Request for Proposal (RFP) and Terms of References (TOR)
Survey Companies to Conduct Baseline and Endline Surveys for Impact Evaluation of the Somoud (Thabaat) Project in Sudan
1. BACKGROUND
Sudan is facing an acute food security crisis, with more than half of the population experiencing severe food insecurity amid ongoing conflict and economic instability. The Somoud (Thabaat) project is designed to address these challenges by enhancing community resilience through improved access to food and essential services. By addressing the urgent need for sustainable food systems in Sudan, Thabaat contributes to both immediate humanitarian needs and long-term development objectives. The project is designed to strengthen basic service delivery and improve food security in targeted communities across Sudan. WFP Sudan leads the project component focusing on improving food security, with IFPRI providing research support in the form of robust impact evaluations. This component of the Thabaat project has three major activities aiming to: (i) support farmer cooperatives and associated farmers with access to inputs (e.g., fertilizers, seeds, or technical training; (ii) support SMEs in the supported value chains by offering matching grants; and (iii) support consumer cooperatives. Specifically, IFPRI aims to evaluate the impact of the project on beneficiaries.
2. Objectives
IFPRI, on behalf of WFP is planning impact evaluation surveys in 2025 and 2026; comprising baseline, and endline surveys. The surveys will collect data from farmers and farmer coperatives as well as SMEs with the primary objective of tracking changes in selected indicators including that of crop productivity, market access and marketability of agricultural products, food security, dietary diversity, and others. Below are some details about the nature of the surveys:
i. Type of the survey โ Panel survey that will have 2 rounds.
ii. Survey coverage โ geographic: As currently envisaged, the survey will cover three states Kassala, Northern and River Nile.
iii. Survey coverage โ economic: The surveys are expected to cover farmers (about 2000), farmer cooperatives (about 70) and SMEs (about 60).
iv. Survey elements: The surveys consists farmers surveys (quantitative) and community surveys for farmer cooperatives and SMEs.
v. Sample size: The tentative survey design for the core farmers survey specifies that a sample of about 2000 farmers are selected in each of the three state. These 2000 farmers are likely to come from about 70 farmer cooperatives. The farmer questionnaire will take about an hour while the farmer cooperatives and SMEs surveys will take 15-20 minutes.
vi. Survey data collection method: The baseline and endline surveys should be collected using in-person Computer-Assisted Personal Interviews (CAPI).
vii. Timeline: The baseline survey should be collected as soon as possible while the endline survey is going to be collected in 2026.
IFPRI would like to contract an experienced data collection/survey company that will coordinate and implement the Impact Evaluation Surveys as per the description and timeline below:
3. Overall Approach
The company will review the description of the survey and develop an implementation plan for the field work and identify the required personnel (CAPI experts, survey programming experts, field supervisors, enumerators, and other field and office staff). In conjunction with IFPRI, the company will develop a survey guideline document that describes the following:
1. Organization of field operations;
2. Protocols for conducting a field test of the questionnaires, revisions of the questionnaires, translation into Arabic;
3. Procedures for complete listing of farmers, contacting selected farmers, conducting interviews, and recording answers;
4. Procedures for establishing ID code numbers for farmers;
5. Procedures for programming and coding survey on Survey CTO/ODK;
6. Procedures for implementing the surveys and monitoring survey implementation
4. Specific Tasks
i. Listing of farmers, farmers associations, and providing unique IDs for farmers;
ii. Review survey design, and survey instruments (including farmers and community questionnaires), and all relevant protocols;
iii. Translate survey questionnaires into Arabic and prepare corresponding survey manuals in Arabic;
iv. Program household and farmer cooperatives survey/questionnaires onto CAPI
v. Recruit enumerators, supervisors and quality controllers and train them on the questionnaires.
vi. Print survey documents for training field staff including survey supervisors and enumerators;
vii. In-person training of field staff including survey supervisors and enumerators with support from IFPRI;
viii. Acquire security clearances from authorities to conduct enumerator training, and data collection in the three states;
ix. Conduct the survey enumeration including farmers complete listing, farmer sample selection, and data collection and quality assurance as per the design provided by IFPRI;
x. Design data cleaning protocols and implement those endorsed by IFPRI at field-level in parallel with the data collection;
xi. Design and implement data retrieval protocols for transferring data to from the field to its head office and IFPRI-Sudan in parallel with the data collection;
xii. Handover the complete dataset both in the data collection program format, excel and Stata.
xiii. Attend regular meetings (weekly or biweekly) with research team.
5. Timeframe
The baseline survey should be collected as soon as possible while the endline survey is going to be collected in 2026.
6. PROPOSAL
With this announcement, interested companies are requested to submit a technical and financial proposal to be considered by IFPRI. Proposals should be submitted by July 13, 2025, virtually at the following address: IFPRI-Sudan@cgiar.org. The submission should include:
ยท Technical proposal