Consultancy at World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF)

Job Summary

The AWARD strategy 2017-2022 envisions a robust, resilient gender responsive agricultural innovation system working toward agriculture-driven prosperity for Africa. AWARD invests in African scientists and research institutions, and agribusinesses so that they can deliver agricultural innovations that better respond to the needs and priorities of a diversity of women and men across Africa’s food systems. The strategy is anchored on three pillars including 1) build a pool of capable, confident, and influential African scientists to lead critical advances and innovations in the agricultural research and development sector 2) Support African ARD institutions to prioritize and embrace gender responsiveness in both policy and practice 3) build an enabling environment for gender responsiveness to become an embedded cultural norm and practice in the African ARD. As this year culminates the last year of the current strategy, we are in the process of developing a new strategy (2023-2027) that charts the way forward for AWARD.

Job Description

AWARD plans to conduct an external evaluation on the effectiveness of its current strategy and areas of work since inception, to take stock of achievements, identify gaps, challenges, opportunities and lessons that will be used as a foundation for the next strategic plan development. 

Objectives of the Evaluation

The primary focus of the evaluation will be the current Strategic Plan (2017-2022) and the previous Strategic Plans since the inception of AWARD, in order to distill lessons and identify strategic focus areas as an input into the new Strategic Plan (2023–2027). The evaluation will assess the relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, impact, visibility, and sustainability of AWARD strategy. The evaluation will identify gaps, challenges and lessons that will inform the development of the new AWARD strategy

The evaluation will have the following specific objectives:

• Assess the appropriateness of AWARD’s strategy-, short-, medium-, and long-term priorities and objectives for the achievement of AWARD’s mission.
• Assess the relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, impact, coherence, and sustainability of the programmatic areas of the Strategic Plan in terms of delivering quality services and interventions to the beneficiaries.
• Assess AWARD’s programmatic areas (AWARD Fellowships, GRARD, ATU, GAIA) relevance, performance and identify areas of improvement in terms of implementation modalities, portfolio management, M&E, knowledge management, partnerships, and resource mobilization as stated in the strategic plan.
• Assess the transition and coherence of the program from the previous Strategic Plans to the current Strategic Plan.
• Identify issues, challenges and lessons and provide strategic conclusions and recommendations including important programmatic elements, structural and management considerations for the next strategic plan, taking into consideration the changing landscape. 
• Make recommendations on strategic priorities for AWARD’s next strategic plan.

Project expected results 

The outputs of this work shall include:

• An inception mission to meet with AWARD Staff and subsequent inception report which details the findings of the initial inception mission and desk review as well as a stakeholder analysis and engagement strategies, detailed methodology and timeline, the sampling framework, data collection tools, and ethical protocols, amongst other information critical to the successful completion of the joint evaluation.
• Data collection in all the countries where AWARD has ongoing activities, through both online consultations and four country visits to selected countries (Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, and Ghana). This will culminate in debriefing PowerPoint Presentations and validation meetings in for each country and a global validation workshop which will be conducted online or in-person, as necessary.
• Draft evaluation report including an executive summary and sections on the methodology, findings, conclusions, lessons learned and recommendations.
• Case studies, in form of an information brief or visual four-page document, for disseminating results.
• Final evaluation report, validated through a workshop.
• Approach and Methodology 
• The evaluation will apply a mixed-methods approach, collecting both qualitative and quantitative data, and will adhere to the UN Evaluation Group (UNEG) Norms and Standards, as well as the Ethical Guidelines for evaluations in the CGIAR system. It will be guided by the evaluation criteria defined by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and additional aspects as detailed in the evaluation questions.

The evaluation will be based on a mix of the following methods (but not limited to): Document review; review of available M&E data: and collection of primary data. Data collection methods during field visits will include:

• focus group discussions to generate broad views on outcomes and issues of concern.
• in-depth interviews with key stakeholders to collect data in individual perspectives and experiences.
• key informant interviews with partners, government, and other duty bearers.
• participant surveys to collect indicator-level data.

While the evaluation will focus of the analysis of key achievements and lessons across all of the countries where AWARD has ongoing activities, fieldwork data collection will be conducted in four selected countries, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, and Ghana, where there is a concentration of activities. The in-depth country field visits will inform the identification and preparation of case studies, that provide an in-depth look at quantitative and qualitative results and illustrate key lessons.

Requirements

The lead consultant shall have:

• At least 10 years’ experience as an evaluator with demonstrated quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis skills, with proven record of conducting formative, process and impact evaluation; including leading evaluations of multi-stakeholder programs for development organizations in Africa.
• Proven experience in evaluating gender equality and women’s empowerment projects of value above 1 million dollars
• Possess at a minimum, a master’s degree.
• Extensive experience of program formulation, monitoring and evaluation.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English and.