Call for Consultancy: Data Management, Protocol, and Verification of Applicants

20 March, 2025

RUF / SRVS- CONS/2024 – 2025 /002

Background

The Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) is a network of 175 universities from 40 African countries. RUFORUM envisions vibrant, transformative universities catalyzing sustainable, inclusive agricultural development to feed and create prosperity for Africa. RUFORUM’s mission is to strengthen the capacities of universities to foster innovations responsive to demands of small-holder farmers through the training of high-quality researchers, the output of impact-oriented research and the maintenance of collaborative working relations among researchers, farmers, national agricultural research institutions and governments. RUFORUM operates guided by three strategic objectives; (1) Building synergy from networks of specialization to develop quality human resources and capacity required to intensify and increase Africa’s agricultural productivity and competitiveness; (2) Ensuring the products, processes and knowledge developed through university research directly respond to and are used by value chain actors in the agri-food system to catalyse transformation; and, (3) Marshalling resources and strategically allocating them to enable African universities to transform into viable institutional entities responsive to national aspirations and conditions through intensive knowledge-sharing and collective action.

RUFORUM is currently implementing the Transforming African Agricultural Universities to Meaningfully Contribute to Africa’s Growth and Development (TAGDev 2.0) program partnering with a consortium of 12 Universities from 10 countries as well as with the Global Confederation of Higher Education Associations for Agricultural and Life Sciences (GCHERA) as its technical partner. The TAGDev 2.0 program seeks to strengthen universities and TVET institutions to better serve communities by skilling and empowering Africa’s young people and their institutions to drive inclusive, equitable and climate resilient transformation of agriculture and agrifood systems. This goal will contribute to three strategic outcomes: (1) Expanded equal work opportunities for young women and men in the agricultural sector; (2) Improved climate adaptive agricultural production and productivity and; (3) Strengthened quality of higher agricultural education outcomes in training, research and innovation. The TAGDev 2.0 program will be providing scholarships. As part of transparent recruitment process, RUFORUM is required to develop a transparent and cohesive selection protocol to identify right profile students, and to ensure that all applicants have a fair and equal chance of being selected. The selection protocol developed last year will be revised and adapted to take in consideration a higher number of applications and students to be selected.

Purpose and tasks of the assignment

RUFORUM seeks the services of a consultant with capacity to perform large data sets analytics to guide the recruitment and placement teams to complete the selection process by reviewing, verifying and performing technical analysis to shortlist possible applicants for scholarship award.

Assignment tasks:

Clean, harmonize, and finalize applicant datasets.
Revise shortlisting criteria and tools based on the application dataset.
Revise the household verification instruments.
Shortlist candidates for initial household validation surveys.
Support the household validation process.
Clean and review the household validation data to map suitable candidates for universities.
Finalize the shortlisted candidates using data from the validation process.
Present data to RUFORUM staff and attend the awards meeting by the Technical Committee.
Provide a summary report providing learnings and outcomes of the selection procedure, including a final report with recommendations for future candidate selection.
Develop a manuscript for submission to Internationally Peer Reviewed Journal.

Deliverables

Cleaned application data and university admissions lists.
Revised shortlisting criteria and tools.
Revised household verification instruments.
Shortlist of candidates for initial household validation.
Cleaned and reviewed household validation data.
Final shortlist of candidates for university intake.
Summary report of the final selection process and recommendations.

Assignment time period

The assignment will be executed over three (3) months, from April to June, 2025 working closely with RUFORUM staff to develop a verification tool for applicant household information and a selection protocol to guide the identification of awardees.

Required expertise and qualifications

At least a Master’s in agricultural economics, statistics, with expertise in econometric analysis. A PhD will be an added advantage.
Evidence of publication history with published papers in internationally peer reviewed journals in SCORPUS.
Minimum of five years of relevant experience in developing poverty and economic vulnerability assessment methodologies, and econometric modeling.
Familiarity with innovative higher education student recruitment and selection processes.
Proficiency in statistical analysis software (R, Stata, SPSS, Microsoft Excel).
Availability to work with RUFORUM Secretariat within the stipulated timeline and with minimum supervision.

Duration and professional fees

Negotiable.

Application submission

You are required to submit your applications through secretariat@ruforum.org not later than 31^st March 2025 at 5:00 pm EAT.