Application Form for Technical Proposal

Section A: General Information about the Applicant

A1: Name of Applicant Organization\Firm

A2: Address in Ethiopia

A3: Contact telephone number

A4: Contact e-mail address

Section B: Organizational\Firm Experience and Capacity

Briefly describe your organization\firm’s experience\capacity in the following areas [if any]

B1: experience in conducting crop production and surplus market assessments

B2: Experience and positive relations with governmental and local authorities, traders and
cooperative unions, farmers, etc. in Ethiopia regions

Section C: Methodology

C1: Describe your methodology including sample size, study design, sampling procedure, data
collection systems and tools, deployed project team structure, etc.

Sampling Design
The consultant will use multi-stage stratified sampling method with regions and city
administrations producing cereal grains and pulses as a strata, and zones, districts and kebeles,
and households as primary, secondary, tertiary, and the ultimate units of sample respectively.
Other factors like rural-urban, agro-ecological zones, food insecure\hotspot woredas and so forth
will be used for disaggregation using pivotal arrays. The number of strata, zones, and districts
will be determined in consultation with the WFP technical team after pilot dimension\phase but
the kebeles will be determined in consultation with local government district offices. Therefore,
the detailed size will be furnished during the inception report.
Study Design
The consultant will adopt a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches for the crop
production and market assessment study by employing the following activities
Mapping food vendors: The consultant will apply a strategic sourcing methodology to identify
potential untapped food purchasing opportunities and food sources and compile their profiles
proposing the overall approach for dealing with those suppliers, portfolio of buying options, the
roles of each purchased category in meeting WFP-Ethiopia strategic objectives, comparative
cost benefit analysis and resulting cost-saving, mapping logistics of engagements, mapping out
negotiation tactics for countering a supplier’s responses, define the leverage points of vendors
and formulate strategies for countering a vendor’s leverage points. To enhance coordination,
alignment and innovation in the outsourcing, the consultant proposed multiple supply chain
models demonstrating simultaneous capabilities for flexibility, efficiency, responsiveness and
those sources offering the best price and perfect order fulfilment having critical resources
available on stand-by with a well-designed order-entry process and meet unexpected demand.
This makes WFP-Ethiopia to diversify its supply base to avoid the risks associated with a limited
food supplier [vendor].
Competitor buyers Analysis: the consultant will also make a light touch on other humanitarian
institutions and government programs competing for the same product\service demystifying their
legal mandates, interests, and structures hereby searching grounds for synergies and reducing
duplication of efforts and enhancing transparency and best value for money.
Market Analysis: The consultant will identify potential cereal grains and pulses’ source
markets, intervention and downstream markets, level of integration with the market hubs,
marketed surplus and marketable surplus, and socio-economic, institutional, technological and
infrastructural factors affecting \influencing marketing surplus like production price of cereal
grains and pulses, size of holding or retention [marginal farms, small farms, medium farms, and
large farms], size of family, requirement of seed and feed, nature of the commodity, consumption
habits, land utilization pattern [percentages of sown, covered with forest, unfavorable for
cultivation, uncultivated land excluding fallow land but including permanent pastures, trees,
etc.], households classification [workers, non-workers, cultivators, agricultural laborers],
channels of marketing, losses incurred in various stages of production and marketing of the
produce, quantity sold, demographic profiles of households selected, their cropping pattern,
outputs produced, inputs used, information dissemination, etc.
Generate Production and Marketing information: The consultant will then provide a
quantitative analysis of the last three years crop production, food availability and food prices,
collect market intelligence data for the year 2018-2019, and quantify annual cereal grains and
pulses for the main harvest season with estimated marketable surpluses across all regions, and at
woreda[zone level, seasonal availability of food tonnages for the coming 12 months from each
possible sources with updated, current and precise market prices for all studied crops across all
regions subject to fluctuations due to inflation, changes in exchange rates, poor market
integration.
For this analysis, variables like distribution of cultivated land by farm size, crop area, and
production by farm size, crop yield by season [both in Meher and Belg], trends in total
production, and so forth will be integrated in to the decomposition equation to generate changes
due to developmental domains like agro-ecology, market infrastructures, etc.
Data collection tools
The tools for this study are expected to be piloted first for 3 days for prototyping, and tested for
its functionality, easy to use and capability for optimal data capture. The consultant will apply
both secondary and primary data collection tools supplemented with desk review of literation as
detailed below.
Literature Review
The consultant is expected to compile deep investigation and review of related grey literature,
donor and various humanitarian reports, recent market assessment studies, evaluations and
researches, briefings and market and price monitoring reports of UN-based organizations, WFP
related documents, and so fort.
Qualitative data will be gathered using such tools as key informant interviews, focus group
discussions, and observation.
Key Informant Interviews [KIIs]: The consultant makes an in-depth interview with
representatives and experts of selected whole sellers, private retailers, government warehouse
and stockpile stores, food manufacturers and processors, experts at district level from office of
agriculture and rural development, cooperative office, and national level such as Meteorological
Agency, ministry of agriculture, Agricultural Transformation Agency, Ethiopian Seed
Enterprises, Agriculture Research institutes, International Food Policy research Institute [IFPRI],
nearby universities, FAO, USAID, and DFID, WB, Zonal department of agriculture, Food
Security Coordination programs like PSNP, cooperatives and unions at regional and zone levels.
Similar KIIs will be conducted with institutional buyers like CARE, World Vision, Ethiopian
Society of REDCROSS and the CRESCENT, SAVE the CHILDREN, etc. The KIIs are
performed KIIs interview guide or protocol
Focus Group Discussions [FGDs]: The consultant will make interactive focus group
discussions with selected lead or model farmer households and nucleus women using FGDs
guide or protocol.
Another FGDs are also arranged in parallel with the food insecure households and marginalized
groups like PSNP beneficiaries and committees, persons with disabilities, female headed
households, and landless youth farmers to cross-validate the data information.
Physical Observation: The consultant will conduct observation of physical structures like
storage facilities [silo, rhombus, cribs, barns, rafters] and warehouses, and private or government
warehouses, swatches of farmlands owned by cooperatives and lead farmer households, farm
machineries and implements, sample irrigation schemes, and so forth to judge its vitality and
indispensable role in contributing to the production and marketing efforts.
The consultant will capture video and audio, photography of the theater behind each tool and
complement with the report.
The quantitative information will be gathered using structure close-ended questionnaire
administered on the sample households mainly focused on the marketed surplus and marketable
surplus, and socio-economic, institutional, technological and infrastructural factors affecting
\influencing marketing. The number of household farmers to be contacted in each kebele is
determined by using the 95% confidence level with the formula:

C2: Explain the scientific basis and justification of your chosen methodology
The consultant used multi-stage sampling since the study covers nation-wide [rural, urban,
farmers, private, NGOs, CBOs, etc.] and equally multitude of variables influencing the
production and marketing arena which makes it amenable to analyze per themes, zones, crops,
actors like farmers, privates, etc.
The consultant has chosen staggered modality [piloting, and then review tools, and full-fledged
survey] for conduction this study for the reason that the study covers multiple of stakeholders.
Therefore the instruments should be tested first for applicability, data capture power and
relevance to be used for prediction and forecasting.
Quantitative and qualitative information is required since the results go beyond finding to
prediction\forecasting which in turn requires special software application

C3: Explain the limitations and accuracy of your methodology

Time series forecasting supported by decomposition analysis is one of the most applied
technique in prediction and forecasting, and qualitative narratives per themes like crop varieties,
regions, woredas, agro-ecological zone, urban-rural, and so forth cross-validates its integrity and
consistency. However, selection bias, Hawthorne effects, confounding effects, missing values
and extreme outliers can gravitate results if not managed wisely. The issue of exogenous
variables like pervasiveness of conflict and bout of aberrant climatic conditions in some districts
might be ignored or skipped during analysis but requiring a dummy variable indication.
C4: Suggest data management procedure
Qualitative data will be gathered by lead consultants assigned by the consultant office daily with
their tablet laptops: video, audio and photo voice transcriptions are expected to be made on each
day during the evening following completion of interactions with respondents at 5: 00 P.M. The
qualitative data will be analyzed using thematic and content analysis with strong narratives.
Regarding the quantitative data, data enumerators are expected to submit a paper [hard copy
completed respondent filled self-managed questionnaire to the district assigned lead consultant,
and the lead consultant will enter and collate in to the stata\spss datasheet for further collation
and analysis. Data cleaning, editing and management of missing values will be the mandate of
the respective lead consultant.
After the completion of the survey, the respective lead consultants will submit all the electronic
quantitative raw data at their disposal with their associated respondent filled hard copies to the
consultant office, and a high level stata[spss] specialist is assigned to merge all the data in to a
single file for further analysis. The consultant will apply stata or spss software to generate
elegant outputs. Data entering, cleaning and editing, management of outliers, missing values and
mistakes will be conducted. The specialist will apply the data for production in the three
reference years and factors influencing the household level marketed surplus and marketable
surplus cited in the foregoing, and using time series model with decomposition analysis to
forecast the next 12 months scenario.
Similarly, the qualitative counterparts will be submitted to the consultant office and consolidated
reports are provided.
Lastly, researchers are assigned to make a synthesis report with integration of quantitative and
qualitative data and generate findings and recommendations.
With concern to data quality management, the consultant will variants techniques including spot-
checks, back-checks, and cross-validation across methods, tools and sources. Consistency of
results across the respondents is also employed to to corroborate with logical and circumstantial
evidences guaranteeing the survey quality.
C5: Suggest a work plan using the format inserted

Activity No. of Expected output Week

days 1 2 3 4 5
Inception report 10 Inception report
Piloting the tools 3 Reviewed tools and
inception report as
well
Field work 10 Complete Survey
report
Draft report First draft study
report
Final report Commented and
finalized study
report

Section D: Staffing

D1: Describe the key staff required for the project, their roles and responsibilities. CVs of
project managing staff should be attached. Provide overview structure of the entire project
team, including description of teams’ enumerators and data collectors, and those teams’
literacy level.