BACKGROUND

GAIN was launched at the UN in 2002 to tackle the human suffering caused by malnutrition. GAIN is a global, Swiss-based foundation that mobilises public-private partnerships and provides financial and technical support to deliver nutritious foods to those people most at risk of malnutrition. Our programs in Africa and Asia enable better diets via nutritional products, such as fortified staples foods, including cooking oil and flour, and condiments like salt and soy sauce. We also support improved maternal and infant health by promoting breastfeeding and specialised products for infants over six months and young children. In addition, we partner with local businesses to improve the quality of food along agricultural value chains. By building alliances that deliver impact at scale, we believe malnutrition can be eliminated within our lifetimes.

GAIN contribute to fighting malnutrition in Ethiopia through innovative and sustainable models that increase access to affordable nutritious foods among communities vulnerable to malnutrition and is currently implementing a Complementary Feeding project. The project focus on improving access and demand to affordable nutritious foods for children 6-59 months in six towns of Tigray, Oromia and SNNP regions namely, Inda silase, Aksum, Shashemene, Arsi Negele, Aleta Wendo and Dila. GAIN has selected egg and locally produced fortified complementary foods (FCF) for the project, in consultation with government partners.

In order to monitor the availability of egg and FCF for the mothers of children 6-59 months, GAIN has planned to conduct exhaustive survey in the six target towns. This census is a follow up of the previous exhaustive survey on availability, pricing and sales of egg and FCF that was conducted in June 2020 reaching 3,763 retailers (kiosks, shemachoch, minimarket, supermarket, wholesale and gulit).  

OBJECTIVE

The consultant is expected to design and conduct a census to capture egg and FCF availability, price, sales, barriers and busters of availabilities, reaches of activation/sensitization and effectiveness of retailers’ activation/sensitization intervention in the six target areas in two rounds (assuming reach of +/-4000 retailers in each round) and analyse the data against the previous census for the data available in the previous census and separately for the new data. GAIN will provide the recent census report and raw data which includes the detail contact of the surveyed retailers to the selected consultant.

Specific objectives of the assignment are to:

·       Develop the census approach and modify the questionnaire based on the objective and translate the tools into local language  

·       Collect data in all six towns as per the protocol and questionnaire

·       Analyse the findings including against the previous census and develop comprehensive report as per indicated timeline

·       Present the result of the study to GAIN

STUDY AREA:

The data collection will be conducted in the six intervention towns.

METHODOLOGY

The detail methodology will be developed by the consultant. The sampling method will apply a census. 

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE CONSULTANT 

·       Review the previous retailers’ census report and modify the existing questionnaire in line with the objective

·       Recruit qualified data collectors, supervisors and other team members of the task

·       Develop training guide and key reference note for the data collectors, supervisors and other team members of the task and provide formal training

·       Translate the survey instruments into the local languages

·       Co-ordinate the overall data collection activities at the field 

·       Collect the data using tablets which avoid a manual entry of data

·       Clean up the collected data for analysis using Stata (the preference) or SPSS

·       Develop comprehensive report of the study   

·       Develop a PPt presentation and present key results of the study to GAIN

RESPONSIBILITY OF GAIN

·       Provide the previous study report and raw data  

·       Facilitate support letter from respective government sector for the monitoring  

·       Transfer payments of the consultancy work as per agreed preconditions and schedule

CONSULTANT QUALIFICATIONS 

·       Proven capabilities to design and conduct data collection in Ethiopia

·       Proven research capabilities

·       Ability to provide evidence based and strong recommendation based on the research findings

·       Clear and systematic thinking that demonstrates good judgment, expert problem solving, and creativity for innovative recommendations  

·       Strong quantitative & qualitative data assessment skills

·       Experience working in a public/private partnership environment highly desirable

·       Qualified team expertise in researches

·       Ability to assign teams have skills of local language and has knowledge of the local context of each region

·       Ability to deploy multiple qualified teams parallelly and provide deliverable in short timeline