Consultant at Mercy Corps Nigeria - 4 Openings

Mercy Corps is a leading global organization powered by the belief that a better world is possible. In disaster, in hardship, in more than 40 countries around the world, we partner to put bold solutions into action - helping people triumph over adversity and build stronger communities from within, now, and for the future.

We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: Consultant

Locations: Gombe, Borno, Yobe and Adamawa
Employment Type: Contract

Background

• The Feed the Future Nigeria Rural Resilience Activity is a five-year Activity funded by USAID. The Activity is being implemented by Mercy Corps in partnership with Save the Children International and International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC).
• The goal of the Rural Resilience Activity is to facilitate and protect economic recovery and growth in vulnerable conflict-affected areas and sustainably move people out of chronic vulnerability and poverty via expanded opportunities.
• The Activity seeks to increase incomes, improve livelihoods and resilience of households through market-led growth in 4 states (Adamawa, Borno, Gombe and Yobe States) in Northeast Nigeria.

Purpose / Project Description

• The Rural Resilience Activity aims to identify potential partners and innovative approaches that leverage USAID resources to develop practical and market-driven solutions to implement innovative business models targeting smallholder farmers, youth, women, and micro-enterprises who have been affected by the protracted conflicts in North-eastern Nigeria.
• Layered on the principles of broadened and inclusive growth through local economy and microenterprises competitiveness, the Activity objectives are a) inclusive and sustainable agriculture-led economic growth; b) strengthened resilience among people and systems; and c) a well-nourished population, especially women and children, thereby contributing to sustainable reductions in malnutrition and poverty.
• Business Membership Organizations (BMOs) enable members to work collectively, learn and adopt new knowledge and behaviour, improve quality, and sell high quality products to better markets for better prices. Through BMOs, members can access more goods and services such as quality raw materials from traders and aggregators, better advocacy and representation in decision making spaces, better management and record keeping for businesses, access to finance and technologies, among others.
• BMOs are also a place where they could facilitate improvement in relationships between its members and the other market actors and amongst themselves. The Activity seeks to assess the capacity of BMOs in the BAY-G states with the aim of improving the quality and quantity of relationships that exist between market actors in North-eastern Nigeria. This will comprise of an assessment of the environment in which Business Membership Organizations operate, and how business governance affects the value of services that BMOs provide to members in the BAY-G (Borno, Adamawa, Yobe and Gombe) states.
• The analysis and recommendations on how strengthening the capacity of BMOs can contribute to economic resilience in conflicted affected contexts and will serve as critical input for the design of interventions and implementation.

Consultant Objectives
For these relationships to grow sustainably over time, BMOs needs a combination of:

• A well-defined service package to the members with corresponding capacity to deliver services to the members;
• Developed relationships and trust with market actors including government regulatory and standards agencies, suppliers, financial institutions, last mile marketing; and
• Business advisory support to BMOs and their members to improve their profitability, cash flow and use of data for decision making (i.e. having access to data on suppliers for forecasting, trade finance, performance management, digital payments, etc.) such that they operate as a business.

BMOs are faced with capacity constraints which limit their scope to serve members. Increased management capacity, business skills, improved governance, and improved capacity to negotiate and advocate for members will help BMOs serve their members, increase member profits by selling to higher value markets. Specifically:

• Identify opportunities and challenges that the BMOs in Northeast Nigeria have in serving their members sustainably.
• Provide recommendations on how the activity can strengthen capacities of prioritised Business Membership Organizations for effective performance based on capacity assessment results.
• Develop a commercial service model for 4 at least BMOs and their members, prioritizing those working in the Agric sector.

Activities
The Consultant will conduct the following tasks:

Task Area 1:

• Conduct internal organizational capacity and structure assessments of 20 BMOs, as part of the entry and to establish a baseline status. This assessment will guide a set of interventions and facilitate the development of a capacity building plan. This will be done in a participatory manner with the BMOs’ leadership.
• Key performance result: Tools for capacity assessment, Organizational Capacity and Structure assessment report and Capacity building plan with key targets and milestones.

Task Area 2:

• Design and cause to be approved the relevant business documents and policies for BMOs. The consultant will support and facilitate processes leading to the development of internal operation policies of BMOs and work with the leadership to kick off improvements.
• Key performance result: Developed and approved business operation documents and policies. (Human Resource manual, finance manual, procurement manual, governance manual)

Task Area 3:

• Develop the BMO business plan, business model and Service package. BMOs have a mandate, which is to represent and serve their members. However, BMOs often lack a well-defined service package and often have no business plan. The consultant will support 5BMOs to achieve this.
• Key performance results: Service package, business plan, business and financial model including a membership engagement plan.

Task Area 4:

• Capacity Building of BMO leadership and 5 BMO members. To ensure delivery of technical capacity building to BMOs, the consultant will be expected to select, train and mentor at least five members of each selected BMO in basic business management, record keeping, marketing, supply chain management, inclusive business planning. The five members are expected to be focal examples from which other members can learn going forward. 2 to 3 of these will be women owned businesses.
• Key performance result: Capacity building report of the five businesses, inclusive business plans for the 5 businesses, business documents and internal policies of the five businesses, BMO board performance management plan.

Task Area 5:

• Profiling of BMO members and development of BMO information pack.
• Key performance results: An electronic profile of each BMO and its members and an information pack for marketing BMO products and services

Task Area 6:

• Performance reports. The consultant will be required to submit performance reports as defined in the deliverable schedule highlighting progress on key tasks towards achieving the objectives of the SOW.
• Key performance results: Performance reports of the capacity building tasks.

Consultant Deliverables
The Consultant Will (What will they Accomplish / Deliver - Bulleted list preferred):

Through evidence, provide a framework which will propose business models that will move BMOs from having little recognition, poor performance and ineffective competition, to having increased recognition and improved performance with effective competition.

Timeframe / Schedule:

• 40 days in 3 months (November 2022 – January2023).
• Payment schedule will be based on the following percentage of deliverable.

Working Relationships

• The Consultant will report to: The Intervention Officer.
• The Consultant will work closely with: DCOP and other Internal TSU members, including but not limited to the Financial Inclusion Advisor and the Gender and Youth Engagement Advisor.’

Required Experience & Skills

• Mercy Corps standard is 5 - 10 years of relevant experience for consultants.
• At least 5 to 10 or more years of professional experience in the field of MSMEs/BMO development, business, and development advisory.
• Demonstrated evidence that shows they have supported at least three or more Organizations (both public and private sectors) on business strategy development.
• Being an assessor (technical or quality) of an accreditation body is an asset.
• Experience or qualification in supporting development programs is an additional advantage.
• Experience in critical environment research and business environment reform advocacy.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Excel, Word, and PowerPoint.
• Previous work in Agriculture and Technology specifically.
• Knowledge of the Northeast and previous work in the region is an added advantage, as is ability to communicate in Hausa.

Application Closing Date
7th November, 2022.