Consultants (Individual/Firm) at the United Nation Development Programme (UNDP)

The United Nation Development Programme (UNDP) and Global Environment Facility (GEF) in partnership with Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) is recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: Consultant (Individual/Firm)

Location: Northern Nigeria

Background

• United Nation Development Programme (UNDP) and Global Environment Facility (GEF) is partnering with Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) to implement landscape management to enhance food security in the savannah zone of Northern Nigeria for 5 years, The overall goal of this project is to enhance long-term sustainability and resilience of food production systems in Nigeria, building greater community resilience to climate risks and other shocks that drive food insecurity.
• This will be achieved through interventions that: (I) enhance the policy and institutional enabling environment for achieving improved food security in a sustainable, resilient and value-chain driven manner; (ii) scale up sustainable land and water management (SLWM) and climate-smart agricultural (CSA) practices in support of environmental and social development benefits at farm and landscape level; and (iii) reduce gender disparities in agricultural production, which substantially affect overall sector performance.

The project is implemented in seven (7) states across the three savanna zones of northern Nigeria:

• Guinea savanna ( Benue and Nasarawa state)
• Sudan savanna (Adamawa and Gombe state)
• Sudan-Sahel savanna ( Kano, Jigawa and Katsina state)

Two (2) LGAs were selected from each state and five (5) communities were further selected from each selected LGA as project sites, summing up the total project communities to seventy (70).

Categories Of Assignments
Based on need at different times, the project will require the services of different individual consultants and firms to provide one or more related or different services under the three interwoven project components depending on qualifications and relevant experience:

Component One
(Enhancing Policy & Institutional Enabling Environment for Food Security)

• Support government in partnership with civil society to review and harmonize existing relevant policies and strategies on food and nutrition security and produce National Food & Nutrition Security Policy (NFNSP) at federal and state level.
• Support government to evaluate the performance of relevant national- and state-level institutions to construct a National System for Food and Nutrition security (NSFNS).
• Facilitate the consolidation of the NFNSP and NSFNS into a National Sustainable Food Security Resilience Framework (NSFSRF) and develop an action plan for its implementation.
• Work with Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Federal Ministry of Environment, voice for food security coalition and other proven NGOs to facilitate and establish multi stakeholder organ on sustainable and resilient food and nutrition security and replicate establishment of multi stakeholder advocacy organs at state level.
• Build and/or strengthen capacities of government and other organs to drive advocacy on sustainable and resilient food and nutrition security.
• Use Public- Private Partnership system to establish interstate food commodity value chain (production, processing and marketing) among the project states for major food crops (rice, groundnuts, cassava, maize, cowpea and sorghum)

Component Two
(Scaling up of Sustainable Land & Water Management & Climate Smart Agriculture in support of environmental and social development benefits)

• Identification of suitable crops and sustainable agricultural practices in each project sites.
• Setting up of demonstration plots using the suitable crops identified and sustainable agricultural practices identified in assignment 1) to showcase its viability and benefits to farmers.
• Supporting the development of improved land use and agro-ecosystem management practices including training of farmers on different techniques of climate smart agriculture and sustainable land and water management to adapt to the challenging climate change and land degradation in the savanna zones of northern Nigeria.
• Training of agricultural extension workers on sustainable agricultural practices and climate smart agricultural techniques and coach them on how to step down to farmers at project communities.
• Assessment of state of smallholder commodity production, availability of potential traders and develop/design concrete business ideas to involve smallholders. (Study)
• Facilitating establishment/strengthening of commodity cooperative groups or associations of producers, processors, marketers and other value chain actors in the project communities. Furthermore, use leverage from ASDP initiative to create innovation platforms for sharing knowledge, innovation and business development.
• Increasing productivity of farmers as out-growers through improved access to inputs and adoption of best practices and enhance seed production and marketing at scale
• Linking partners to identified sources of inputs, and facilitate access to credit and markets
• Identifying and exploring potentials for intensification, processing and marketing opportunities for each of the 10 project communities.
• Designing and implementing a diversified alternative livelihood package for each community (to cover at least 500 ha per community)
• Designing of market-based mechanisms for each of the packages that provide smallholders with proper incentives to invest in sustainability
• Supplying and installation of labour saving equipment for production, post-harvest and processing activities in the 14 LGA of the project states
• Identifying and working with influences and supporters to engage in and support the project
• Enhance women and youth farmers knowledge (training and mentoring) of improved small scale groundnut and rice production and processing technologies such as aflatoxin management technologies etc.
• Training of women and youth groups on use of labour saving equipment for production and processing

Component Three
(Knowledge Management, Monitoring and Assessment)

• Facilitating the establishment/strengthening research unit on food security in the FMARD to update information on food security
• Reviewing existing information systems related to food security, identify gaps and recommend ways of enhancing effectiveness
• Facilitating establishment of an effective and functional National Food Security Information System (NFSIS) and Food Security Information Networks(FSIN) at state level in various agro-ecological zones and create National Platform for interaction(NPI) among state based food security networks
• Developing M&E plan for the project
• Conducting physical and socio-economic baseline surveys for participating states and project communities /sites
• Assessment of the effectiveness of introduced sustainable land and water management and climate smart agricultural techniques and Agro-biodiversity practices. (Study)
• Conducting knowledge management activities such as organizing media workshop production of newsletters, jingles, and documentary and so on.

Qualifications

• Educational qualification required for component one assignments: Postgraduate degree in Agricultural economics, Sustainable Development, Rural Development, Development Studies or any other relevant qualifications related to policy making, review and analysis.
• Educational qualification required for component two assignments: Postgraduate degree in Agricultural economics, Agribusiness, Agricultural Extension Service, Agronomy, Forestry/Agroforestry, Environmental Management, Geography, Climatology, Natural Resource Management, or any relevant field in earth and environmental science.
• Educational qualification required for component three assignments: Postgraduate degree in Agricultural Economics, Economics, Monitoring & Evaluation, Operations Research, Information/Knowledge Management, communication studies, Project Management or any related field.
• A minimum of 5 years of experience in the field of development sector including consultancy work with the Government and development partners in food and nutrition security or related fields.
• Demonstrated ability to deliver quality results within strict deadlines.
• Proven knowledge of the issues around Sustainability and Resilience of Food security in Sub-Saha ran Africa (SSA)

Application Closing Date
18th April, 2019

How to Apply
Interested and qualified consultants and firms should send their CV and firms profiles respectively along with Cover/Motivation Letter expressing qualifications and capacity to do a selected assignment from any of the component of interest to: [email protected]

Note

• He/she should send the Cover Letter/Motivation Letter along with the CV or profile as one document in WORD attachment. The subject of the email should read the selected assignment and the component. See example: Component two: Training of agricultural extension workers on sustainable agricultural practices