CALL FOR MONITORING AND EVALUATION CONSULTANT
Project Title: Promoting climate and finance awareness for women smallholder farmers and small scale cross border traders to adapt to climate risks
Project Location: Malaba (Kenya/Uganda) and Lwakhakha (Kenya/Uganda)
Project duration: Cumulative 6 months spread over 22 months
Proposed assignment: Baseline and Endline assessment of the project implementation.
1.INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background
Sauti East Africa is a women-led social enterprise combining development research and technology solutions to address the digital information gaps facing women working in agricultural value-chains. Sauti leverages the competitive advantage of mobile technology to deliver tailored agro climate and market information to farmers and traders in East Africa. Our mission is to empower women farmers and traders to trade legally, safely, and profitably.
1.2 Project Context
With less access to capital than their male counterparts, small-scale informal women farmers and traders often rely on high-interest personal and informal community-based loans to support their farm activities. Surveys conducted with women farmers and traders at the border of Uganda and Kenya found that 39% and 24% of women relied on loans from digital lenders and community-based banking institutions, respectively, to overcome disruptions to their business activities.
While innovative finance has enabled many Kenyan and Ugandan women in the agricultural sector to overcome some of the gendered capital constraints to participating in the agricultural sector, many informal finance institutions poorly capture the risk of disruptions to women’s revenue from climate-related events in the region. Moreover, women farmers and traders have few accessible resources and typically poor financial literacy to effectively evaluate predicted volatility and climate-related hazards that may impact their ability to repay loans.
There are structural challenges that women farmers face in accessing resources, securing land, and participating fully in agricultural economies. From land ownership constraints to gendered disparities in decision-making and finance, these factors shape the realities of women in farming and limit their economic opportunities.
The impact of climate volatility is compounded for traders who trade their goods across Kenya and Uganda’s borders, as they face gender-based barriers such as sexual harassment, corruption, and other safety-related risks to cross the border and access the market for their goods.
1.3 Project Overview
Sauti’s approach targets the information and accessibility gaps that prevent Kenya’s and Uganda’s women small-scale farmers and traders from assessing the real-time climate-related risks of their agricultural activities. We will employ a human-centred design approach to create a mobile-based climate and finance risk information platform, which will be accessible via Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), WhatsApp, and Short Message Service (SMS).
The behavioral change model underlying this initiative is built on the premise that better information leads to better decisions. When farmers have timely and reliable access to agricultural and financial information, they can plan more effectively, reducing their vulnerability to climate-related disruptions. This allows them to manage risk proactively, secure better credit opportunities, and strengthen their financial position over time.
1.4 How it will work
Our project takes advantage of the ubiquity of mobile phones among our target population to maximize locally focused information, reach, and gender-sensitivity. Using any kind of phone, without the need of the internet, and from anywhere in the country, farmers can dial our short code and navigate through numbered menu options. Users will be presented with a simplified ‘risk report’, that will include real-time weather forecasts, seasonal climate hazard forecasts, market prices, and social services resources.
In addition to providing accessible climate and finance information, the project includes digital and financial literacy training to help women farmers understand their credit options and manage financial risks more effectively using digital tools – including the information platform deployed as part of this project. This ensures that farmers are not only aware of potential challenges but are also equipped with the knowledge and tools to take action. By combining financial education with real-time data, the project enhances farmers’ ability to make strategic decisions, improving their overall resilience and stability in the face of climate uncertainty.
1.5 Project approach:
The project improves the adaptability of women farmers to climate change by leveraging local and easy-to-use USSD/SMS-based platforms to deliver climate and finance-related information and adaptation tools. The users dial the short code *484*716# (Kenya) or *284*111# (Uganda) and navigate through a numbered menu of options using any kind of phone. Thus, smartphones and the internet are not required to access the platform. The obtained mobile-based information includes real-time weather forecasts, seasonal climate hazards, agricultural adaptation strategies, climate risk management tools, climate finance opportunities, and current and future market information. All the information is provided for free and translated into several local languages
2. EVALUATION
2.1 Rationale of the evaluation
The project will be evaluated in three phases. These include a needs assessment at project inception, baseline study and lastly an endline study. The evaluation at the different phases will be commissioned to assess the project progress toward achieving its key objectives. The evaluation will be required to track and ascertain progress against the outcomes of the project towards achievement of the overall goal of the project, identify lessons learnt, good practices and provide concrete recommendations for future similar interventions in order to enhance adaptive programming.
.2.2 Evaluation Objectives
The objective of the evaluation will be to
- Assess the extent to which the project has achieved its purpose based on intended outputs and results
- To assess the overall impact and effectiveness of the climate information accessibility by small scale women farmers.
- To evaluate the relevance and sustainability of project activities and outcomes
- Make recommendations to inform similar future programming
- To identify key strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT analysis) related to the project.
- The evaluation will be guided by the project’s specific objectives and commitments in the proposal document and log-frame.
3. METHODOLOGY
The evaluation will employ both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Qualitative data collection methods will include key informant interviews and observations. Quantitative data collection methods will include detailed surveys with women small scale farmers and traders across project areas. The survey respondents will include, but not limited to project beneficiaries and implementing partners from both private and public institutions.
A sample of small scale women farmers and traders will be drawn from project beneficiaries to participate as respondents to the survey. The KII and FGDs respondents shall include key members of the community such as community group leaders, local authority, county governments, local implementing partners, traders and farmers. The sampling framework will be drawn from the project sites.
The quantitative data will be primarily collected digitally through a mobile data collection platform and phone calls, analyzed, visualized and reported using appropriate software applications, in line with the logical framework and commitments in the project proposal.
Expected tasks and outputs will include:
- Inception meeting with project staff, review of key relevant documents
- Develop and submit inception report/ protocol which will include an interpretation of the tasks and study design & methodologies, sampling procedures and detailed work plan
- Develop appropriate tools and instruments for gathering information and present to Sauti team for approval
- Conduct survey interviews in the field
- Undertake KIIs and FGDs with key stakeholders and beneficiaries identified
- General oversight and coordination of the evaluation process including logistical arrangements for data collection in collaboration with the Project and MEL teams
- Provide all data sets of data collected in this evaluation process
- Process and analyze the data, and develop a draft report. Revise the report and based on Sauti feedback, submit a final report of the needs assessment, baseline and endline studies to the Sauti Team.
Study Sample Size
The needs assessment will adopt a qualitative approach involving approximately 100 women participating in Focus Group Discussions (FGDs). These will be organized into around 10 FGDs each comprising approximately 10 participants to facilitate in-depth discussions on participants’ information needs, challenges, and priorities.
For the baseline and endline surveys, a quantitative sample of 250 respondents will be targeted at each stage comprising women small-scale cross-border traders and farmers.
4. BUDGET PROPOSAL
Applicants are required to submit a detailed financial proposal that clearly outlines the costs associated with undertaking the needs assessment, baseline and endline. The proposed budget should be comprehensive covering all activities necessary to deliver the expected tasks and outputs including development of questionnaires, data collection tools, field data collection (surveys, key informant interviews, and focus group discussions), logistical coordination, data management and analysis, report writing and submission of all required deliverables including cleaned datasets.
The budget should provide a clear breakdown of costs by major budget lines like personnel, travel and accommodation, data collection, logistics, data processing and analysis, report production and any other relevant expenses), together with a brief justification for each item.
5. REQUIRED COMPETENCIES
- A team leader with a minimum of 5 years’ experience in evaluations and knowledge management for Agritech and market information systems in Western Kenya and Eastern Uganda and/or related fields
- Ability to work in both Uganda and Kenya A MUST
- Proven strong skills and experience in qualitative and participatory data collection approaches are mandatory.
- Previous experience with gender-based obstacles to agri-tech economic development is an asset.
- Strong analytical skills with ability to correlate different data sets to actionable conclusions.
- Result-based planning, report writing, and communication skills.
- English language skills (report should be written in English). Ability to make clear presentations and disseminate findings to both technical and non-technical audiences.
6. HOW TO APPLY
Applications for interested candidates should present an application as follows:
- A one-page cover letter summarizing the consultant’s fit for the position according to the required competencies described above;
- A CV detailing the consultant’s experience;
- 1 sample of previous similar work done; and,
- A budget proposal.
The application should be submitted to info@sautiafrica.org indicating ‘Promoting climate and finance awareness for women smallholder farmers to adapt to climate risks in Kenya and Uganda-’ as the subject. The deadline for submission is Close of Business on 31st July 2026.