Description

1. BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE OF STREAM II PROJECT

   July 2023

   BASELINE SURVEY SCOPE OF WORK (SOW) – STREAM II PROJECT

   South Sudan continues to face extremely high levels of food insecurity, social and political instability. A situation which is deepening due to endemic violence, conflict, climatic shocks resulting in extraordinary, localized flooding and droughts, inflation, and the economic impact of COVID-19 (OCHA, 2023)1. Despite South Sudan’s rich agricultural resources, four in five households skipped meals or ran out of food in both urban and rural parts of South Sudan, reflecting the severe impacts of the pandemic on the ability of households to meet their daily food needs (World Bank, 2021)2.In response to these challenges, Mercy Corps partnered with SDC and AFD and has been implementing the Strengthening Resilience in Agriculture, Livelihoods and Markets (STREAM) Project (Phase 1 and 2) through local institutions in Mundri (Mundri East and West) and Koch in South Sudan since November 2020. The Project supports smallholder farmers in Western Equatorial and Unity states to move out of chronic vulnerability to food-shocks by partnering with the private sector to strengthen local markets and support farmers through climate smart agriculture and provision of farm inputs.

   The first phase of the STREAM Project has improved the incomes and food security of over 3,672 (1,313 males and 2,359 females) smallholder farmers households and 2,470 (959 males and 1,511 females) non-farm enterprises and contributed to a revival of the agricultural markets in the target locations after decades of neglect and underinvestment. Leveraging on the impact of the Project and lessons learnt to date, Mercy Corps proposed second phase is focusing its interventions on specific market functions to sustainably move households out of chronic vulnerability and poverty by facilitating economic recovery and growth for smallholder farmers and non-farm microenterprises in vulnerable and conflict-affected areas of Greater Mundri Counties to directly and indirectly reach 35,000 and 35,000 participants respectively with system wide interventions.

   The three -year project dubbed STREAM II, includes include a 6-month inception phase combining continuing work with participants from STREAM I on market and financial linkages while also carrying out relevant assessments such as market systems, resilience, gender, and conflict analysis.

   The inception phase will also include mixed methods of data collection in support of an innovative research activity to evaluate the Project’s contribution to participants’ psychosocial capacities, and the role these capacities play in strengthening household resilience. These assessments and research activities will build on previous assessments conducted in STREAM I and will be used as a springboard for evidence-based adaptive management approaches. The Project will also carry out a detailed Organizational Capacity Assessment (OCA) and Organization Network Analysis (ONA) for the local partner AYA, and develop a capacity building plan for the partner for institutional strengthening for implementing activities in line with the localization agenda. STREAM II will use the Organization Capacity Index (OCI) on a quarterly basis to evaluate institutional strengthening while implementing the organization capacity building plan.
   

   Project Objectives, Theory of Change and Proposed Approach.

   The STREAM II Project seeks to sustainably move households out of chronic vulnerability and poverty by facilitating economic recovery and growth for smallholder farmers and non-farm microenterprises in vulnerable and conflict affected areas in Greater Mundri counties. We believe that:

   IF chronically vulnerable households (majority are women led and youths) in greater Mundri have the knowledge, skills, and productive assets to address their household needs, and IF markets and local institutions provide an enabling environment for self-employment and employment, THEN households will have improved food security and resilience to future shocks and stresses.

   To realize this goal, the project will focus on three key objectives:

2. Improved, more efficient and inclusive productive agricultural inputs and output markets.

The project implementation approach is anchored on sustainability and scalability components of change processes that seeks to ensure market functions remains at the heart of the Project design. The bulk of STREAM II activities are purposely designed to support viable economic initiatives, driven by market actors, and local organizations. Hence, the design of the project avoids one-off activities with no prospect of sustainability, unless they have clear catalytic objectives, to accelerate and enable changes that break vicious aid-dependency circles and create safe spaces for experimentation. Our primarily methodological approach to implementation is a Market Systems Development (MSD)[1] in crisis settings lens. The Project will employ a market facilitation model that enables target participants to meet basic needs, participate in markets, cope through local systems, and ultimately improve these local systems with a view to increasing household and market systems resilience, reward, innovation, and inclusiveness in the target value chains.

The Project will work with agricultural and non-farm ecosystem partners including farmers associations, cooperatives, self-help groups, mobile network operators, financial institutions, producer groups, technology innovators, agriculture value chain players, government, and other key market stakeholders to build or strengthen their relationships that are positive, co-dependent, and mutualistic. STREAM II’s MSD approach is designed for markets in fragile environments, and the project’s foundational strategy is to be light-touch and facilitative, focusing on creating linkages between market actors and stimulating systems for sustainability. The project, thus, proposes to use subsidies as a last resort means to buy down real risks and risk perceptions of strategic partners and create safer conditions for them to experiment and try out new/better ways of doing things, behaving and investing.

Alongside cash and voucher assistance (CVA), subsidies will be time-bound and play a catalytic role, to accelerate experimentation. Each subsidy will have a clear rationale (why are we using it instead of other options), an exit strategy (how is it enabling market actors to own the process of change), achievement milestones (what we expect from the recipients at specific points) and a withdrawal plan/schedule that is clear to the recipients and actors. The Project will emphasize continual market intelligence on the dynamics of value chain demand and supply, gaps in key supporting functions, the broader political economy, and pivotal secondary markets.

STREAM II will identify and address the barriers and constraints that have excluded certain people and groups, in order for markets to be more inclusive and for economic opportunities to be more equitable and accessible – all of which directly reduce grievances related to economic marginalization that have fueled the unrest. Tailored to the specifics of the Mundri East, West, and Mvolo, additional guiding principles of our MSD approach include: emphasizing the role of social capital – the trust, networks, and linkages that are so important when informality dominates and traditional social ties may have been disrupted, as well as the importance of information and diversification – in linkages, supply sources, access routes – necessary to lower risk profiles and proactively deal with unexpected changes. As part of this approach, STREAM II will work through existing SHGs to implement and test an innovative package of interventions designed to promote the diversification of members’ social networks and build their psychosocial capacities. This in turn will facilitate more inclusive access to markets and advance resilience outcomes.

2. BASELINE OBJECTIVE AND SURVEY QUESTIONS

With financial support from SDC, STREAM II Project plans to conduct a comprehensive baseline assessment to understand the current participants’ exposure to Project activities, but also to measure how participants and households are leveraging their resilience capacities in the face of shocks and stresses and how this affects their outcomes in relation to improved food security in the Greater Mundri Counties. The findings from this assessment will benchmark subsequent monitoring and results measurement approaches including recurrent (annual) monitoring surveys[2] that follow the same individuals and households over time, typically either triggered by a shock or stress (e.g., conflict or drought) or, are carried out at specific times of the year when households experience several shocks and stresses (e.g., during an agricultural lean season) to understand progress and resilience capacity of the project participants to inform project’s adaptation and maximized impact. This process will also be considered as the first round served as a baseline for key Project indicators and data points in addition to exploring the effects of several shocks and stresses that occur during the agricultural lean season.

As a result, the baseline survey process will establish baseline values for key intervention indicators related to the STREAM II overall objective of facilitating economic recovery and growth for smallholder farmers and non-farm microenterprises in vulnerable and conflict affected areas in Greater Mundri counties, while capitalizing on opportunities to improve more efficient and inclusive productive agricultural inputs and output markets, expand inclusive economic opportunities through financial inclusion, stronger market orientation and economies of scale for non-farm enterprises and smallholder farmers, and increase their psychosocial capacities and social cohesion among communities and market actors to ensure the inclusion of traditionally marginalized populations.

Baseline Assessment Approach, Questions.

While these questions are not entirely definitive, the process to review and finalize the baseline assessment question will be participatory and consultative, informed by key findings from STREAM II Endline and previous assessments as well as discussions to leverage insights and contributions by the Project team with technical guidance from the consultant(s).

The following are some of the proposed guiding questions to be explored by the study:

General Questions:

In response to the above general questions, the baseline assessment is expected to explore further key performance areas and systemic factors in the process of establishing benchmarks.

The following approach will be considered:

Proposed Baseline Approach

STREAM II proposes to establish a baseline for two types of indicators that will be used to establish its success:

The STREAM II baseline process will thus focus on the intervention-level and qualitative market system-level indicators (to be shared as in the finalized Log frame).

Proposed Systems Level Changes and Study Questions

The following table proposes the key system-level areas that the STREAM II baseline seeks to capture baseline information on. The broad questions will inform the systems indicators to be used to assess the contribution of the project during implementation:

Assessment Areas

Key Question

Household food security and livelihoods

Production o What is the current state of food production and productivity in the target Greater Mundri counties?

o Within the selected value chains (cassava, sorghum, maize and groundnuts) and market systems in the region, what are the key constraints to their productivity and production?

Livelihoods:

o What is the current status of the livelihoods for SHF and especially women led HH in the target Mundri counties?

o What is the role of improved, more efficient and productive agricultural inputs and output markets in their livelihoods?

o What are the current levels of poverty and vulnerability at HH level?

o What are the key characteristics that differentiate the wealth groups within each county?

Climate Resilience

o How are non-farm enterprises and small holder farmers and communities in the target counties adapting to climate change?

o What are the current and anticipated impacts of climate variability on agricultural production and livelihoods?

o What is the existing climate-resilient practices and strategies that could be leveraged or scaled up through the project?

Market actor relationships

Cooperation and Trust:

o What formal and informal rules and expectations between producers and other market actors affect the flow of information, financing, and commercial exchange of goods and services?

o How do market actors cooperate and compete?

Strength and quality of networks:

o What is the quality and breadth of commercial relationships existing both within target market systems and with related supporting systems (e.g., finance)? o How are these relationships evolving in terms of increased formality, or increased quantity or quality of provision of goods and services (e.g., information, credit, insurance)?

Private Sector engagement:

o What is the level of engagement of the private sector in the selected value chains in the target counties of implementation?

o What are the existing private sector initiatives and investments in the sector?

o What are the challenges and opportunities for private sector engagement in enhancing selected value chains productivity and market competitiveness?

Business practices

o What kinds of changes—organizational, marketing, process, or product innovations—are market actors making to their business models, if any?

o What is the pace at which changes are being made?

o Are businesses offering new products (or services) to customers? If yes, what? o Have businesses changed the way they produce any of their products? If yes, how?

o Have businesses changed any of their business processes or the way they do business? If yes, how?)

Enabling environment

o What is stakeholder perception of the enforcement of formal and informal rules in the selected counties?

o What is the current policy environment for selected value chains production and trade in the selected counties?

o What are the existing policies and regulations that impact production and trade of the selected value chains? How do they impact the project anticipated outcomes?

o What are the challenges and opportunities for policy reforms to enhance productivity and market competitiveness for the selected value chains?

Inclusion

o To what extent is the existing market inclusive of women and youth and adopting practices that better enable their inclusion across the selected counties?

o What is the role of women and youth in the selected sector value chains in the targeted counties?

o What is the gender and youth-specific challenges and opportunities in the sector?

o What is the gender and youth-specific opportunities for improving productivity and livelihoods in the selected value chains?

Proposed Intervention-Level Indicators

The following table outlines the key intervention-level indicators that STREAM II baseline will capture baseline information on. These indicators are may be improved and may change during the baseline study.

***NB -These indicators are not exhaustive and will be refined to ensure comprehensive assessment of intervention results areas as well as market system changes during the baseline process.

Indicator Source