BASELINE SURVEY FOR CLIMATE SMART AGRICULTURE COMPONENT OF THE PROJECT: STRENGTHENING ADVOCACY AGAINST VIOLENT EXTREMISM (SAVE) PROJECT IN KATSINA STATE, NIGERIA

BASELINE SURVEY FOR CLIMATE SMART AGRICULTURE COMPONENT OF

THE PROJECT: STRENGTHENING ADVOCACY AGAINST VIOLENT EXTREMISM (SAVE) PROJECT IN KATSINA STATE, NIGERIA.

CALL FOR EXPRESSION OF INTEREST FROM RESEARCH ORGANIZATIONS

Women Environmental Programme (WEP) is seeking the services of competent research organization to carry out a baseline study for the Climate Smart Agriculture Component of her Strengthening Advocacy Against Violent Extremism (SAVE) project in Katsina State, North-West Nigeria.

WEP is a non-governmental, non-profit, non-political, non-religion organization with headquarters in Abuja Nigeria, and with offices in Tunisia, Togo, Burkina Faso and Niger.  WEP has a vision of a world where the lives of women and youth around the globe are positively transformed. WEP works to achieve her vision through four programme areas: Environment, Climate Change, Governance, Peace and Security.

Background

Funded by the Global Community Engagement and Resilient Fund (GCERF), the SAVE project is being implemented in four local government areas (Dutsin-Ma, Funtua, Jibia and Musawa) of Katsina State. The Project is implemented under a consortium approach with WEP serving as Principal Recipient (PR) and Murna Foundation as Sub-Recipient (SR). The overall goal of the project is to strengthen community resilience against violent extremism.

The Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) is a new component of the SAVE Project which aimed at ensuring food security as a strategy to prevent violent extremism and a means of sustaining livelihoods. The CSA component of the SAVE project aims to build community resilience in project target local government areas to cope with losses and shortages of food resources and to strengthen community stability, support target beneficiaries to be food secure and prevent target beneficiaries from joining violent extremist groups as a result of unemployment.  The CSA component of SAVE will also provide economic stability through maximizing development impact by targeting high crop value chain that are critical for food security. It will focus on improving the community’s access to crop technology, sustainable agricultural skills and practices, improved seeds, small grants, promotion and strengthening agricultural cooperatives that will improve economic opportunities among women and youth and other vulnerable groups.

For the CSA component of the SAVE to achieve its goal of ensuring food security and providing employment for women and youth as a way of preventing their recruitment and radicalization into violent extremism, the following actions have been proposed to be implemented:

• Creation of farmers’ cooperative societies in the target local government areas
• Training of farmers on climate smart agricultural practices
• Establishment of demonstration farms to demonstrate sustainable agricultural practices
• Establishment of mini organic fertilizer and pesticide production plants
• Establishment of agro-processing facilities for farmers cooperatives
• Create linkages with investors towards investing in the agriculture sector in the state.

It is hoped that these actions will create employment for youth and ensure food security while at the same time preserve and protect the soil from degradation for sustained agricultural production.

Tasks expected of the research organization

The successful research organization will be expected to carry out a baseline survey in the project target local government areas, to gather relevant information that will help the planning and implementation of the CSA component of the SAVE project and against which success will be measured.

The baseline survey is expected to gather information that bother on the following issues among others: kinds of agricultural practices in the state; the level of climate smart agriculture practice in the state; the level involvement of women and youth in agriculture; the level of employment agriculture has created in the state among the youth; the sustainability of the current agricultural practices; level of investment in agriculture; the level of food security in the state and its connection with current food production efforts. These are the issues among other important issues that the baseline survey is expected to gather information about.

The specific tasks to be performed by the research organization and the timelines are as follows:

S/N	Task	Timeline
1.	Develop baseline survey plan	Deadline for submitting expression of interest
2.	Development and submit survey tools for approval	1 week
3.	Recruit and train data collectors	1 weeks
4.	Pre-test data collection tools	1 week
5.	Undertake baseline survey	2 weeks
6.	Submit interim report	1 week
7.	Receive and incorporate feedback to the report	1 week
8.	Submit final report	1 week

Requirements

The research organization to be contracted is expected to meet the following criteria:

• Must be registered with Corporate Affairs Commission of Nigeria
• Must have a good understanding and practical experience of development work including advanced skills in social research, project impact evaluation, and development studies
• Must show evidence of up to date tax payment to the government or tax exemption for non-profits, evidence of contribution to pension of personnel, and evidence of compliance with other government regulations.
• Must demonstrate experience of community engagement, knowledge of peace and security, sustainable agriculture, women and youth empowerment.
• The lead researcher must have an advanced degree in the field of social and development work, social research, evaluation or another relevant social science subject).
• The research organization must have a minimum of 5 years’ experience in carrying out similar assignment and capacity for impact evaluation (a report of such work done in the last 2 years is a required evidence)
• Must demonstrate experience in developing tools for project baselines and impact evaluations.
• Demonstrated understanding of the role of Monitoring & Evaluation in project cycle and experience of conducting learning reviews and evaluation processes in the development sector.
• Demonstrate how to mainstream gender in delivering on the assignment.
• Ability to apply a range of primary and secondary research methods including participatory methods.
• Experience in using qualitative and quantitative data analysis packages (E.g. SPSS, ATLAS.Ti, Nvivo).
• Ability of the team members to speak Hausa and understand the cultural context of the environment.

 

Duration of assignment

This assignment will last for a duration of 2 months from the date of signing the contract with the research organization.

How to submit expression of interest

Interested organizations should send their applications to procurement@wepnigeria.net with “Climate Smart Agriculture Baseline – Acronym or Abbreviation of the organization” as the email subject.

The application should highlight among other things: the organization’s relevant experience, profile of the research team (with each of the team member’s CV sent as annex to the application), proposed survey methodology, work plan and financial proposal.

The application should be maximum of 8 A4-sized pages, excluding annexes.

Deadline for submitting applications is 31^st January 2023. (Deadline extended to 10th February 2023)

Note: Only selected applicant will be contacted.