| Overview : Background
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) with support from Department for International Development (DfID), the European Union (EU), the Embassy of Sweden and the Government of Zimbabwe is currently managing a resilience building programme in rural communities known as the Zimbabwe Resilience Building Fund (ZRBF). The programme seeks to improve the communities’ adaptive, absorptive and transformation capacity while improving early warning mechanisms and capacitating government (both national and local) for improved evidence-based planning and policy making. Implementation of activities at community level under ZRBF takes place via a group of Consortia partners, with the leadership and guidance of Government stakeholders. ZRBF consortia partners have made strides in bringing on board a number of private sector companies in inclusive business models with rural communities as well as building the capacity of community groups to run Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLAs) or Internal Savings and Lending Associations (ISALs) and broker other linkages with formal financial institutions. However, despite these efforts, the macroeconomic challenges in Zimbabwe have resulted in highly volatile business operating environment which has adversely affected some of the relationships that have been built. The removal of the 1:1 parity between the bond note and the USD saw continued deterioration of the RTGS dollar and uncoordinated pricing mechanisms for agricultural inputs and basic food commodities. Resultantly, the value of savings accumulated in various VSLAs/ISALs that had been established was eroded. The devaluation also affected possible contract farming arrangements with private sector players as the environment had become uncertain regarding terms of trade, the currency to adopt in transactions and the economic risks posed by the time lag in transactions. A number of private sector companies traded cautiously as they shied away from traditional contract farming arrangements, whilst communities also did the same due to the unfavourable payment terms offered by the private companies. The multi-currency regime required that communities and farmers have a clear understanding of the prevailing exchange rates as this was key in the pricing of their commodities. The introduction of the Zimbabwean Dollar as the official currency and phasing out of the multicurrency system as announced in June 2019 added further confusion and uncertainty concerning market linkages and the value of savings. This move brought a lot of uncertainty, and businesses pegged RTGS dollar prices highly to manage uncertainty. For communities’ enterprises to survive, it means they have to come up with viable pricing strategies and financial literacy training has become very critical to enable communities to run meaningful and viable enterprises In order to support the efforts of the consortia partners in promoting market linkages and financial inclusion, ZRBF seeks the services of two individual consultants. These consultants are expected to support this initiative through 4 strategic components highlighted in the scope of work and will be operating from within the offices of ZRBF PMU. In order to ensure sustainability of the work carried by the 2 consultants under this arrangement, the consultants will build the capacity of and work closely with the marketing focal person for each consortia (who is also a member of the marking working group and the focal person will also build the capacity and work closely with 2 Government focal persons from each district, one from the Department of Small and Medium Enterprises and one from Agritex). Objectives
The broader objective of the consultancy is to accelerate the pace of market linkages and financial inclusion to improve people’s livelihoods and support the development and growth of sustainable, innovative, cost effective and scalable business initiatives for the targeted districts, in line with the broad ZRBF objective of improving the communities’ adaptive, absorptive and transformation capacity. Scope
To achieve the objective highlighted above, the Consultants are expected to support the following 4 components:
Component 1: Facilitation and Coordination of Market Linkages (output, input) and financial services to support inclusive business/partnerships models. Under this component, the consultants are expected to undertake the following: - Assist the existing portfolio of private sector companiesto refine their business models to cope with the changing environment and coordination across districts to lower transaction costs of doing business with rural communities in ZRBF programming areas.
- Mentoring and coaching of the market linkages working group members (comprising of one representative from each of the 7 ZRBF consortia);
- Negotiations with national level companies;.
- Support the consortia partners in the setting up of Inclusive Business Forums , mentoring of producer groups in the 18 districts. These activities will be conducted at different time interval in the respective district centres (listed below). Each consultant will be responsible for 9 districts. The Inclusive Business Forum should not merely be discussion fora but should facilitate multi-partite agreements for cooperation in value chain or territory-based agricultural (multi-value chain) development, which might involve agribusinesses, smallholder associations/unions, financial institutions, extension services and civil society;
- Facilitate coordination with other similar programs involved in market linkages facilitation for example ZAGP and LFSP;
- Design a private sector engagement model for the ZRBF consortia.
- Evaluation of business proposals under the technology fund and provision of technical support for scale up successful technologies under the Technology Fund. Facilitate the establishment of 18 district Inclusive Business Forums to facilitate linkages within and across districts and consortia partners with the support of the ZRBF Market Linkages Group.
Component 2: Promote federation of VSLAs/ISALs and strengthening and upscaling of community-based, self-managed institutions for financial inclusion and risk sharing. Under this component, the consultants are expected to undertake the following: - Financial literacy training for 4 commodity groups and 10 VSLAs/ISALs per district, in order for them to cope with the volatile economic environment. The consultants should carry out the financial literacy training at consortia level through a ToT for the consortia focal persons and the extension staff in all the 18 districts, who should in turn cascade the training to the project participants;
- Research good practices for sustainable establishment and scaling up of VSLAs/ISALs and other self-managed institutions of the rural poor, including informing whether promoting their federation is the appropriate option going forward. This will be done in collaboration with the Resilience Knowledge Hub. Targets for the numbers and geographic scope of federations of ISALs to be established are to be determined with the ZRBF PMU after a scoping assessment to be performed by the consultants;
- For existing SACCOs, the consultants are expected to strengthen the SACCOs’ capacity in governance, group dynamics and financial management (a total of 36 SACCOs-2 per district), especially considering that all the existing SACCOs are operating as enterprises;
- Carry an assessment on how VSLAs can help members to respond to crises and how ZRBF can support VSLA members during a crisis period. This assessment also includes the possibility of establishing community contingency funds through contributions from various VSLAs. This activity will be done in collaboration with the RKH.
Component 3: Research and Documentation. Under this component, the consultants are expected to undertake the following: - Documentation of models, including previous success and failures in market linkages and financial inclusion interventions in collaboration with the ZRBF Resilience Knowledge Hub.
Component 4: Strengthening/establishment of commodity groups at different level (National, district and community level). Under this component, the consultants are expected to undertake the following: - Support 4 current commodity groups per district and 2 per province from different consortia and identify gaps in collaboration with the relevant government ministry/department especially the Department of Small and Medium Enterprises and the Ministry of Land Agriculture Water and Rural Resettlement. The support to involve assessment of the maturity level of the existing commodity groups, assist them to have proper constitutions and management structures and have them registered to make their operations formal;
- Support establishment of 4 commodity groups per district, where they are non-existent. Assess the potential for establishment of one or more provincial and national-level commodity associations or apex bodies, e.g. for small grains. Determine with the PMU (in coordination with LFSP and other relevant initiatives), after this assessment, a target for establishment of provincial and national-level associations;
- Facilitate relevant trainings on the group committee members (for the 88 commodity groups across the 18 districts (4 per district, 2 per province) and to the members through a Training of Trainers and cascading model to enable them to run the business of commodity groups along business/commercial lines;
- Carry out cost benefit analysis, in collaboration with ZAGP, of 10 value chains (5 per consultant) and an overview of net incomes for value chain currently undertaken by the ZRBF consortia;
- Conduct a sample-based household income and expenditure analysis (based on different income sources and expenditures at different time of year) and the role of VSLA in the respective household economies. This activity will be done in collaboration with the RKH.
This assignment involves extensive travel within Zimbabwe which consultants are expected to cost. Details of the destinations and distance are provided in the attached ToRs. Bidders are encouraged to fully familiarise themslves with the full scope of work before preparing proposals. Any requests for clarifications should be sent to procurement.zw@undp.org. Full details of this consultancy and application procedures are available on https://jobs.undp.org/cj_view_job.cfm?cur_job_id=89059 |
