Heifer International Kenya
Project / Activity Name: Strengthening Farmer Visibility Program
Country: Kenya
REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL: COMMERCIAL PROGRAM OWNER FOR STRENGTHENING FARMER VISIBILITY FOR IMPACT PROJECT - 20230101KE
RFP Release Date: 13th January 2023
Performance Period: 28 Days
Proposal Submission Deadline: 10th February 2023
Question/ Inquiry Submission Deadline: 03rd February 2023
Electronic submission to the attention of: Procurement Kenya
Electronic submission: procurement-ke@heifer.org
Contact information for inquiries about this RFP: procurement-ke@heifer.org
1. INTRODUCTION AND CONTEXT
Heifer International (Heifer) has long recognized the centrality of human development as one of the main aspects of its drive to end hunger, poverty, and the need to take care of the earth.
Heifer’s values-based holistic community development model, with its 12 cornerstones for fair and sustainable development, is the basis of his work.
With this solid foundation, Heifer focuses his work on pro-poor wealth by creating value chains that exploit the social capital of communities to stimulate market development.
The fight against poverty and food and nutrition insecurity is an obligatory gateway for any economic development strategy for African countries.
The agriculture sector is an important economic sector; it contributes to 14% of the GDP and accounts for about 50% of the labour force. Despite this, more than half of rural people, usually very small farmers engaged in subsistence agriculture, live below the poverty line and 30% of them are affected by food insecurity (World Bank, 2014).
These farmers have limited access to finance despite the promotion of rural financial inclusion over the past decades.
A lot of initiatives have gone into providing access to finance for smallholder farmers; however, smallholder farmers are not benefitting because these initiatives are not tailored to smallholder farmer needs. In most cases, there is a mismatch between formal financial products and the needs of these farmers resulting in a lack of trust.
Smallholder farmers suffer a lack of visibility and transparency in their transactions and cannot provide a physical asset as collateral. This is further elevated by the lack of data infrastructure that collects, collates, and churns SHF data into a digital record that creates visibility to real-time transaction patterns and historic performance.
So, strengthening the visibility of smallholder farmers will integrate them into markets by creating traceability to sales transactions, advance their recognition and rights, enable visibility to other service providers, unlock access to finance for farmers and their cooperatives, and shape policies for agriculture and sustainable development. Despite these important roles, farmers face many constraints that limit their access to profitable economic activities.
One major barrier is the lack of visibility, resulting in these farmers operating in isolation and preventing them from engaging in rural economies and partnerships. The signature program model allows us to address value chain issues but there are systemic constraints that do not allow digital inclusion to get to the last mile.
MasterCard has realized that data is the future and have leveraged its strength to create a product that provides an ecosystem that allows data to flow across all actors and within numerous sectors to make both financial and non-financial decisions.
Heifer, therefore, has decided to leverage the technological advancement and Community Pass ecosystem to drive access to finance for smallholder farmers through the program titled Strengthening Farmers Visibility for Impact.
Recognizing that it is often a challenge to identify and obtain reliable data and creditworthiness on existing farmers, the Strengthening Farmers Visibility for Impact intervention in Africa will fill this critical information gap.
For remote communities, technology is also increasingly woven into everyday life, from rural farms and medical clinics to schools and businesses. However, technology adoption, usage and management have yet to bring the deep transformative systemic change we believe is possible.
Mastercard has a clear strategy of driving digital inclusion and supporting governments, financial institutions, and other value chain actors in communities to access better livelihoods.
To implement this strategy, Mastercard has designed a platform called Community Pass, which unlocks services for the underserved population as well as those who may not have a formal identity document such as a birth certificate or passport.
Mastercard, in partnership with Heifer International, will be providing digital identity and transaction visibility for our smallholder farmers in all African countries, with an initial pilot in Kenya, Malawi, and Tanzania.
The Farmers’ Visibility initiative will enable Heifer International to leverage Mastercard technologies to scale up digital inclusion and transaction visibility with 5 million smallholder farmers across nine African countries.
The interventions will result in:
- Increased access to finance and other economic services especially in remote communities, including farmers ones with limited connectivity and electricity.
- Reduced cost of service delivery through a shared digital infrastructure for use across sectors enabling service providers to reduce the cost-of-service delivery.
- Improved operational efficiency through the design of interoperable infrastructure that connects smallholder farmers to service providers, while placing the user at the centre.
- Access to segment data provided that will secure data management, aggregate, and anonymize data analytics to provide critical insights on remote communities and program performance — enabling financial institutions to extend credit and other financial services to digitally excluded consumers and merchants.
Expected project outcomes
- At least 700,000 dairy, beef and poultry smallholder farmers, 40% of whom are women and 20% youth (18– 35 years old) are sustainably linked to reliable off-taker markets and with a reduced living income gap.
- At least 3,500 jobs created (every 200 SHFs creating at least 1 direct job) with at least 60% are youth (boys and girls), 20% women (beyond 35 years old) serving as Digital Agriculture Champions, MSME merchants, Agrodealers and inputs distributors, etc
- Establish and/or strengthen and support BDS services to 3806 businesses including Agrodealers and Medium and Large Agri-buyers (off-takers) and input suppliers within the market system through digital Innovation and access to financial services.
- 60% of the smallholder farmers have access to extension, inputs, markets and finance through digital farm infrastructure.
Proposed project outputs
- Increase income of 700,000 dairy, beef and poultry smallholder farmers, 40% of whom are women and 20% youth (18 – 35 years old) through improved farm yield and access to reliable markets as a result of using Community Pass
- Improve last-mile extension delivery to at least 75% through digital agriculture champions.
- Increase the number of and connect Agri-buyers to FPOs, and establish at least 306 digitized Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) to assure all farmers have better access to services, information, inputs, and finance.
- 75% of the SHFs have and are using cards (powered by Mastercard) to access services, and information and do transactions.
- FPO to have gender and youth integration policies.
Heifer International Kenya seeks to recruit a Commercial Program Partner (CPP) to build and drive commercial engagement on Mastercard’s Community Pass platform through revenue generation.
2. SCOPE OF WORK FOR THE CPP
- Mobilize smallholder farmers (SHFs) into functional groups, establish Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) and connect to Agrodealers, Agri-buyers, input providers and Financial Institutions.
- Conduct digital marketing and awareness campaigns among farmers in collaboration with key stakeholders.
- Build the capacity of the farmers on financial literacy programs to educate farmers on the value of digital and financial inclusions
- Recruit Digital Agriculture Champions (DACs) and develop performance-based incentives programs for them to drive activation and usage
- Organize procurement of Point of Interaction (POI) terminal devices and cards for farmers and FPO agents.
- Train DACS on solution functionalities, customer care, adoption of digital and agronomic productivity-enhancing technologies, FPO group and business management and financial literacy
- Establish a DACS network made up of DACS and super agents providing last-mile service to farmers, FPOs, Agri buyers and financial institutions
- Develop and implement a marketing campaign (media campaigns, last mile materials, agent’s user guides) targeted at farmers and agribusinesses and other value chain actors.
- Facilitate the establishment of community-based farmer groups and reference farms to enhance learning and adoption of productivity-enhancing technologies among SHFs
- Advocate gender equity and youth inclusion in agriculture through FPO and farmer groups platforms to reach the overall targets of 40% women and 20% youth farmers.
- Program management reporting to Heifer.
CLICK HERE to download the detailed Terms of Reference
3.3 How to Apply
Interested firms legally eligible to implement this assignment in Kenya are requested to submit a proposal including a contract as well as your telephone and email contact information.
Submissions must be in English and typed single-spaced using Times New Roman font size 12, with a complete set of appendices/attachments as applicable. All pages must be numbered and include the SOW reference number on the cover page, and the name of the organization at the bottom of each page.
The proposal (duly signed) from the consultants should comprise a technical and financial proposal. The Proposal will be accepted as a soft copy through email and mentioning the subject line; “Strengthening Farmer Visibility for Impact” to procurement-ke@heifer.org not later than 10th February 23.
Proposals received after the submission deadline will not be considered.
Applicants are responsible to ensure their proposals are submitted according to the instructions stated herein.
Heifer retains the right to terminate this RFP or modify the requirements upon notification to the Offerors.