26 September 2025

Terms of Reference: End-term evaluation of the Coffee Farmer Income Resilience Program (CFIRP)

Introduction

Background

The Coffee Farmer Income Resilience Program is a partnership between the IKEA Foundation and IDH, working on improving income resilience, adoption of regenerative agriculture practices, strengthening blended service delivery, and fostering smallholder inclusion in the coffee value chain. The high-level objectives of the Program include expanding IDH’s proven service delivery model approach to develop a robust proof of concept for blending coffee-specific services with services for other, non-coffee farm produce to improve income resilience of about 20,000 coffee farming households in Kenya and Uganda. Together with private sector partners, IDH has developed service delivery models which integrate a stepwise approach to achieving income resilience for farmers while transitioning farm systems to regenerative agriculture. Moreover, the Program addressed power imbalance along the supply chain in two dimensions: between farmers/farmer organisations and other value chain actors in aspects of coffee trading practices and between farmers/farmer organisations and sector regulators in policy formulation.

Kenya and Uganda are both important coffee producers in East Africa. In Kenya, coffee producers grow Arabica, whereas Uganda produces both Arabica and Robusta. While most of Kenya and Uganda smallholder coffee farms are diversified, farmers are still unable to afford all the resources required for diversified production systems to allow them to earn a living income. Soil degradation, along with poor farm management and poor resource allocation decisions present major challenges in both countries which can trap farmers in a low-income cycle, lacking resources to improve farm management practices, and consequently additional soil fertility deterioration. CFIRP addresses these challenges by influencing more resilient, diversified farm systems that benefit the livelihoods of coffee producers and prevent soil erosion through blended service delivery and adoption of regenerative agriculture.

End-term Evaluation

To ensure continuity and depth in the evaluation of the Coffee Farmer Income Resilience Program (CFIRP), this end-term assessment builds upon two prior evaluations: the baseline (2021) and mid-term (2023). These evaluations established benchmarks and provided critical insights into the program’s implementation and early outcomes in Kenya and Uganda. Together, they form the foundation for assessing progress against the Theory of Change (ToC) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

Role

The end-term evaluation is the last of three evaluations to be done in the full cycle of the Program: baseline, mid-term, and end-term. The evaluation's findings should be compared against the baseline and mid-term evaluations.

The overall aim of the end-term evaluation is to evaluate the achievement of the planned outputs, outcomes and impact according to the Theory of Change (“ToC”, attached hereto as Annex 4) of CFIRP in Kenya and Uganda against benchmarks established through the baseline and mid-term assessments, in order to draw conclusions on the Program strategy and replicate and optimize future programs.

Deadline for the submission of proposals is: 22 October 2025, 17:00 CEST, by email, to: Carla Wefers at: wefers@idhtrade.org and James Kamakia at: kamakia@idhtrade.org