External Impact Evaluator

Scaling Up Sweetpotato Through Agriculture and Nutrition (SUSTAIN)

Request for Proposal for External Impact Evaluation



INTRODUCTION 

Scaling Up Sweetpotato Through Agriculture and Nutrition (SUSTAIN) is a new 5-year regional project led by the International Potato Center (CIP) with support by DFID, to enhance nutritional security of women and young children in East and Southern Africa through integrated agriculture-nutrition interventions utilizing orange-fleshed sweetpotato (OFSP). The project will scale up successful OFSP technologies and delivery mechanisms developed by the International Potato Center and its partners to reach 1.2 million farming households, as well as 400,000 urban and rural consumers, in Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, and Rwanda. 

The project builds on recent advances in the biofortification of sweetpotato and applies lessons and models from proof-of-concept research to combine the dissemination of agricultural technologies. These technologies include improved sweetpotato varieties with support to improve nutrition awareness, household dietary practices, and diversification of sweetpotato utilization. This integrated approach has been shown during the pilot stage to deliver enhanced nutritional outcomes of investments in biofortified sweetpotato. In order to demonstrate the scaling-up potential of this approach, the project requires high-quality impact evaluation to strengthen evidence on the effectiveness of an integrated OFSP approach in delivering nutritional outcomes, and on the most cost-effective ways to achieve nutritional impacts at scale.

The Project was announced by the UK government at the 2013 Nutrition for Growth Event and is well aligned with the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition and the Scaling Up Nutrition movement. The Project is funded as part of DFID’s support to the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and will contribute specifically to the CGIAR research programs on Roots, Tubers and Bananas and on Agriculture for Improved Nutrition and Health. 


PROJECT BACKGROUND 

The Project builds on successful research by CIP and its partners to develop biofortified, vitamin A-rich varieties of orange-fleshed sweetpotato. The use of OFSP, when introduced along with nutrition education at the community level, is a proven cost-effective strategy for providing vitamin A, at high levels of bioavailability, to vulnerable populations. OFSP production from 500 m2 can provide sufficient vitamin A for a family of five, and is also a good source of energy, a number of B vitamins, and vitamins C and K. These are vital benefits for people in rural areas where other vitamin A deficiency interventions, such as supplementation and food fortification face greater challenges reaching those at risk. Large scale studies investigating the effects of the provision of OFSP among farming households in Mozambique demonstrated that the intake of Vitamin A doubled in women and young children, and in Uganda, increased by two thirds for children and nearly doubled for women. In Uganda, where vitamin A status was assessed among children 3-5 years old who were previously vulnerable to vitamin A deficiency, there was a 13% decline in children deficient in vitamin A. A previous study in Mozambique attributed a 15% decline in the prevalence of vitamin A deficiency to the integrated agriculture-nutrition intervention.

Over the next 5 to 10 years, CIP and its partners will focus their effort on realizing these benefits for millions of poor households in Africa, and globally, through effective, efficient and sustainable interventions at scale. Thus, the Project is of pivotal importance for developing and verifying effective scaling-up approaches and tools that can facilitate this expansion of impact. High quality Impact Evaluation is essential for ensuring that these approaches and tools are indeed effective, efficient and sustainable. 

Under the umbrella of the regional Sweetpotato for Health and Income (SPHI) initiative CIP and its partners have been breeding adapted OFSP varieties in 12 countries in Africa, and conducting research on how to deliver these materials effectively in 3 of these countries. We have developed an integrated approach to promoting OFSP production and utilization that links access to and use of improved production inputs, in particular quality OFSP planting material, with nutrition interventions including nutrition education, access to health services, and support to improved household nutrition practices. We have also started to expand our arena of intervention along the value chain to demonstrate the viability of more diversified utilization of OFSP in commercially processed products for urban markets in order to reach a wider spectrum of consumers and create ‘pull factors’ for increased OFSP production.

The new Project will scale up the proven technologies, approaches and partnerships generated from this research work, and assess the scaling-up mechanisms used. The Project scaling-up activities will be aimed at improving: 
? Access to and use of quality OFSP planting materials among smallholder farming households;
? Linkages of OFSP to health and nutrition services target at women and children.
? Production and marketing of economically viable processed products based on OFSP; and


Accompanying these scaling-up activities, the Project will implement a rigorous measuring and evaluation plan that will generate sound and compelling evidence on the potential of the integrated OFSP approach to deliver nutrition outcomes at scale. 

In support of these objectives, the purpose of the external evaluation is to provide a high-quality independent assessment of the drivers and sustainability of OFSP adoption and of the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of the Project’s delivery mechanisms. Possible evaluation questions of interest to the Project include:
• What are the socio-economic drivers and gender dimensions of adoption?
• To what extent is the integated delivery approach scalable by different implementing partners?
• To what extent is the food processing approach sustainable and effective in stimulating market demand for OFSP?
• How cost-effective are different delivery mechanisms for OSPF adoption?
• How effective are these different delivery mechanisms in driving sustained adoption?


PROJECT OBJECTIVES

The Project is designed to contribute to reducing vitamin A deficiency and improved nutrition security through improved frequency of intake of vitamin A rich foods by women and young children, increased number of households practicing good infant and young child feeding practices, and increased dietary diversity in rural households. 

The expected Project outcome is 1.2 million small farming households growing and consuming orange fleshed sweet potato and 400,000 urban and rural consumers accessing OFSP-based products, linked to increased investments in OFSP value chains and nutrition programs by 2018.

The specific Project Objectives are:

? Scale up the use of OFSP by smallholders in four countries: Mozambique, Malawi, Rwanda, Kenya, reaching at least 1.2 million women and at least 2.4 million children <5 years by 2018.
? Develop partnerships with at least one major agro-processor in each target country to produce an economically-viable processed product that uses OFSP as a major ingredient, to enable the development of sustainable markets for OFSP and reach at least 400,000 urban and rural consumers.
? Develop innovative ways of linking OFSP delivery to health and nutritional services targeted at women and children. 
? Develop and implement robust metrics and gender-sensitive monitoring processes to assess nutrition outcomes, cost-effectiveness, and sustainability of OFSP integrated delivery systems.

PROJECT APPROACH TO IMPACT EVALUATION
Measurement and Learning along the scaling-up process is a key objective of the Project, on par with other research and development objectives. High-quality evidence on the impact of scaling-up mechanisms will guide decisions on future approaches to getting OFSP and other biofortified crops to scale and on how best to ensure nutrition outcomes are being achieved through these agricultural investments. The Project thus offers great opportunities to develop evaluation methodologies and generate results that can influence a wide range of future agriculture and nutrition initiatives. This project will contribute to achieving CIP’s Strategic Objective to reach 15 million households in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia over the next 10 years. Lessons learned by the project will inform CIP’s scaling-up strategy to reach this objective, and – through CIP’s leadership of the CGIAR Research Program of Roots, Tubers and Bananas – will be applied to other crops.

External impact evaluation of Project interventions and high-quality technical support to Project partners to strengthen measuring and learning at the agriculture-nutrition nexus and across countries are a major strategic component of the Project. To be effective, we see these activities spanning the duration of the Project, including during the critical design and planning phase in Year 1, when the Evaluator will design a robust Evaluation Plan including clear evaluation objectives and a short list of evaluation questions. This will be done in coordination with the Project’s own M&E design led by CIP’s impact assessment economists to ensure design and implementation are synchronized and data gathered by Project M&E are relevant for the evaluation. 

The Project will require rigorous evaluation of its interventions across a range of indicators that can measure increase in frequency of vitamin A intakes, improved dietary diversity, increase in the practices of key child feeding behaviors, agricultural performance, market penetration, cost-effectiveness of scaling-up mechanisms and not least, gender outcomes and impacts. Because previous work has demonstrated the links between increased vitamin A intake using an integrated approach and vitamin A status, we will not be expecting the collection of vitamin A status indicators at scale. In order to permit attribution of impacts, the Project also requires robust counterfactuals for the community level nutrition interventions. We expect that the commercial market development work will need a strong before and after assessment of market penetration and consumer acceptance. While it will be possible to identify control areas and populations in each case, these will take different forms for agricultural practices, awareness and behavior change, access to services, or market participation. In addition, the Project works through linkages to different types of implementing partners, including private sector and government, who will need to understand why it is important to have counterfactuals. In some countries, due to other concurrent OFSP interventions, it may prove difficult to apply formal methodologies for counterfactual evidence, such as randomized control trials, in a uniform manner, and the Evaluator will have to design and implement innovative approaches that are fit for purpose in the Project context, but also generate robust and convincing scientific evidence.

In delivering these services, the Evaluator will coordinate closely with but work independently from the Project Team and CIP’s impact assessment economists in the Global Program on Social and Health Sciences, and with Project level monitoring staff. The Project’s strategic value for CIP and its partners largely lies in the learning opportunity it offers for understanding the effectiveness, not just of our technologies, but of scaling-up mechanisms for getting the benefits of these technologies to millions of poor and food insecure people. As a research organization, CIP is strongly committed to undertaking research into best practice scaling-up systems and has prioritized this area of work in its research strategy. Collaboration with high-quality external impact evaluators is an important part of this strategy to ensure independent, credible assessments and continued updating of the OFSP evidence base. 

SCOPE OF WORK
The scope of work of the external Impact Evaluation services is to:

1. In collaboration with the Project Team and CIP’s impact evaluation economists, develop a robust learning and evaluation framework for the project as a whole that will support the effective implementation of the External Evaluation.
2. Design and implement an independent Impact Evaluation Plan for the project’s main components, including baseline and endline surveys, counterfactuals whenever feasible, in-depth qualitative research, and with gender equity considerations integrated throughout.
3. Contribute to the design of the detailed project research plan during Year 1 to ensure the project design will allow rigorous and independent evaluation.
4. Participate in initial sensitization sessions to help ensure that all major partners and other stakeholders understand the value of rigorous evaluation.
5. Contribute to publications and regional technical conferences on results and methodologies of Impact Evaluation of agriculture-nutrition interventions. 
6. Contribute to regular project reporting, communications, and review meetings as and when required.


Specifically, the Evaluator will be expected to perform the following tasks:

1. Develop and facilitate implementation of a rigorous gender-sensitive learning and evaluation framework for the project

? Work with the Project Team, CIP’s impact assessment scientists and implementation partners to develop a coherent Theory of Change for the project as a whole and for the main interventions that includes awareness of potential positive and or negative gender implications along the major project impact pathways. 
? On the basis of the Theory of Change, contribute to developing a Learning and Evaluation Framework that identifies products, forums and processes for information exchange, discussions and learning.
? Contribute to the development of a core set of project indicators that allow for the consistent measurement and comparison of impacts across project interventions, and for the comparison of the impacts and cost-effectiveness of Project approaches with those of similar development interventions. This will ensure that project indicators will generate data that will be relevant to the External Evaluation.


2. Design and implement an independent Impact Evaluation Plan for the Project’s main components

? Define clear evaluation objectives and key evaluation questions that will guide the development of methodologies and implementation plans.
? Devise a methodology that allows for the credible attribution of results and conclusion to the project interventions.
? The desired methodology should combine robust quantitative and qualitative methods that will generate high-quality new knowledge about the scaling-up process both with respect to OFSP adoption and nutrition outcomes. Methods should include robust RCT’s whenever feasible, as well as qualitative assessments of key adoption issues such as gender, market access, socio-economic status, ethnicity and cultural food preferences, and age differentiation.
? Design and produce research and survey tools and questionnaires in required languages. 
? Implement surveys and qualitative research in the four countries, coordinating closely with project country teams as appropriate. .
? Prepare and present data as four separate baseline reports (one per country) and a final cross-country comparative endline study of impact (as of the end of the project) of the interventions. 


3. Review the design of Project implementation plans to ensure compliance with the learning and evaluation framework and external evaluation requirements

? Review Project documentation in particular.
? With respect to design of intervention and control areas, target populations, and intervention approaches to ensure External Evaluation requirements are being safeguarded.
? Contribute to annual review sessions to identify needs for adjustments in implementation plans.

4. Contribute to publications and regional technical conferences on results and methodologies of Impact Evaluation of agriculture-nutrition interventions

? Contribute to the portfolio of project publications and research articles through independent as well as collaborative publications reflecting the main outputs from the evaluation services.
? Lead the preparation of drafts of at least 2 journal articles concerning key findings from the study on topics agreed upon with the Project Team
? Present methodologies and results at technical conferences and forums organized by the Project.
? Provide information for the Project’s policy dialogue at country and regional level. 

5. Contribute to regular project reporting, communications, and review meetings as and when required
? In collaboration with the Project Team, prepare regular technical and financial reports using formats and specifications provided.
? Contribute to project communication campaigns and provide information and data for wider stakeholder dialogue.
? Participate in regular project meetings and project review missions as and when required.


SELECTION CRITERIA

To deliver the scope of work outlined above, we are looking for an independent partner organization who is an internationally recognized leader and innovator in this field of research with proven expertise in both agriculture and nutrition. 

We expect that following expertise and capacity:

? Excellent track record of high-visibility Impact Evaluation and evaluation support services in the context of large research and development projects, preferrably encompassing both agriculture and nutrition.
? Leading scientific and technical publications on current methodologies and approaches in impact evaluation in agricultural research and food security context. 
? Strong and direct expertise in experimental design and quasi experimental design and in implementing evaluations based on such design.
? An excellent track record of integrating gender and socio-economic analysis into impact evaluation.
? Strong senior research staff capacity available to the Project with excellent skills in both quantitative and qualitative methodologies and with direct experience of surveys and in-depth evaluations. 
? Strong capabilities for facilitating development of learning and evaluation frameworks for complex sets of partners. 
? Strong collaborative experience working with public, private sector and NGO partners at country and regional levels.
? Successful track record of providing similar services to other CGIAR programs is a definite advantage.
? Track record of work in sub-Saharan Africa both at field and policy level, and requisite language proficiencies (Portuguese, French). 

TIMEFRAME AND COMPENSATION

The consultancy is expected to run for the duration of the project until mid-2018, subject to satisfactory performance. Proposals from interested parties should be submitted by 15 November 2013, and should not exceed 15 pages. The proposals will be evaluated on the technical and cost proposal separately. Only proposals that meet the minimum requirements on the technical basis will have their cost proposals evaluated. Then cost proposals not exceeding $1.2 million USD (753,000 GBP) will be evaluated during the second stage of the evaluation process with the greater consideration given to the lowest cost proposal. Each cost proposal will be evaluated on determination of cost realism, completeness, and reasonableness. Cost realism is defined as the offeror’s ability to project costs which are realistic for the work to be performed; reflect a clear understanding of the requirements, and are consistent with the offeror’s technical capacity. The winning proposal will offer the International Potato Center the Best Value. The Best Value is defined as the offer that results in the most advantageous solution for the International Potato Center, in consideration of the technical, cost, and other factors. The evaluation team should be able to commence work in January 2014 at the latest. Please send any questions and final Technical and Cost Proposals separately to CIP-GnCOffice@cgiar.org. The project logframe is available on request.