AGRA is a not-for-profit organization working with African governments, other donors, NGOs, the private sector, and farmers to improve productivity and incomes of resource-poor smallholder farmers in Africa. AGRA aims to catalyze an inclusive agricultural transformation in Africa by increasing incomes and improving food security for millions of smallholder farmers in Africa. To ensure the aforementioned is succinctly attained, AGRA makes certain that smallholder farmers have what they need to succeed in their agricultural enterprises such as good seeds and healthy soils; access to markets, information, financing, storage, and transport; and policies that provide them with comprehensive support. Through developing Africa’s high-potential breadbasket areas, while also boosting farm productivity across more challenging environments, AGRA works to transform smallholder agriculture into a highly productive, efficient, sustainable, and competitive system, while protecting the environment. For more information about AGRA, visit our website on www.agra.org

AGRA’s new 5-year strategy aims to catalyze and sustain an Inclusive Agricultural Transformation in Africa to increase incomes and improve food security for 28 million farmers. Under this strategy, AGRA aims to deliver through an integrated approach that simultaneously catalyzes change at the farmer level, through four business lines – Seed Systems, Sustainable Farming, Inclusive Markets and Trade and Policy and State Capability. It aims to strengthen input and output market systems and puts government at the centre to enable and champion private-sector-led agricultural growth at the national level. AGRA intervenes at the national level to tackle specific constraints in agricultural systems, to drive impact at scale for Africa’s smallholder farmers.

The purpose of this consultancy is to develop an inclusive market, finance and regional trade strategy by synthesizing several studies completed in 2022/23, including the 2021 external evaluation, the AGRA Corporate Strategy, the IMT theory of change (ToC), market linkage models, access to finance models, regional trade interventions, policy predictability models, the country deep dive analyses work already completed in 15 countries and the youth and women job creation models. The strategy aims to promote Inclusive Agriculture-Led Economic Growth, reduce poverty, enhance trade opportunities, and create opportunities for youth and women employment in these countries. The consultancy will be conducted in close collaboration with the AGRA IMT team.

Objectives of the Consultancy

The primary objective of this consultancy is to develop a comprehensive and coherent Inclusive Market and Trade (IM&T) Program strategy based on the synthesis of following key documents AGRA has produced in 2022/23 including (but not limited to):

• The AGRA Corporate strategy.
• The country strategies and implementation plans, including the key entry points in each country and operational and investment plans.
• Funding proposals shared with key resource partners of AGRA.
• the IM&T theory of change (TOC), theory of action (TOA) and results framework.
• Previous AGRA evaluation reports and other assessment studies.
• Previous annual progress reports.
• Market Linkage and access to finance models.
• Country flagship documents.
• Regional trade strategy and interventions.
• Priority value chains and trade corridors.
• Continental trade and market policy related issues.
• Overview of work opportunities for youth and women in IM&T.
• Country IM&T deep dive analyses (15) that include potential partners, best practices, success factors, and areas for improvement.

The above documents will be shared with the successful consultant.