Identification and Formulation of Rural Economic Development Programme (RED) in Ethiopia

Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, Unit for the Horn of Africa and Eastern Africa (hereinafter referred to as “Contracting Authority” or “MFA”) requests tenders to provide Services (hereinafter referred to as ”the Services") for Identification and Formulation of Rural Economic Development Programme (RED) in Ethiopia. The objective of the Services is to prepare a realistic and viable Programme Document (PD) on Rural Economic Development (RED) for cooperation between Finland and Ethiopia. The new RED programme should build on the current REILA and AgroBIG projects combining their successful elements into one programme. The Programme Document will be based on the outline provided in the MFA Manual for Bilateral Programs. The PD will facilitate the tendering, implementation, management, monitoring, and evaluation of the programme in an objectives/results-oriented manner. The assignment is divided into two phases. The first phase in an Identification Phase. The objective of the Identification Phase is to provide decision makers in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, working in collaboration with the Ethiopian authorities, with sufficient information to justify the acceptance, modification or rejection of the proposed programme, and determine the scope of further programme Formulation Phase. Subject to a satisfactory delivery of the Services and the approval of the governments of Finland and Ethiopia to continue the planning of the RED programme, the second phase, Formulatoin, will follow. The objective of the Formulation phase is to finalize the Programme Document. Please refer to Annex 1 “Terms of Reference” for a more detailed description of the required Services and Annex 1a, Pre-Identification report, for more detailed description of the initial ideas and suggestions for the Identification Mission.

The contract will be awarded through an open procedure. The experts tendered as a part of the Service will include a Team Leader and three (3) Team Members whose task is to conduct an Identification and Formulation of the new RED programme in Ethiopia. The tender documents include a full list of the minimum requirements set for the appointed experts [or the project team] in respect of education, language abilities, work experience and completed consultation and/or expert services as well as factors influencing the quality comparison. Should several tenderers have appointed the same expert for their tender, tenderers remain responsible for making an agreement on how they will possibly protect their own trade secrets or ensure the effective availability of the appointed expert resource during the contract period if one appointed expert was working for several different tenderers. Additionally, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs requires that the expert commit to confidentiality as regards the content of the interviews.

The Contracting Authority has done the following corrections to the Invitation to Tender with a correction notice dated 28/5/2021: The minimum requirement for the named Team Leader: "The Tenderer confirms by answering “Yes” that the proposed Team Leader has at least seven (7) years of comprehensive leadership and management experience as a Chief Technical Advisor or Team Leader from planning or implementing development cooperation programmes in developing countries that are eligible to receive official development assistance according to OECD DAC. has been corrected into form: "The Tenderer confirms by answering “Yes” that the proposed Team Leader has at least seven (7) years of comprehensive leadership and management experience in a senior management position from planning or implementing development cooperation programmes." See the corrected requirement in the part "Minimum Requirement for the Service, Experts and the Tender": "Team Leader". No other changes have been made with this correction notice.