TENDER NOTICE FOR CONSULTANCY SERVICES

Title of the Tender: Hiring an individual local consultant to develop a Five-year strategic plan of the ministry of youth. 

Tender Reference Number: CRS-Rwanda 006-FY24-TN/2023

Procurement Method: National Open Competitive Tender

Date of Issue: November 23^rd, 2023 

Deadline for submission: December 7^th, 2023

Terms of Reference for Hiring an individual local consultant to develop a Five-year strategic plan of the ministry of youth.

1. About Catholic Relief Services (CRS) 

Catholic Relief Services is the official international humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United States. CRS works to save, protect, and transform lives in need in more than 100 countries, without regard to race, religion or nationality. CRS’ relief and development works are accomplished through programs of emergency response, HIV, health, agriculture, education, microfinance, and peacebuilding. The Country Program has over 80 staff and implements its projects through local and international partners, with strong coordination/collaboration with Government of Rwanda structures. Catholic Relief Services (CRS) has been working in Rwanda since 1961. CRS Rwanda’s key programing areas include youth empowerment, agriculture, early childhood development, economic strengthening, justice, and peace building. To achieve this, CRS collaborates with the government of Rwanda, donors, the Catholic church, private sector, and civil society organizations. 

2. About Ministry of Youth (MINIYOUTH) 

The Ministry of Youth (MINIYOUTH) in partnership with Catholic Relief Services – United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (CRS) intends to develop a five-year strategic plan for the Rwandan National Youth Sector. Through alignment with national strategic documents, institutional policies, partners’ youth programs/strategies, this comprehensive strategic plan with specific strategic actions will direct MINIYOUTH toward the achievement of national strategic goals, including but not limited to strategic orientation and priority areas of focus in terms of youth development, implementation, financing, and the M&E framework.

2.1   Background 

In Rwanda, youth represent the most abundant asset not only to contribute to the economy of the country but also in various perspectives of the development and a significant share of Rwanda's population for the current and predictable future. Sustainable development, economic growth, equity, and human development are not possible without youth development. Rwanda is a youthful nation, with a median age of just 19 years and 27.6 percent of the population lies between 16-30 years of age (Youth age bracket in Rwanda) and almost 67% is below 30 years (LFS, 2022).

Given the developmental challenges of young people in different aspects remain. Some examples of such challenges are Youth Employment and Productivity, Youth access to finance, Youth, and poverty, Digital literacy, and Youth participation in subsistence agriculture among others. These challenges can partly be associated with consequential issues of mental health, teen pregnancy, and alcohol and drug substance that go on to hamper the developmental needs for youth to thrive.

Creating decent economic opportunities for young people is a key priority under the National Strategy for Transformation (NST1), whereby GoR is continuing to create a conducive environment through developing policies, strategies, and institutional frameworks that facilitate young people to be at the center of transformation and this will be possible only when Rwandan youth have the right skills, knowledge, and attitudes to support the transition to a middle-income country.

3. Objective, Scope of Work and Responsibilities

• General Objectives

The general objective of this consultancy is to develop a comprehensive strategic plan with clear strategic actions for achieving national strategic goals of the Ministry of Youth including but not limited to strategic orientation and priority areas of focus in terms of youth development, implementation, financing, and M&E framework as well as aligning the strategy with National strategic documents, institutional policies, and strategies.

• Overall objective

The overall objective of developing this strategy is to describe the Youth empowerment transformation journey from 2024 to 2029 in line with the national strategic documents.

• Scope/Responsibilities

• More specifically, the consultant assignment should consist of the following main tasks:
• Review the existing national strategic documents including but not limited to sector strategic plans that would be able to create space for youth and empower them to summarize the key gaps and opportunities.
• Aligning the strategic plan with the revised relevant national priority documents such as NST, Vision 2050, sector policies, strategies, and other documents deemed to be necessary.
• Provide a detailed youth sector analysis in the key domains and sub-domains and define concrete actions, measurable impactful indicators, baseline, targets, and expected outcomes.
• Make sure that all key stakeholders are consulted during the development of this strategic plan and aligning their strategic plans within this strategic plan document.
• Conducting desk reviews and organizing focus group discussions with young people including the National Youth Council structure and Youth-based organizations by sampling the locations (urban and rural), different age groups, and levels of education to make sure that youth voices are considered and captured in the strategic plan.
• Prepare a detailed roadmap for strategy development, preferably assigning weekly timeframes for activities to be completed in the given time.

4. Expected outcomes

• Consistent and homogeneous youth empowerment in all key sectors of economic development
• Improved youth sector performance and reduced all the critical challenges youths are facing.
• Harmonized coordination among key actors in the youth transformation agenda
• Increased partnership to support youth initiatives.
• Increased Rwanda’s global ranking in the youth sector especially in the youth development index
• Increased and fast-tracked the achievement of the country’s target in different domains, employment, ICT, Agriculture, Education, Financial Inclusion, Health, sports Arts and recreation, and behavior change.
• Strengthened the youth center development for a wider range of youth empowerment agenda.
• Provide a detailed youth sector analysis in the key domains and sub-domains and define concrete actions, measurable impactful indicators, baseline, targets, expected outcomes, and costing.
• Developed a detailed implementation plan and M&E framework.

5. Deliverables

More specifically, this consultant is expected to produce the following deliverables in regard to the Youth Strategic Plan. 

The consultant will deliver the following documents:

• Inception report including, detailed work plan, methodology and understanding of the assignment, table of contents, strategy development, description of activities, timeline, documents to be used and key stakeholders to be consulted, highlight issues identified that need much attention, and propose content and structure of the strategy.
• Draft proposed strategy for review, approval, and validation
• Approved final strategy to be implemented.
• A well-designed and summarized version of the strategy to be shared with all stakeholders in English and published on website at least (10 to 20 pages) 

6. Qualifications of the Consultant

Consultant should have a master’s degree in economics, Development Planning, Policy development, Project management, Development studies, or other closely related field.  

• Experience

• Having 5 years of Experience in policy/Strategy development and analysis
• Should have Knowledge on youth related aspects and their development.
• Have developed work related to strategic plans, policies, and any other national strategic documents that have been successfully implemented elsewhere preferably in other institutions.
• Knowledge of Results-based management, Planning-based management, and Logical framework approach.
• Proven substantial experience in planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation projects.
• Ability to work effectively in English, should also be fluent in Kinyarwanda knowledge of French is an added advantage.
  • Essential qualification and composition of the team
• The consultancy team/the consultant should possess strong interpersonal skills with the ability to establish and maintain effective work relationships with people of different national and cultural backgrounds.
• Proven experience and skills to facilitate the stakeholder's engagement plan.
• Team members should have excellent communication skills with the ability to express ideas clearly, logically, and effectively, both orally and in writing.
  • Required Skills, Experience, and Competencies
• The consultant will need to demonstrate the following experience: Qualified and available staff for the task and their CV.
• Provision of documentation to demonstrate the organizational capability including basic information about the company, management structures, project support, and specialized knowledge within the task area.
• Demonstrated experience in delivering similar or related services.
• The consultant should demonstrate experience in working with partners or other stakeholders in public sector development programs.
• The consultant should have experience in using methodology such as the Logical Framework Approach (LAF) for the design of performance-based planning, including support in the setting of specific, measurable, agreed-upon time realistic time-bound (SMART) targets. 

7. Duration of the Contract

The planned duration of the assignment is 45 days. The consultant will include the following phases with their respective time frame. 

Table 1: Consultancy Time frame

8. Institutional Arrangement

This section describes the organizational and management structure for the consultant and outlays the roles, key responsibilities, and lines of authority of all parties involved in the evaluation process. Implementation arrangements are intended to clarify expectations, eliminate ambiguities, and facilitate an efficient and effective evaluation and management process.

8.1. CRS’ responsibilities

CRS is responsible for the management of this consultancy and will contract an independent consultant to undertake the consultancy work on behalf of the Ministry of Youth. CRS will ensure that all issues pertaining to the contract with the consultant, including payments, are completed on schedule to facilitate the work of the consultant.  CRS should also comment on the qualitative elements of the deliverables.

8.2. MINIYOUTH’s responsibilities

Day-to-day management of the consultant will be provided by the Ministry of Youth with the support of CRS staff who will be selected to support this assignment. The Ministry of Youth will be the focal point for the review of the strategy and will facilitate all the technical work during the entire process.  

9. Duty Station

The duty station of the work is Kigali, Rwanda with possible data collection in neighbouring rural areas. 

10. Payment Modality

The consultant shall be paid upon completion of the following milestones:

• 20% after the submission and acceptance of the Inception Report.
• 40% after the submission and validation of the draft strategy
• 40% after the submission and validation of the final strategy and the summarized Version of 10-20 pages.

The remuneration stated above is subject to applicable taxes in accordance with the laws of the Republic of Rwanda.

11. Evaluation Criteria

The consultant will be selected using the quality and cost-based selection. Maximum score is 100% out of which technical criteria equals 70% and financial criteria equals 30%.  

The technical evaluation will include the following: 

Table 3: Selection Criteria Technical Evaluation

N.B : The minimum technical score for the consultant to pass the technical stage is 60%.

• Tw = % Weight of technical score (70%)
• Fw = % Weight of financial score (30%)
• The financial score for each consultant will be calculated using the following formula:
• Financial score (FS) = (LF x 100)/ Fi
• LF = The lowest financial proposal.
• Fi = The proposal to be evaluated. 

• Financial evaluation

• The winning consultant will be determined by combining the technical score and financial score as per the following formula:
• Final score (S): (TS x Tw%) + (FSxFw%) where:
• S= Final score
• TS = Technical score
• FS = Financial score
• Tw = % Weight of technical score (70%)
• Fw = % Weight of financial score (30%) 

Table 4: Financial proposal submission form

Note:

• The cost should be inclusive of required taxes ( 15% WHT or 18%VAT Tax)
• All Rwandan consultants must quote in Rwandan Francs
• Bids must remain validy for 90 days 

12. Supervision of the Consultancy work

The successful consultant shall work under the supervision of the Director of General youth empowerment.

13. Confidentiality

All documents and data will be treated as confidential and used solely to facilitate this assignment. 

14. Estimated budget

The estimated budget for this consultancy should not exceed RWF 10,000,000 including taxes. 

15. Application process 

Interested individual consultant are encouraged to send their applications to rwandabids@crs.org no later than December 7^th, 2023, at 11:00am Kigali time. The title of the email must include: “Develop a Five-year strategic plan of the ministry of youth.’’ and the application document should include the technical proposal and financial proposal in two PDF documents. A late submission will not be considered.

Length of the bid document 

Interested bidders should submit technical and financial proposal documents that do not exceed 10 pages maximum without annexes. 

Done at Kigali, November 23 rd , 2023.

Hans Fly

Country Representative