Agriculture Resilience Activity - EG - RFI.pdf

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI)

Subject: Request for Information (RFI) 668-RFl-20-CLA

Project Name: Agriculture Resilience Activity

Date of Issuance: Monday, August 17, 2020

Response due: Friday, September 4, 2020 (1:00 PM Juba Time)

Respond to: jgemenze@usaid.gov

The U.S Agency for International Development Mission in South Sudan requests information concerning USAID’s Economic Growth Office seeks to improve the resilience of targeted rural households to shocks.

It should be noted that funds are currently not available for any interventions proposed under this Request for Information (RFI). The intent of this RFI is to gain information on how best to position USAID/South Sudan to appropriately respond to the needs highlighted in the background information attached to this RFI

This announcement is a Request for Information, not a Request for Applications or a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) and it is not a commitment by USAID/South Sudan to issue a solicitation - cooperative agreement or grant or otherwise compensate an organization or individual for any information submitted to the U.S. Government.

The issuance of this RFI does not obligate USAID/South Sudan to pay for costs incurred in the preparation and submission of the requested information. Do not submit applications or statements of qualifications in response to this request. USAID/South Sudan will not provide answers to questions submitted in response to this request.

Please note that responding to this Request for Information will not give advantage to an organization or individual in any subsequent competition. Responses may be used by USAID without restriction or limitation, therefore proprietary information should not be sent.

Submission Information:

All submissions shall be submitted by the closing date and time noted on page 1 of this notice.

Submission via email is required; no hard copy delivery will be accepted. E-mail submissions shall be sent to jgemenze@usaid.gov mailto:jgemenze@usaid.gov mailto:jgemenze@usaid.gov

Interested parties shall prepare their submission in English and shall address the information requested below. All submissions must include Section I “Cover Page”, Section II “Comments/Questions” and Section III “Capability Statements” (applicable to U.S. Small Businesses only). Submissions shall use only 8.5 inch by 11-inch paper, single-spaced pages for all narrative documents and each page numbered consecutively. Interested parties must use Times New Roman font 11 typeset and should be provided in MS Word or PDF format.

I. Cover Page with Business Information (1 page)

● Organization/firm: name, address, contact information.

● Point of Contact(s): name, title, phone number, address, e-mail address.

● Statement of self-certification of business size and socio-economic status of the Organization/firm.

● Organization/firm’s DUNS number and certification that organization/firm if registered in the System for Award Management (SAM).

II. Comments/Questions (2 Page Limit)

Comments and Questions not to exceed five (5) pages will be accepted from all interested parties.

This is not a formal solicitation Q&A period; the government will not be providing responses. All comments and questions will merely serve to inform the government on current market trends and further refine the activity. Comments may include but are not limited to feedback on the Activity Synopsis, anticipated demand in beneficiary geographic areas, other market considerations, etc.

In order to maximize potential, USAID is seeking to receive feedback on the project approach, including opportunities and potential pitfalls, and individual or institutional perspectives on programs, policies, research, data, activities, and/or development approaches that might be useful for the project design, including past successes and failures, opportunities to leverage existing efforts and resources, gaps that need to be addressed, and sectoral and geographic focus.

Please ensure that comments are concise and specific to the information within this RFI.

Respondents do not need to fully address all questions, only those germane to their interests and programming. In addition to comments on the Activity Synopsis, USAID is also seeking input from the development community and industry on the following items:

III. Input Requested

In an effort to gather information, USAID is interested in the following topics and specific questions related to the above background:

A. Institutional capacity and in-country presence

Are you working in these geographic areas and what types of programs related to food security and livelihoods do you have there?

Within your areas of expertise what are the primary agriculture and livelihood opportunities to improve community resilience in [geographic focus]? And why?

What does coordination among NGOs, UN Agencies and government look like in the areas?

B. Gender equity and social inclusion.

What types of agricultural and livelihood programs could be successfully tailored to address inclusivity of women and youth?

How will activities intentionally engage youth and women- in the design and implementation of activities to improve their inclusivity and to strengthen project outcomes?

How are your activities supportive of gender transformation (movement towards gender equality) and how do they address gender-based violence?

C. Collaborating, learning and adapting

How do you integrate adaptive management into design of your activities and how are you adapting currently with COVID?

What other government or donor-funded programs/approaches related to agriculture and livelihood opportunities already exist in the geographic areas and can be leveraged?

What are some lessons learned from those programs that USAID should consider for this activity?

D. Cross-sectoral approaches

How can health information on topics such as family planning, maternal and child health, water and sanitation and communicable disease prevention (such as COVID-19 and HIV) be integrated into agriculture resilience efforts?

Is there conflict between wildlife and livestock/agriculture in your areas of implementation? If so, are you or are there other actors trying to address that conflict?

Thank you for your interest in working with USAID/South Sudan.

Sincerely, Luis Garcia

Supervisory Agreement Officer

Attachment: 1 RFI - Agriculture Resilience Activity – CLA approaches – EG in South Sudan

Background

Threats to food security remain an enormous challenge to local populations in South Sudan. The most recent data from USAID’s Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance show that 1.3 million children are malnourished (290,000 children facing severe acute malnutrition (SAM), 1 million children facing moderate acute malnutrition (MAM). Additionally, there are 470,000 malnourished pregnant and lactating women. According to Famine Early Warning Network, prior to the advent of COVID-19, the May-to-July IPC projected an estimated 6.5 million people of South Sudan’s total population of 11.7 million were expected to face IPC 3 or worse levels of acute food insecurity at the peak of the lean season. In 2019, despite significant contributions from the WFP, which delivered 300,000 tons of cereals in humanitarian aid, South Sudan still faced a deficit of

181,500 tons. Now due to COVID-19 an additional 2.1 million people are estimated to be in need of additional food assistance.

Efforts to increase resilience to help the country better respond to multiple crises and threats, including conflict, economic decline, natural disasters, plant pests, human and animal diseases remain critical. The purpose of this food security activity is to generate rural sector development and improve household resilience, building on the gains that USAID made through

FAO/Sustainable Agriculture for Economic Resilience (SAFER) project. SAFER contributed significantly in the realization of cereal increase in 2019 and led to improvement of livelihoods in selected conflict affected areas of South Sudan with stressed and crisis levels of food insecurity.

The complexities surrounding conflict and displacements remain as critical drivers of food insecurity and diminished livelihoods. The SAFER project demonstrated that these root causes are best addressed by a conflict and market sensitive approach aimed at enhancing resilience through improved food security, better functioning agriculture markets, strengthened capacity and diversified livelihoods. To further contribute to the resilience of farming households and communities, more projects are needed to help strengthen farming groups, raise technical capacity, develop value chain opportunities for local businesses and improve the nutrition of women and children through utilization of more nutritious crops.

Activity Summary

USAID’s Economic Growth Office seeks to improve the resilience of targeted rural households to shocks. Interventions should strengthen the productive capacities of households to increase food production, utilize more nutritious foods and diversify incomes through off-farm market activities.

This activity will leverage SAFER achievements, which ends in August 2021, to establish a multi-sectoral agriculture system that emphasizes functioning agriculture markets, food productivity, livestock farming, community capacity building, rural livelihoods, better nutrition - all of which will increase farming communities’ resilience in the face of shocks. The following are sub-objectives with illustrative activities:

1. Increase the productivity of the agriculture sector

a. Extension services for farmers

b. Access to and distribution of quality inputs (seeds, tools, equipment)

c. Safe and effective use of fertilizers and pesticides

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d. Access to irrigation services

e. Animal health services for livestock keepers

f. Build cohesive functioning farmer

2. Diversify livelihoods

a. Fisheries and attendant activities such as net weaving, smoking, canoe building

b. Beekeeping, honey production, marketing of local honey in local markets

c. Fruit and vegetable drying and processing for local markets

d. Strengthening livelihood groups to operate as an enterprise

3. Support Market-oriented interventions - on and off farm

a. Provide business skills training to start ups, particularly youth and women

b. Build networks of service providers, producers, buyers

c. Technical training on machinery, tool manufacturing, other input provision

d. Enable financial service providers to reach farmer groups, including support to village savings and loan associations

e. Use of technology to disseminate market information

4. Integrate improved nutrition activities across objectives

a. Increase availability of fruit and vegetables seeds to farmers, particularly women who are more likely to manage household gardens

b. Develop aquaculture and fish processing activities

c. Stimulate demand for more nutritious foods which may include tailored messaging to women and men, household vegetable gardening, livestock for milk and meat

d. Improve availability of vegetables at local markets

The preceding objectives and activities are not mutually exclusive. For example, diversified sustained livelihoods development requires cohesive functioning groups to generate supply;

technical assistance is needed to ensure quality of product; business actors will provide aggregation, transportation and marketing support to sustain livelihoods; and income from such livelihood activities should enable families to purchase more nutritious foods if they are available.

To achieve our food security objectives, the activity will engage and develop private sector partnerships and identify key crops for value addition as appropriate. For example, the activity will engage seed companies to test and distribute quality seeds; fertilizer and pesticide companies to train farmers on effective safe application; off-takers and processing companies to provide extension services and cultivate market quality crops. Voucher and cash transfer programs will be implemented to promote private provision of goods and services. Additionally, the activity will coordinate with other USAID activities and those of donors under the context of the Partnership for Recovery and Resilience. The Agriculture Resilience activities will be a leader for USAID in coordinating joint work plans with USAID (and other donor) implementing partners in the geographical areas where activities are implemented.

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Besides integrating private sector engagement across the various objectives, there will be an emphasis on the following cross-cutting issues: promoting women in leadership roles for farmer/livelihood groups; targeting women and caregivers on nutrition messaging, planting nutritious crops, and raising small livestock; creating economic opportunities in the agriculture sector for youth, particularly in added value activities. The activity will also coordinate and integrate existing USAID activities in WASH, maternal/child health, community engagement, and OFDA/FFP school feeding programs and multi-year expenditure program.

USAID would like to utilize “CLA” approaches: Collaborating intentionally with stakeholders, including the broader development community, to share knowledge and reduce duplication of effort. Learning systematically by drawing on evidence from a variety of sources and taking time to reflect on implementation. And Adapting strategically based on applied learning.

USAID also seeks to enable CLA around market systems and partnership within our field

Missions and partner community.

Geographic coverage

The proposed geographic area for this activity is:

1. Jonglei State

2. Eastern Equatoria State

3. Western Bahr El Ghazal State

4. Upper Nile State

5. Unity State

END OF RFI

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