Background
To feed its growing population amid climate change and other challenges, the developing world needs a flourishing food system that is nutrition-sensitive, efficient, safe, healthy, and environmentally sustainable. This requires bringing modern technologies to local communities, helping stakeholders to acquire the relevant technical know-how, and building strong partnerships and institutions. Developed countries around the world can play important roles in these efforts and Japan is one of them. We explore how Japan can lend its expertise to address food and nutrition challenges in the developing world by examining the transferability of Japanโs advanced technologies, know-how and institutional innovations to the developing world.
International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), under the financial support through the Japanese Governmentโs FY2024 Supplementary Budget, implements the project โEmpowering women to sustainably increase incomes and improve welfare through innovations: Intervention in shea butter value chains in underdeveloped areas of Ghanaโ.
We introduce bundled innovations to improve efficiency as well as augment value added at womenโs cooperatives engaged in shea collection in disadvantaged areas of Ghana. The technological arm of our intervention has three components: (a) tricycle truck, (b) de-husking machine and (c) others such as personal protective equipment and drying mats (hygiene improvement) to boost the productivity of shea collection, reduce loss, improve time allocation, and increase value added. The components (a) and (b) are a time-saving technological change, which makes more time available for other activities. All the above empower women engaged in the shea butter production and create positive impacts not only in the shea butter production, but also to other productive and household activities such as farming activities and human capital investments in children. The institutional (socioeconomic) arm of the intervention aims to improve the incentive structure of the cooperative to utilize the technological innovations, introduced through the technological arm of our intervention, in an efficient and effective manner. This can be called incentive design intervention.
Three rounds of data collection are planned to assess the impacts of the above intervention targeted to 30 womenโs cooperatives: baseline in April 2025, follow up 1 in September 2025 and follow up 2 in February 2026. The shea butter intervention will be introduced during the sea season, May to August 2025, which will be assessed in follow up 1. The off-season intervention, that utilizes the above technological innovations, especially (a) starts around September, which will be assessed in follow up 2.
The project decides the optimal number of treatment womenโs cooperatives (out of the randomly selected 30 intervention cooperatives) and that of control cooperatives. Both groups are covered in the surveys.
IFPRI is seeking a qualified consultant or survey team to prepare and conduct these surveys, as well as provide support for the training intervention, between March 15, 2025 and March 14, 2026. The consultant will assist the IFPRI team in listing respondents for the baseline survey, and lead the pretesting of the survey questionnaire, translating of the questionnaire from English to local languages, programing of CAPI questionnaire, training of enumerators on the survey questionnaire and the data collection for both baseline and 2 follow-up surveys. The survey consultant also assists securing necessary approval from the local IRB in Ghana. The survey consultant will also facilitate IFPRI team for training implementation. The position is based in northern Ghana.
Scope of work
Facilitate the acquisition of IRB approval
Pretest, review and translate the baseline and follow-up survey questionnaires
Convert paper questionnaires to CAPI questionnaire
Conduct listing of respondents
Conduct training on the survey questionnaires for survey supervisors and enumerators
Conduct baseline and follow-up survey interviews, data quality check and data cleaning
Required qualifications of the consultant / survey team leader
Demonstrated experience conducting field work and survey work in Ghana within the past 5 years
Demonstrated experience conducting survey-related trainings
Excellent interviewing, investigation, and probing skills
Experience in building trust and good relations with interviewees and communities
Excellent communication and interpersonal skills
Experience in working with Ghana IRB institutions
Proficiency in English and Swahili
Preferred qualifications
Demonstrated experience in coordinating activities in the field
Demonstrated experience in effective interaction and coordination with collaborators and project partners
Experience in agriculture, rural development, nutrition, and/or food security field
Experience with data entry and CAPI software packages
Proficiency in additional local languages in northern Ghana, other than English
Requirements in the application
Cover letter and company profile
Technical proposal with a detailed budget
Application Deadline: February 19, 2025