Assignment text
The objective of the assignment is to support the Danish Embassy in Addis Ababa in:
(a) establishing and facilitating a functioning monitoring and risk management system for the Country Programme and other projects to improve programme effectiveness, facilitate learning and ensure informed decision-making by the Embassy and its partners, and maximise transparency and accountability regarding the development of the programme;
(b) communicating to the Ethiopian and Danish public relevant achievements and results obtained by the Country Programme and other projects in the Embassy’s country portfolio.
The Country Programme presently comprises 6 engagements, increasing to 10 during 2020. Not all of the implementing partners have the capacity to monitor and report on their progress and results as expected, and the Embassy wishes to acquire assistance to support them adequately, to quality-assure the monitoring and reporting, and to communicate the achievements regularly to the public.
The services by the consultant shall amount to approximately 800 working days (Phase 1 and 2 combined)supplied by 2 core team members — one team leader cum monitoring expert (approx. 400 days) and one communication expert (approx. 200 days) — and a number of short-term experts (approx. 200 days combined)with profiles yet to be determined. The bulk of the working days shall be spent in Ethiopia. HQ management and backstopping shall be additional to this and be financed from contract overheads.
The 2 areas of monitoring and communication shall be treated as partly independent from each other and will have separate tasks and deliverables.
On the monitoring side of the assignment, major tasks will i.a. be capacity assessments of the Embassy’s partners regarding monitoring and reporting, capacity-development activities to assist partners considered weak, establishment of monitoring baselines, quality assurance of partners’ monitoring data, production of annual status reports on the Country Programme.
Regarding communication, main tasks will be to identify and formulate stories on Country Programme achievements adapted to a variety of written and visual media in both Denmark and Ethiopia.
Both the monitoring and the communication work will include field trips to individual projects within and outside the Country Programme.
The procurement has 2 options.
The first option is Phase 2 of the assignment. Around 18 months into the assignment, the Embassy will carryout a mid-term review and may execute the option for Phase 2 if the consultant’s fulfilment of the assignment(in Phase 1) is satisfactory. Apart from a 2-month inception period at the beginning of Phase 1, the scope of services does not distinguish between Phase 1 and 2, as the 2 phases are intended to form one single work process in case the Embassy executes the option to continue the contract after Phase 1.
The second option relates to optional tasks. The Embassy may wish to request the consultant to carry out certain other tasks that to varying degrees are related to monitoring and communication. Examples could be studies related to impact or value-for-money assessments, or assistance related to particular opportunities for communication. In such cases, the Embassy and the consultant will discuss the feasibility, including the financial and staff implications, and jointly determine the approach to be taken. The tasks will be based on written scope of services and financed from a reserve fund of DKK 2 000 000 (in addition to the estimated value of the contract of DKK 8 000 000) which will form part of the cost of the contract. While the consultant commits to charge the same rates and other unit costs as applied in the contract in general (or similar rates, in case new specialists are engaged for the purpose), there is no engagement by the Embassy to spend the total amount of the reserve. The Embassy can initiate these optional tasks in both Phase 1 and Phase 2.