Mozambique - End of Term Review of Support to Non-State Actors in Mozambique

Lot:7 - Governance and Home Affairs - EuropeAid FWC Beneficiaries 127054

The Team of experts should be composed of:
2 senior experts

The duration of the assignment for the team will be of 40 working-days, to be distributed between the two experts.

Profile required for the team:
Absolutely required:
 Masters degree in a relevant field;
 At least 10 years experience with programme & project planning, monitoring and evaluation;
 At least 10 years experience with institutional capacity-development programmes, including experience in the area of civil society and community development;
 Experience with advocacy and civic education programmes;
 Familiarity with the EC's Project Cycle Management and Logical Framework approach, and a working knowledge of EC procedures;
 Experience with financial management and accountability issues;
 Excellence in both written and conversational English;
 Good spoken Portuguese is essential.

Experience and knowledge of the socio-political context of Mozambique would be an asset, in particular in relation to the civil society.

The experts will have excellent writing, editing and communicational skills. If the team proves unable to meet the level of quality required for drafting the report, the consulting firm will provide, at no additional cost to the Commission, an immediate technical support to the team to meet the required standards.

4. LOCATION AND DURATION

The mission should start by September 08th, 2010 to conclude by September 30th, 2010. The work will take place in Maputo and Provinces. Visits will be carried out to a sample of the projects awarded through the call for proposals.

2.1 Overall Objective

The overall objective of the review is to inform stakeholders of the extent to which the programme has produced or is on track to produce its intended development results, to understand the reasons for such performance, and to identify the key lessons/recommendations, which can inform on the design and implementation of activities for the future programming and next steps.

Specifically, the review will establish the relevance, efficiency, effectiveness and emerging impact of the programme, and will assess the likely level of sustainability of the outputs produced and development results or benefits achieved.

While the programme intended to develop capacity of NSAs in project cycle management, implementation of poverty reduction projects as well as advocacy and dialogue, the various delays incurred in the start up phase have meant that the effective period of implementation has become very short. In that light, the review should focus mainly on three components: the efficiency and effectiveness of the capacity-building component, the advocacy and communication component and the management structure of the programme. For those three main points, the review should identify what usefully could have been done should the implementation period for the programme have been longer.

The results and recommendations of the evaluation will be used to help design and orient the nature of future support. The relevance of organising a restitution seminar will be assessed and discussed at that time.
2.2 Beneficiaries
The beneficiary of this evaluation will be the Government of Mozambique (particularly the National Authorising Officer and the Ministry of Planning and Development) and the EU Delegation. The lessons learned will be shared with other relevant ministries and development partners in Mozambique as well as with EuropeAid in Brussels
2.3 Requested Services

As regards the approach to be taken to this evaluation, the team will ensure that the relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, sustainability and impact of the project are assessed. Also, it should be noted that while taking into account the standard evaluation criteria (endorsed by OECD-DAC) mentioned above, this evaluation should be organised around a set of specific evaluation questions (a maximum of 5).

These questions are intended to articulate the key issues of concern to stakeholders, thus optimising the focus and utility of the evaluation. The development of those questions will be drafted in the inception report and based on the analysis of available documents.

The evaluation questions will be identified in the first instance by the evaluation team. The questions should cover the following three main areas:
- The capacity-building component
- The advocacy, communication and information component.
- The management structure of the programme

For this purpose, the team should also assess:

The coordination and complementarity of EC support actions and strategy to Mozambique with policies / actions of Member States and other development partners in the area.
The team will also address the following aspects:

2.3.1. Relevance

- Assess the extent to which the programme's objectives were directly relevant to the Government of Mozambique's overall development and poverty-reduction strategy and to its strategy for support to Non State Actors;
- Assess the degree to which the programme's objectives were aligned with the EC's policies relating to support and engage with Non State Actors, as well as its degree of coherence with other EC policies relating to Mozambique;
- Assess the extent to which the design and implementation of the project adequately took into account existing support to Non State Actors provided by other donors and through EC thematic programmes.
- Assess the relevance of programme in relation to the problems it was designed to resolve, and the extent to which the stated objectives correctly addressed the identified problems and real needs, including those that might have become apparent during implementation.
- Identify the main thematic areas that could be of consideration in the design of next support programme to NSAs. In this perspective, identify efficient and effective activities at national level implemented during the past 10 years in relation to advocacy, information and civic education.

2.3.2. Efficiency

- Assess the extent to which the project has delivered (or is likely to deliver) it's programmed outputs at the scale and quality and in accordance with the real timelines;
- Assess the quality and efficiency of the annual planning processes, monitoring, evaluation and reporting and communication systems.
- Assess the quality of the project management in the context of the NAO's contracting authority and implementing entity.

The consultants should summarise and analyse the organisational set up, both for the national authorities and the programme specific framework (NAO, EU Delegation, TA contractors). Issues to be analysed will include the operational plan and timetable; financial management planning and budgeting systems; phasing of activities, internal information flows, costs and outputs of technical assistance, coordination with other actors, operational accompanying measures by the government. A key consideration in the report should be whether the management structure was adequate in terms of organisational capacities for the expected results.

2.3.3. Effectiveness

This chapter concerns the relationship between the results and the programme purpose. It should give an assessment of the extent to which the programme's results have contributed to the purpose. Particular attention should be given to the outcomes for the beneficiaries.
It should also consider whether the assumptions required to translates the results into the purpose where were realised or not, and how this might have affected the programme. In this context, it should consider which accompanying measures should have been taken by government and partner authorities, whether these were delivered, what were the consequences for the project if they were not, and were the right things done. Also, it should identify the main lessons learned in relation to the strategy adopted and its implementation which will be of use in the design and implementation of future programme.


2.3.4. Ownership and Sustainability

-Assess the overall level of participation of key programme stakeholders in the design and implementation of the project, and their level of sense of ownership;.
-Assess the extent to which the outputs produced by the programme are being used and maintained by the beneficiaries, mainly related to capacity-building outputs;
-Assess the extent to which the above outputs are likely to continue to be sustained when the project is concluded;
-Draw the main lessons to be learned from the above which will be of value in the design and implementation of future support programme to NSAs in Mozambique and elsewhere, focussing mainly on the three main components identified..

2.3.5. Impact

- Identify the nature and analyse the impact the project has had to date (whether direct or indirect, positive or negative, and intended or unintended).

2.3.6 Conclusions and Recommendations
Under this heading, the consultants should, drawing on the conclusions, summarize the overall outcome and formulate lessons learnt and proposals for future programming. The conclusions should cover all important aspects requiring such action. As already mentioned, the focus of the evaluation is on Capacity building, Advocacy, information and civic education and Management and Organisational set up as also emphasised through the evaluation-questions.

The consultants should also analyse what the main successes and failures of the programme were and whether the effects justify the costs involved.
As part of the conclusion and in the light of the just started process of formulation, the consultants should emphasize what can be learned from this experience that can improve future programmes of support to NSAs.
2.4 Methodology

The review should be conducted through a combination of secondary data review (sector reviews, project documentation etc.), interviews with key informants from the public sector, civil society and thematic experts and evaluation/ assessment of a selection of projects awarded. The mission team should meet with a wide range of stakeholders at national and provincial levels, which should include NSAs, the NAO, the MPD, other relevant ministries and the EU delegation, contractors and technical assistant and final beneficiaries.
The inception report will propose a set of evaluation questions; identify key informants as well as the NGO projects to be visited. This report will summarize the team's proposed approach to conducting the review, based on its initial discussions with the main institutions concerned. It will also highlight any perceived issues or constraints identified which may affect the team's ability to successfully implement the ToRs.
The inception report will be submitted one week following the start of the review team's work in the country and approved by the NAO and the EU delegation.

2.5 Outputs

One inception report and final report.

The final report should enable the stakeholders to:

a) Form a view of the impact of the programme, notably in terms of capacity building
b) Form a view of what could usefully be done in terms of advocacy with a focus on civic education
c) Learn lessons that can be incorporated in future programmes


A draft final report should be submitted within 10 working days following the end of the field mission. The NAO and the EU delegation will submit comments to the draft report within two weeks of receipt of this. The consultants will submit the final report within 15 working days of receiving the comments on the draft report.

PLEASE NOTE: ONLY SELECTED CANDIDATES WILL BE CONTACTED