The United Nations World Food Programme is the world’s largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide.  The mission of WFP is to help the world achieve Zero Hunger in our lifetimes.  Every day, WFP works worldwide to ensure that no child goes to bed hungry and that the poorest and most vulnerable, particularly women and children, can access the nutritious food they need.

Ghana’s CSP is anchored on capacity strengthening, which runs through all the five strategic outcomes with their various activity categories. The priorities of WFP’s first country strategic plan (CSP) covering the period 2019-2023 are in line with the findings of the Ghana zero hunger strategic review; interventions focus on direct food assistance using commodity vouchers and social behaviour change communication (SBCC) to improve the nutritional status of targeted populations, in line with national targets. The country office (CO) also aims to ensure vulnerable communities benefit from: (a) efficient and resilient food systems which support nutritional value chains; (b) capacity strengthening interventions to manage food security, nutrition, and social protection programmes; and (c) advocacy and coherent policy frameworks support to key cooperating partners

The Country Office is in the process of implementing a project:  Strengthening Food Systems to Empower Smallholder Farmers and Young People project.

The project goal is to contribute to the modernization and transformation of Ghana’s agricultural sector and improved livelihoods of smallholder farmers (SHFs) with deliberate focus on youth. The project is aimed at creating jobs and contributing to reducing unemployment in Ghana among youth especially females through improvement in existing and creation of new opportunities in the agriculture sector. This will be achieved through reduction in post harvest losses, connecting smallholder farmers (SHFs) predominantly the youth, and other agriculture value chain actors to organised value chains and structured markets.

The project main objectives include.

– To reduce post harvest loss among smallholders, improve food safety and quality standards of the targeted commodity value chains.

– To enhance capacity of farmers and provide access to structured and digital markets to Improve Livelihoods.

The project intends to reach 100,000 smallholder farmers (direct beneficiaries-56 percent women) organised in 400 farmers organisations and engaged in production of maize, soybean, rice as the priority primary value chains and  sorghum, and millet as the secondary  value chains.  The project will cover 9 regions of Ghana including Ashanti, Bono East, Bono, Upper East, Upper West, Savanna, Eastern region, Northern and Northeast. Of the 100,000 SHFs, 60 percent of project beneficiaries (60,000) will be youth aged between 18 -35 years, 60 percent of the youth beneficiaries will be young women (36,000). The focus of the project is on creating job opportunities for the youth especially young women and will analyse all bottlenecks that hinder young women from accessing available opportunities and will provide sustainable solutions to those bottlenecks. The project also intends to engage 50 aggregators/SME buyers, 20 agro-processors, commercial, institutional, and regional buyers and will ensure that the targeted youths acquire new work created through wage and self-employment. The project is expected to be implemented in 5 years effective January 2022 to January 2027

The project will adopt an integrated value chain approach to implement context-specific interventions aimed at reaching the following outcomes:

a)         Young people, especially women, have improved employment opportunities along the value chain

b)         Smallholder farmers, especially youth and women, increase the value of their sales, resulting in

improved income

c)         Smallholder farmers, especially youth and women, reduce post-harvest losses and improve the

quality for targeted crops

d)         Improved inclusiveness of marginalized groups in agricultural value chains

e)         Improved value chain efficiency for young people, in particular women

In addition, whenever possible the initiative will explore and advance digital solutions to attract young people to the sector and increase value chain efficiencies

MAJOR DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Under the overall supervision of the Head of Programme/DCD, the technical supervision of the Sustainable Food Systems Coordinator in Accra and the Value chain experts at HQ, the value chain analysis consultant will be expected to perform the following duties:

1. Conduct value chain analysis (VCA) of selected food commodities in the target locations of the project. This includes describing how the target value chains are structured (map of process, actors, roles, dynamics, and relationships), how they work (assessing key value chain dimensions: access to markets, information, finance, economic analysis, gender, youth, etc.) and how these chains can be improved by identifying constraints, entry-points/interventions, and key partnerships for chain development
2. Use WFP corporate VCA methodology to conduct the assessment of the target value chains. This includes adjusting the methodology and tools to the specific context of Ghana and considering the framework of the MCF project. This does not exclude the potential development of specific tools to collect primary data as needed.
3. The consultant will be required to identify the value chain supporters/Support services and their roles, challenges experienced in offering /accessing facilitative service, possible potential risks / opportunities, gender and power dynamics and advice on areas for improvement in maximizing benefits to women and the youth
4. Identify Job / employment opportunities, challenges/ bottlenecks for the young men and women along the selected agricultural value chains and develop strategies that create / enhance job creation at different stages of the target agricultural value chains.
5. Support the identification and potentially establishment of specific, relevant, and reliable markets the supported entrepreneurs should target at primary, regional, national, and international level markets. This includes determining their suitability, competitive and comparative advantages; assessing the size of the markets, volume of sales, market integration/segmentation and assessing agriculture and postharvest practices to conform with market requirements and standards (e.g., quality and safety standards).
6. Establish the level of access to finance for the SHFs and other value chain actors, analyze the barriers to access to affordable financial services and possible strategies to address the barriers
7. Assess the current trends in the enabling environment (market system); this includes government, policies, regulations, and control mechanisms; identify policy issues that impact the selected value chains and establish markets structures and infrastructure to address them (e.g., policies affecting market access)
8. Provide a framework for the design, implementation, monitoring, risk management and evaluation of value chains development strategies and interventions. This includes the design of tools to ensure that information is incorporated in production stages and how it should be interpreted and used for decision-making
9. Identify, establish, and foster operational local partnerships to implement collaborative initiatives that will contribute to address some of the inefficiencies identified in the target value chains

10. Other duties as required.

Deliverables of the consultancy

1. Inception report
2. Values chain analysis report per target food commodity (soft copy of the reports, soft copies of analyzed data and filled data sheets/tools shall also be handed in). This report should allow to draw relevant conclusions that can inform project interventions. The Reports should include (but not limited to) description of the target value chains (structure and how the chains are working), identifying key constraints, gaps, and risks, and develop recommendations for possible improvements of the target chains.
3. Recommendations should include potential areas of interventions that WFP can address to improve the value chains (e.g., actions to empower women, create jobs for the youth, reduce postharvest loses, improve market access, etc.), as well as identify potential and key partnerships to implement those interventions.
4. Complete value chain maps; chain actors, stakeholders, supporters, and influencers accompanied with description of the relationships of stakeholders: how many they are, roles & responsibility, values and volumes handled;
5. Detailed analysis of the stakeholders, demand (Markets) and supply (Production) factors
6. An analysis of potential risks that may hamper reaching goals for the value chain as well as risks that may hamper commercialization of the value chains at local, national, and international markets.
7. Detailed analysis of the enabling and environment impacts
8. Recommendations: Description of the key systemic / critical issues, as well as practical actions to address the issues, recommendations for an upgrading strategy, action points, activities, monitoring indicators (including process and outcome indicators) outputs, expected outcomes and risks/assumptions and recommendations around risk monitoring, mitigation, and management

STANDARD MINIMUM ACADEMIC QUALIFICATION

Education

The consultant should have at least a master’s degree in Agricultural Economics or equivalent experience, Agribusiness Management, Business management or marketing

Experience

The candidate must have at least 5 years of postgraduate professional experience , specifically in agriculture, food value chain analysis, rural development, and development projects in the field of smallholder agricultural market support; with previous experience working with multi-lateral development institutions and the private sector

Knowledge and skills

• Knowledge of food value chains, smallholder agricultural support and food systems
• Working experience within multicultural teams and international organizations or companies and highly knowledgeable of Ghana’s social, agricultural and rural development and economic development issues, questions and challenges
• Excellent analytical skills with ability to compile, analyse and interpret quantitative and qualitative data, prepare reports and draw conclusions and recommendations
• Knowledge of relevant actors in the agricultural development sector (government institutions, international organizations, NGOs, academia, etc. especially in Ghana)
• Strong interpersonal skills
• A good command of MS Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc)
• Willingness to travel to remote regions,

Language: Excellent written and spoken English. Knowledge of any local languages would be an added advantage

Technical and functional skills

• Knowledge of food value chains analysis and development, food systems, nutrition, gender, climate, social protection/social safety, smallholder agricultural support and efficiency/marketing initiatives in developing/transition countries
• Capacity to develop and implement complex value chains initiatives in developing countries, which includes skills in working with governments
• Extent of experience in conducting value chain assessments and providing technical support in value chain development in terms of successful interventions
• Excellent analytical skills with ability to compile, analyse and interpret quantitative and qualitative data, prepare reports, and draw conclusions and recommendations
• Strong interpersonal skills and ability for perform well in cross-disciplinary teams
• Very good oral and written communication skills to engage experts and liaising with external and internal stakeholders as appropriate
• Ability to establish priorities and to plan, coordinate and monitor own work plan, and deliver results and meet deadlines