Senior Programme Officer/ Value Chain Development Specialist

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE OF THE ASSIGNMENT: WFP is partnering with the Mastercard Foundation (the Foundation) on a five-year 130 million USD partnership titled ‘Strengthening food systems to promote increased value chain employment opportunities for youth’. This partnership, which aims to strengthen local food systems and making them more efficient, sustainable and inclusive for youth, in particular young women, will be implemented in eight WFP Country Offices (COs), in three different regions: East Africa (Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda); Southern Africa (Tanzania, Mozambique) and West Africa (Ghana, Nigeria, and Senegal). In each of these countries, the programme will adopt an integrated value chain approach to implement context-specific interventions aimed at creating youth jobs through reducing post-harvest losses, improving the quality of crops and increasing the value of sales by smallholder farmers, and broadly improving value chain efficiency for young people.

Using a value chain development approach, the programme will focus on reducing post-harvest losses and increasing the access of small-holder farmers to reliable and remunerative market opportunities for a range of different crops. In complement to those core intervention areas, the partnership will introduce innovative access to finance solutions to the benefit of key value chain actors, as well as a range of other innovative digital solutions to strengthen the performance of those actors and improve overall the overall efficiency of the targeted value chains.

Purpose of the consultancy:

The eight WFP COs conducted a Value Chain Analysis (VCA) in 2022 to identify constraints that affect selected VCs and to identify opportunities that could support women and youth employment. The VCAs have provided recommendations for upgrading the selected VCs with focus on areas that could potentially create employment for women and youth. One of the main outcomes of the VCAs is that youth and women are attracted to new business areas such as processing, trading, and services, which are more lucrative than traditional farming.

Each country has identified a number of opportunities for creating employment for target segments. The opportunities will constitute the entry points for implementation during the 4 years programme timeframe. The identified opportunities are commercial in nature and respond to market demand and potential growth. The COs are currently reviewing the identified opportunities and selecting the most relevant to develop their respective implementation strategies. It is expected that the majority of opportunities will undergo analysis to ensure their commercial feasibility as well as to identify strategic partners in their development.

The consultant is expected to lead the process of developing and assessing the opportunities to evaluate their commercial viability. The consultant will also advise the COs on the structuring of the business models and supporting the Country teams during the process of proposal readjustment and project implementation.

The WFP Programme Coordination team, based in HQ with representations in 3 regional bureaus, hence requires the support of a value chain development specialist to:

1. Provide strategic and technical support to COs in the eight countries where the MCF programme is being implemented to: develop Value Chain Development strategies to create employment opportunities for young men and women; identify commercial opportunities that have the potential to create youth jobs; design and develop business models for identified opportunities.
2. Provide support during the design and implementation of the different opportunities and other key interventions related to value chain development as well as help COs to identify and foster effective partnerships to execute these initiatives.
3. Closely collaborate with other WFP Divisions and Programme Units (e.g. Supply Chain and Procurement, School Feeding, Nutrition, Cash Based Transfers, etc.) that contribute to generate demand for high value commodities, to foster programmatic linkages that have the potential to build synergies between different WFP interventions;
4. Help COs to interact and build connections with private sector entities at national level that contribute to achieve the Programme Objective. Advise COs on the correct internal procurement and legal procedures for building formal partnerships and/or contractual agreements with private sector entities, if any.

The consultant will report to the MCF-WFP deputy global coordinator and will work as part of the MCF-WFP Programme Coordination Team, including the regional bureaus’ regional coordinators, and in close coordination with focal points in target country offices and, when required, with colleagues in the Food Systems and Smallholder Support Unit (PROR-F). The position involves substantial travel to the 8 countries where the MCF-WFP project operates and may require periodic missions to WFP HQ.

In its support to the COs, the consultant should be aware and adapt its methods and tools to the internal capacities of COs and to the nature of the activities that are the backbone of the MCF programme in the respective countries. In particular, the consultant should understand how the MCF objective of creating youth jobs can be integrated into respective Country Strategic Programmes (CSPs) and help COs draw the appropriate connections between programmes. In the process, the consultant should contribute to increasing CO capacity in analysis and development of opportunities, including if necessary by advising the CO on the recruitment of additional human resources in key technical areas.

During the assignment, the consultant will consult WFP’s new Local and Regional Food Procurement Policy (LRFPP) which offers a framework for addressing bottlenecks in value chains, in particular detecting inefficiencies and imbalances that may prevent actors along the chain from benefiting from food procurement. The Policy aims at boosting WFP’s local, regional and pro-smallholder procurement by complementing the cost-efficiency considerations that guide its procurement decisions and introducing additional principles and parameters, including programme objectives and analysis of local value chains. This will contribute to improving the participation of smallholders in existing and new food and agriculture value chains.

ACCOUNTABILITIES/RESPONSIBILITIES:

1. Lead the design and development of the Value Chain Development Strategy for the Mastercard Foundation programme for each participating COs.
2. Design, organise and deliver tools and workshops with the COs to implement the VCD strategy and implementation modalities.
3. Conduct market assessment and feasibility studies of potential commercial opportunities to evaluate its commercial viability and develop appropriate engagement strategy.
4. Lead the dialogue with the private sector including SMEs and large corporates to explore collaboration opportunities. The consultant is also expected to identify potential roles of different private sector segments (SMES and Large) in the project and advise COs on the best approach to engage with the private sector under the different business models.
5. Assess and evaluate the business models under implementation to provide feedback and advise on progress.
6. Build capacity of MCF COs teams in aspects related to design, development, and implementation of business opportunities.
7. Provide support on VCA and VCD for other PROR-F teams, as required. This include advising COs on VCA methodologies and approaches; Review Value Chain support request forms/expressions of interest submitted by RBs and COs to advise on action and provide / assign appropriate support.
8. Participate in HQ PROR-F VCA and VCD development workshops and provide technical guidance on the development of WFP VCA methodology.
9. Act as a focal point for quality control in HQ for VCA reports, review VCA outcomes and reports conducted by COs, and provide recommendations.
10. Lead/Contribute to the development of value chain studies and initiatives for a range of food commodities, acting as link between Procurement and Programme.
11. Participate in the design and implementation of programmes and projects related to agribusiness, value chain development, and agricultural and rural development in line with WFP’s LRFPP and SAMS+ frameworks.
12. Liaise with internal counterparts to enable effective collaboration, implementation and monitoring of ongoing activities related to value chain development and related ongoing project activities.
13. Identify, establish and foster operational local partnerships to implement collaborative initiatives that will contribute to address some of the inefficiencies identified in the target value chains.
14. As requested, provide technical support and/or backstopping to field activities, including building collaborations and partnerships.
15. Other duties as required

DELIVERABLES:

1. Eight re-adjusted proposals reviewed and analyzed.
2. Eight WFP country offices have implementation plans based on solid evidence, backed by strong public and private partners.
3. Contribution on the organization of learning/sharing events on the VCD results.
4. Prepare reports and data analysis and make recommendations to supervisors.
5. Training sessions organized based on needs.
6. Capacity building missions to COs as required.
7. Draft guidance manual produced at end of assignment to document lessons from implementation in the eight countries.

QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE REQUIRED:

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