L’IFPRI lance un avis d’appel à manifestation d’intérêt pour la sélection d’un Cabinet de conseil pour la réalisation d’enquêtes auprès des agriculteurs vulnérables, y compris les personnes déplacées et les femmes agricultrices, Nigeria
L’IFPRI lance un avis d’appel à manifestation d’intérêt pour la sélection d’un Cabinet de conseil pour la réalisation d’enquêtes auprès des agriculteurs vulnérables, y compris les personnes déplacées et les femmes agricultrices, Nigeria
About HarvestPlus IFPRI:
HarvestPlus IFPRI fights hidden hunger worldwide by scaling staple food crops that are bred to be rich in essential vitamins and minerals. These biofortified, climate-smart crops sustainably improve the health, resilience, and livelihoods of smallholder farming households and low-income consumers, helping to make food systems more nutritious and inclusive. Biofortified staple foods are well accepted and affordable which allows households to consume vital micronutrients as part of their daily diets. HarvestPlus works with delivery partners to scale these crops in some of the most vulnerable regions in the world including the African Sahel -parts of which are deeply affected rising temperatures, rainfall uncertainty, malnutrition, conflict and migration.
Context:
Climate change poses a significant challenge to agriculture productivity in North Nigeria – a sub region that is already food insecure. Climate change has led to increasing temperatures and desertification in the North, erratic and changing rainfall across the country, and increased flood risk in coastal regions and along the major river systems. Delayed and shorter rainy seasons, coupled with low technology adoption has meant yield reductions for most major crops. The impact is projected to be highest in crops on which smallholder livelihoods and diets depend the most – maize, millet, sorghum, and wheat.
Climate change together with a significant increase in population size in Nigeria, exacerbates current food and nutrition insecurity. The overall stock of micronutrients is impacted both through declining yields and reducing mineral content (particularly iron and zinc) of crops. Micronutrient deficiencies, specifically iron and Vitamin A, are particularly concentrated in North Nigeria. Given the context of predominantly agricultural livelihoods, income poverty and high food inflation, addressing these nutritional deficiencies requires solutions that are not only food systems based but also affordable and readily accessible through existent daily diets.
Increases in food production are currently being met through expanding the area under cultivation at the expense of natural forest cover, rather than via plot level agricultural intensification (World Bank, 2018), such as improved agriculture technologies. Population pressures mean that this strategy is not sustainable. The increased pressure on natural resources is reflected as well in increased farmer herder conflict and expanded numbers of internally displaced populations. Food price inflation has been in the double digits over the last three years, reducing the affordability of nutritious diverse diets. Intensification (use of improved seeds, fertilizers) is low across Sub Saharan Africa for a few potential reasons well captured in literature:
- liquidity constraints at the farmer level, (Giné et al., 2008; Karlan, 2014)
- high risk perception and therefore reduced investment in farm inputs, (Rosenzweig and Binswanger, 1993; Dorward, 2009)
- weak market integration for inputs in North Nigeria and variable quality of inputs (Rutsaert and Donovan, 2020)
- poor coverage of extension and advisory services,
- and high costs of critical inputs like fertilizer (Balana and Fasoranti, 2022).
In this context IFPRI is interested in studying the impact of a bundle of biofortified seed, fertilizer, advisories and insurance. This will be a cluster randomized control trial with a focus on IDPs in Gombe state in North Nigeria. Half the sample of approximately 1300-1400 farmers will have at least one treatment plot (biofortified bundle) and the other half will have one or more control plots of their regular varieties. All farmers will be asked to grow maize or millets as per their usual production/farm management practices/inputs.
We are seeking a research collaborator to conduct field surveying and data management activities for this study.
High Level Scope:
- Work with lead researchers and the local IFPRI team to understand the research design, key data requirements and questionnaire.
- Conduct three survey interview rounds – one baseline and two post-harvest between 2023 and 2024 maize wet and dry seasons.
- Provide qualitative data collection support.
- Collect, manage data and data quality. Conduct regular checks and monitoring to ensure high-quality data collection and maintain required data security procedures.
- Share data in a structured, timely way with lead researchers and local IFPRI team.
Expected Activities:
- The main survey elements are – household survey (three rounds) and qualitative FGDs before and after the intervention. Sample for the hh survey is approximately 1500 across 52 wards in five to six LGAs and for the FGDs are 100 participants in total.
- Obtain all local approvals for data collection.
- Appoint enumerators for the qualitative study and baseline. Jointly review the questionnaire, translate the questionnaire into local language, code the survey instrument in Survey CTO and facilitate training for enumerators on the questionnaire with the IFPRI lead.
- Design survey protocol and conduct field test of baseline questionnaire as part of the training.
- Only enumerators who understand the questionnaire well and who have good interview skills should finally be hired for data collection.
- Establish procedures for implementing the surveys and monitoring implementation.
- Obtain individual informed consent from all participants.
- Complete quick listing survey, provide input on sampling design and establish ID code for households, wards/host communities, LGAs and enumerators.
- Conduct final review of survey instruments and roll out the survey implementation.
- Conduct data collection and quality assurance per IFPRI requirements.
- Design data cleaning protocols and implement those facilitated by IFPRI at field-level in parallel with the data collection.
- Comply with high frequency quality checks from IFPRI staff and provide swift corrective feedback to enumerators where needed.
- Handover the complete dataset both in the data collection program format as well as in Stata format.
Deliverables:
- Translated survey instruments
- Draft Survey CTO instruments
- Final Survey CTO instruments
- Survey training plan
- Survey logistics plan
- Survey quality control plan and data cleaning protocol
- Raw datasets
- Clean datasets with labeled variables
Timeline:
The surveys will be implemented between June 2023 and March 2024.
Proposal Requirement:
Proposals for this RFP are due by April 28th 2023. Only organizations are invited to apply – this is not open to individual consultants.
Proposals should not be more than 10 pages in length.
The following sections should be included:
- Capability statement – Should highlight research expertise and experience with survey design, implementation with greater than 1000 households and impact evaluations both quantitative and qualitative.
- Sector expertise – The organization should have experience and expertise in the agriculture sector and should have some experience of working in conflict or disaster affected areas and the proposal should reflect sensitivity to the relevant local context.
- Team Representativeness – Team should reflect ability to engage vulnerable groups like smallholders, IDPs, women farmers, and religious and ethnic minorities. They should be culturally attuned to how best to communicate with local populations in Gombe especially North and Central Gombe.
- Local language/context – In addition to good English communication and writing skills the team should demonstrate ability to conduct research in Gombe in Hausa and any other relevant local language among IDPs.
- Other skills – The organization should be comfortable managing large amounts of data, data cleaning and processing in Stata.
- Initial recommendations/considerations for research design and sampling – Based on the information given in the first section of the RFP the organization can provide up to one page of recommendations on the research design, sampling considerations and logistics for the research study.
- Financial proposal – See template below. Please breakdown time and expenses by senior and junior researchers. Please add rows as needed.
