Recrutement d’une entreprise pour fournir du matériel de formation et des formations virtuelles aux entreprises en Afrique, Côte d’Ivoire

REQUEST FOR EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST

AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT BANK

Human Capital, Youth and Skills Development Department (AHHD)

Avenue Jean-Paul II, 01 BP 1387 Abidjan 01, Côte d’Ivoire E-mail : [email protected]; cc : [email protected]

RECRUITMENT OF AN ENTERPRISE SUPPORT ORGANIZATION (ESO) TO PROVIDE TRAINING MATERIALS & VIRTUAL TRAINING FOR BUSINESSES IN AFRICA (FOR INCUBATORS, ACCELERATORS, FUND MANAGERS, AND STARTUPS)

1. The African Development Bank (AfDB) is the premier pan-African development institution, promoting the economic growth and social progress across the continent. The Bank delivers financial and technical supports to Regional Member Countries (RMCs) through transformative projects that will significantly reduce poverty and bring inclusive and sustainable economic growth. In order to sharply focus the objectives of the Ten-Year Strategy (2013 – 2022) and ensure greater developmental impact, five priorities (High 5s) have been identified for scaling up the Bank’s delivery, namely: Feed Africa, Industrialize Africa, Power Africa, Integrate Africa and improve the quality of life for the people of Africa. In order to accelerate the improvement of the life for the people of Africa, the Bank approved in 2016 the Jobs for Youth in Africa Strategy (JfYA) with the objective to create 25 million jobs and equip 50 million youth with skills for enhanced employability and entrepreneurial success by 2025. The approach of the JfYA strategy is to support the countries to build an ecosystem conducive to youth employment.

2. The Human Capital, Youth and Skills Development Department (AHHD) therefore requires the services of a firm to provide capacity building – training materials and virtual trainings – for businesses in Africa (for incubators, accelerators, fund managers, and startups).

Capacity building enabling organizations and their leaders to develop competencies and skills that can make them more effective and sustainable, it is a versatile, widely-applicable tool that offers direct benefits to all stakeholders. It addresses a range of needs, including human resources development, impact targeting, measurement, and reporting as well as technical and/or specialized support. When applied well, it improves organizations competitiveness, enhances business performance, expands impact for beneficiaries, and strengthens markets and sectors.

The objective of this assignment is to “build the capacity of Enterprise Support Organizations (ESOs) leaders/managers to develop and scale their businesses”. The firm to be selected is expected to (i) develop training materials and knowledge resources for incubators, accelerators, venture builders, fund managers and startups, with recognized certification in partnership with renowned universities for each of them; (ii) provide virtual training such as webinars, online workshops.

3. The beneficiaries of this activity will be Incubators, Accelerators, Fund managers and Startups :

• Incubators are essential actors in the dynamic of innovation system. They are the carrier for practical innovation activity by providing basic space environment and value-added services for technology-based small and medium enterprises ;
• Accelerators are intermediary organizations or platform working to scale impact enterprises by providing support for multiple impact enterprise needs ;
• Fund Managers are key for achieving a more effective organization. They lead to an improved programme of activities. With strong financial management capacity, the organization becomes more able to control its own affairs. Without it, the future is often uncertain: it may be impossible to predict when money will be short and, crucially, it may become impossible to fund programmes. (iv)Startups are young enterprises founded by one or more entrepreneurs to develop a unique product or service and bring it to market. Each beneficiary would be part of a specific sessions ;

4. The services to be provided under the Assignment include (but are not limited to) providing capacity building activity for Incubators, Accelerators, Fund managers and Startups. The ESO may be called to have an extensive discussion with academic institutions (local, regional or international level) and private sector stakeholders about the Curriculum. The ESO should have a proven record in topics such as: (i) Capacity Building, Innovation, Entrepreneurship; (ii) Focus on Human Capital (innovative firms); (iii) Skillset Development (Sharpen and acquire the skills necessary for building products and services in the new digital era); (iv) Mindset Development (Overcome the barriers to entrepreneurial thinking); (v) Comprehensive Integration (Create the capacity to develop and launch new solutions through a network of innovators with complementary skills; (vi) Certification program (A certificate program via short-term training programs for the development of skills and experiences necessary for a particular job) ;

5. The AfDB jobs team invites consulting firms to indicate their interest in providing the above-described services. Interested ESOs must provide information indicating that they are qualified to perform the services: i) Brochure of the company, ii) Description of similar assignments, iii) References & iv) Team composition ;

6. Only Consulting firms (we encourage joint venture with academic institutions) would be considered for this Expression of Interest and not individual candidatures ;

7. The consultancy firm should be based in Africa or in Non-Regional Member Countries and have proven records of references with Donors / Multinational companies across Africa ;

8. The eligibility criteria, shortlisting and selection procedure shall be in accordance with the Bank’s Procurement Policy for Recruitment of Corporate Consultants ;

9. The Bank is under no obligation to shortlist any consulting firm who expresses interest ;

10. Interested consulting firms may obtain further information at the address below during the Bank’s working hours: 08:00 to 17:00 hours (GMT or Abidjan time), Monday to Friday ;

11. Expressions of interest must be submitted or sent by e-mail to the address mentioned below no later than 18^th December 2020 at 05:00 PM (GMT) and specifically mentioning : “Expression of interest for Capacity building for Enterprise Support Organization”.

For the attention of :

Ms. Aida Mademe Sylla

E-mail : [email protected]

Copy to :

Ms .Ndeye Absa Gningue

E-mail : [email protected]

AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT BANK GROUP

TERMS OF REFERENCE

Recruitment of a firm to provide training materials and virtual trainings for businesses in Africa (for incubators, accelerators, fund managers, and startups)

Human Capital, Youth and Skills Development Department – November 2020

TERMS OF REFERENCE

Recruitment of a firm to provide training materials and virtual trainings for businesses in Africa (for incubators, accelerators, fund managers, and startups).

1. Background :

The rate of formal job creation in Africa is insufficient to absorb the growing working age population. By 2040, Africa will house the world’s largest workforce. However, the pace of job creation remains significantly slow. African labour markets create an average of 3 million wage-earning jobs annually, a number that falls significantly short of the 10 to 12 million youth entering the labour force each year.

In response to this crisis, the African Development Bank has adopted a strategy called Jobs for Youth in Africa (JfYA) for the period of 2016 – 2025. This strategy responds to the priorities in the Bank’s Ten-Year Strategy and the New Corporate Priorities¹. Creating productive jobs for the youth would help improve their living conditions, while providing the much-needed human capital to transform Africa’s energy, agriculture, industrialization and regional integration efforts.

The JfYA strategy is built on three pillars, namely Integration, Innovation and Investment. Under the integration pillar, the Bank will amplify its impact on employment by bringing a youth employment focus to all Bank operations. The innovative pillar aims to develop, scale, and replicate flagship programs that create new economic opportunities for tens of millions of youth in sectors driving Africa’s growth. Three sectors have been identified for these interventions: agriculture, industrialization and ICT. The Investment pillar of the initiative seeks to put in place an investment facility that will catalyze financing for youth employment initiatives.

• The High – 5 : Light up and Power Africa, Feed Africa, Industrialize Africa, Integrate Africa, and Improve the Quality of Life for the People of Africa

Through the innovation pillar of the strategy, the Bank aims to launch an Innovation and Entrepreneurship Lab platform (The Lab). The objective of the Lab is to support Africa’s entrepreneurship ecosystem by incubating and piloting promising new ideas and assessing best practices for existing interventions in support of youth employment. In addition, the Lab will provide knowledge resources to help mitigate the constraints and challenges entrepreneurs face in Africa and allow them to successfully launch and grow their businesses. The Lab will achieve this goal by:

• Increasing the capacity of Enterprise Support Organizations (ESOs) such as incubators, accelerators, hubs, financial intermediaries and other specialized firms, operators and networks that provide capital ;
• Mentoring, coaching, networking, technology and management skills, linkage to other Business Development Services, and other resources and accompanying measures that are required to create and support viable entrepreneurship ecosystems across Africa ;
• Creating a network of ESOs & entrepreneurs across Africa to promote learning and exchange, business and market linkages, and investments.

2. Scope of Work :

Broadly the assignment shall include the following activities (but not limited to) :

• Assessment and benchmarking ;
• Provide strategy that will be used based on assessment and benchmarking; It will include an assessment on several dimensions such as human (knowledge/skill), organizational (communication and collaboration), structural (procedures), material (equipment) ;
• Action planning ;
• Provide Methodology and action plan for the implementation of this activity ;
• Capacity building activity implementation ;
• Provide training programs for incubators, training programs for accelerators, training programs for fund managers, training programs for startups ;
• Provide toolkit for business incubators, toolkit for business accelerators, toolkit for various types of fund managers, toolkit for start-up entrepreneurs ;
• Provide certification for incubators, certification for accelerators, certification for fund managers, certification for startups ;
• Monitoring and evaluation (Reassessment, evaluation and learning) ;
• Assess the quality and relevance of capacity building efforts; It will include but not limited to developmental (improvement of a skill), transitional (moving to a new desired state), and transformational (significant differences).

Methodology :

The capacity building process must develop the skills and ability of the ESOs leaders/managers so that they make a clear distinction among Incubators, Accelerators, Fund managers and Startups. A methodology based on lessons learnt could be used :

• Assessment and benchmarking : The consultant will assess capacity of the targeted organizations to identify gaps, requirements, and priority needs for delivering effective capacity building programs ;
• Action planning : After understanding the requirements from the assessment process, the consultant will start designing the curriculum based on background notes, learning objectives, expected outcomes, targeted audience, and the daily agenda. The necessary materials (theoretical and hands-on exercises), including PPTs, manual, and exercise data, will be prepared in modular approach with real-world examples for each activity ;
• Capacity building activity implementation : This refers to the execution of  a capacity building  activity.  To  implement  the  activities,  we  categorized  ESOs  into  three  groups : Incubators, Accelerators, Fund Managers ;
• Monitoring and evaluation (Reassessment, evaluation and learning): This monitoring and evaluation is an important part of any capacity building event. It helps to improve performance and achieve better results. Monitoring and evaluation has to do with the quality and relevance of capacity building efforts. Structured pre- and post-assessment tools could be developed and used for each type of capacity building activity, except for the exposure learning type, in order to monitor a participant’s expectations, his or her progress in understanding the contents, and to get feedback for continuous improvement.

Team Composition :

The team working on this assignment will consist of three different entities, commissioned by different financing entities, and required to work and collaborate, as follows :

• A Team Leader, to oversee the implementation of the capacity building activity. The Team Leader will provide technical leadership to the staff. This role will include: Technical quality mainstreaming & Capacity building, Staff leadership and management, Strategy, Planning and Programme Development, Networking, Stakeholder Relationships & Partnerships ;
• An Instructor/Mentor Team mandated to provide training for incubators, accelerators, fund managers, startups. The Team will include various competences from academic areas, industry experts, and technical Instructors, to cover services offered by ESOs. It will include but not limited to expert in Business Development Services, expert in business strategy support, expert in access to markets, expert in access to finance, expert in skill development, and expert in innovative funding ;
• A Monitoring and evaluation expert, to assess the quality and relevance of capacity building efforts.

3. Deliverables / Outputs :

The deliverables under this assignment should be made available in English and in French (for all African countries to have access to these resources) :

4. Eligibility Criteria :

The JfYA Team invites Firms having expertise in Research, Business Development Services satisfying the following said conditions :

• Technical expertise on Capacity Building programs for ESOS in Africa and at international level ;
• Technical expertise on establishment of program certification for ESOs

5. Engagement Period :

The period of contract shall be between 15^th of February 2021 to 15^th of October 2021 (9 months).

6. Collaboration :

The consultancy will be managed by the Human Capital Youth and Skills development Department, specifically, the Jobs Team.

7. Remuneration :

The consulting firm will be paid in accordance with the established rules and procedures of the Bank’s procurement model. The selection of proposals is on Quality-and Cost-Based Selection (QCBS) – which considers the technical quality of the proposal, with consideration of the cost of services.