Terms of Reference: Baseline study for Grains Production in Nigeria

IDH and Norwegian Agency for Development Corporation (NORAD) are extending Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative (NICFI) program partnership to include complementary activities in Nigeria and Ethiopia, and to partner with a wider range of food processing companies, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and smallholder farmers (SHF) that produce and process diverse food crops for local and regional markets. 

To this end, IDH has started a market-led grains value chain development program in Nigeria to contribute to the development of the grains sector, support the inclusion of local SMEs and smallholder farmers, and create jobs with a central focus on sustainable, inclusive value chain transformation.  

Based on these Terms of Reference (“ToR”), IDH aims to select a party to conduct a baseline study of the value chain of selected grains in some states of Nigeria. 

About the Program  

Many smallholder farmers in Nigeria face challenges relating to low productivity, low market prices, lack of technical expertise and experience in consistently producing high-value crops at scale for large off-takers, and limited access to affordable financing. By providing direct support to smallholder farmers and supporting SMEs in including increased numbers of smallholder farmers in their supply chains, the Program will help establish more secure livelihoods for smallholder farmers through increased revenue flows and, thus, help reduce food security pressures. 

This Program will enable them to close the gap between regular operations and scalable growth by providing access to inputs, agribusiness management support, agricultural technical assistance, and operational capacity building. The Program will support farmers with access to high-quality training, tools, and inputs. The Program will work with local input companies and other technical service providers, including transport companies, digital service providers, and extension workers, to build sustainable models for long-term service delivery. 

The Assignment

The baseline study will be led by an external consultant, who will support the program management team. The overall objective of this baseline study is to provide an independent information base relevant to the program against which the program’s progress and effectiveness can be monitored and assessed both during the implementation of the project’s activities and after the completion of the project. The baseline study, an early element of the project monitoring framework, is, in effect, the first step in the project monitoring and evaluation system.

The study is to provide the basis for subsequent assessments of how efficiently the program's activities are being implemented and the program's eventual results.

The study will capture the following:

• Current social and production information of SHFs on the selected crops (wheat, sorghum, rice, maize, soybean and groundnut) against the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) in the KPI Framework in Annex 1.

• Household income of the targeted population in the project area.

Please take a closer look at the Terms of Reference and join us in transforming value chains in Nigeria.

The proposal should be submitted to Daniel Abah at abah@idhtrade.org and copied to ogundijo@idhtrade.org on or before February 12, 2025, 17:00 WAT.