AGRA is a not-for-profit organisation working with African governments, other donors, NGOS, the private sector, and farmers to improve the productivity and incomes of resource-poor smallholder farmers in Africa. AGRA is committed to catalysing agricultural transformation needed to accelerate the achievement of the Malabo Declaration commitments and related indicators from the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), the Sustainable Development Goals, and Africa’s Agenda 2063. For more information about AGRA, please visit www.agra.org.

Across African countries today, there is a need for better, more timely use of evidence and more targeted approaches to improve the quality of policymaking by African governments, specifically to overcome policy constraints and structural blockages to agricultural transformation. This need has been recognised by the African Union, which calls for analytical support mechanisms to enhance the use of evidence in policymaking. AGRA responds to this gap by instituting the Data and Analytics unit to provide consolidation and translation advisory services to governments seeking to reform, refine, and/ or develop data and evidence-based policy and investment plans.

AGRA’s strategic plan (2023-2027) aims to catalyse the growth of sustainable food systems in Africa by influencing and leveraging partners to build a robust enabling environment where the private sector thrives, and smallholder farmers are empowered to produce sufficient, healthy food. AGRA will operationalise its strategy by supporting the development of an effective private sector enabling and regulatory environment, focusing on building agricultural input supply, extension, and output marketing systems.

The urgent need to empower and transform Africa’s food systems transcends sectors calling upon policymakers, farmers, entrepreneurs, youth, and every stakeholder to rally around a shared vision. It is a vision of Africa that is self-reliant, where more young people are emancipated economically and productive, and where environmental sustainability, gender equality, and resilience abound. In response to the challenges and deficiencies of African agriculture’s food systems and the high youth unemployment rate, AFSF–AGRA and the Ministry of Agriculture are progressively working on synergizing the alignment of the development of a 2025 AFSF Legacy Programme that is meant to implement the National Agriculture Investment (NAIP) across the country’s geographies.

In this regard, AGRA, through the Data and Analytics Unit and the Africa Food Systems Forum (AFSF), seeks a National Collaborator to collate data meant to feed into Business Case Analytics, which in turn are vital cogs to the development of the National Legacy Programme Document. The Legacy Programme will attract and incentivize investors to invest in each country’s prioritised value chains.

As part of the data required for the legacy program, AGRA is conducting Market analysis, Business Case Analytics and youth and women jobs modelling.

Market analysis involves analysis of market-related data on prices, food availability and supply chains against macroeconomic factors such as economic growth trends, exchange rate fluctuations, imports and exports, employment and inflation and government policies to understand how economies and market’s function. Additionally, geospatial information helps to analyze access to markets, by triangulating data on distances, infrastructure, terrains, and (in)security or weatherrelated events, such as flooding. Such information can be used to make decisions on effective interventions to support smallholder farmers by highlighting how markets and value chains are organized and what can be done to scale.

Further, value chains do not operate in isolation but are part of wider market systems. A well-functioning market system includes several actors providing ‘supporting functions’ to businesses in the core value chain, as well as actors who set and enforce ‘rules’ about how value chain actors operate. In a dysfunctional market system, these supporting functions and rules may be absent or weak.

For the value chain to function, some supporting functions, including infrastructure, financial services, and skills training, among others are critical. These supporting functions can improve the performance of actors in the core value chain. On the other hand, the performance of value chains can often be traced to a lack of, or weaknesses in, these functions. Another key component of the market system is the ‘rules of the game, which govern the way that actors in the value chain operate. These include labour legislation, regulations at all levels of government, quality standards and government policies.

Many value chains are limited to local, traditional markets because of a lack of information about other opportunities, or because actors cannot respond to these opportunities. Therefore, developing links to new markets is an important path to growth. It is therefore important to identify opportunities for improvement, as well as constraints affecting value chains in a country.

The Business Case analytics come from the understanding that the value chain approach in agricultural development helps identify opportunities and weak points in the chain and actions to add more value to actors. The challenges of the development become more vital as structural transformation advances and new investments beyond the farm – such as downstream processing, trading, and food services in both rural and urban areas - become critically important.

The increasing competition for scarce resources implies that spending and investment decisions should be based on value for money, captured through a clear business case to support objective, evidence-based investment decisions. A business case analysis aims to capture the synergy and holistic fit with other projects and programmes, and value society - including the wider social and environmental effects, opportunities (for creating value/businesses/jobs), gross margins and funding of specific projects in the value chain, capacity to successfully deliver results by best practices. The business case analysis aims to identify viable business and investment opportunities along the value chain and estimate the financial investment and delivery capacity required to exploit the opportunities. For example, a business case analysis of sorghum could show the financial viability of investing in multiple ends uses such as products for human consumption; inputs for beer production; and feed for poultry and animals.

The overall objective of this consultancy is to develop a Legacy Programme Report. The report shall be based on analytics and information from the AGRA analytics on markets, business cases and youth and women jobs modelling. Secondary data remains a major component of the report. Specially, the report shall include the following aspects:

The following activities will be performed in 2 states: compilation and write-up, sensitisation and roll-out.

The consultant should have at least 10 years of experience developing market analyses and business cases in food systems and related sectors. The consultant must also have a thorough understanding of Liberia’s food systems landscape, including key institutions, contacts, and processes.

• Experience effectively interacting with local and national institutions, government departments, and business service providers.
• Ability to work under pressure, meet deadlines and handle multiple tasks simultaneously and accurately.
• Ability to professionally interact at high levels of Government.
• Strong written, verbal communication, and presentation skills
• Previous experience in conducting a similar assessment will be required.

AGRA works to achieve a food secure and prosperous Africa through the promotion of rapid, sustainable agricultural growth based on smallholder farmers. Smallholders--the majority women--produce most of Africa's food, and do so with minimal resources and little government support. AGRA aims to ensure that smallholders have what they need to succeed: 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, and do so while protecting the environment.