IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, promotes sustainable private sector investment in developing countries as a way to reduce poverty and improve peoples lives. In addition to its investment work, IFC executes a major donor-funded program of private sector advisory services (AS) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region over 20 countries through country offices coordinated by its Cairo regional office, and four business lines: Financial Markets, Sustainable Business Advisory(SBA), Investment Climate, and Public-Private Partnerships.

Under SBA, IFC manages a set of solutions for farmer and SME Management capacity building (FaST): Business Edge and SME Toolkit. The products were designed specially to enhance the performance and competitiveness of MSMEs (micro, small, medium enterprises) and is used increasingly to strengthen employability of youth.

Business Edge (BE)is IFCs international range of practical class room based management training products adapted to the local business context, delivered by a network of local franchised training providers (TP) and certified trainers. Since 2002, over 140,000 individuals have been trained in Asia, Africa, MENA, Latin America. In MENA, BE is in Afghanistan, Egypt, Yemen, Pakistan, West Bank Gaza; soon (re)activated in Iraq and Jordan and introduced in North Africa. 54,655 individuals (21% women) were trained since 2004, reaching 3,247 unique SMEs.

SME Toolkit (TK) is IFCs platform leveraging the latest information and communication technologies to provide, with global partners and through a network of local distributors, SMEs with on-line, CD-rom and mobile phone access to business management information, interactive tools, and educational resources. The SME Toolkit is available in 32 markets in 18 languages, and attracts 5 million unique visitors per year. In MENA, it is currently available in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and soon Jordan and Gulf Countries - attracting over 591,737 visitors through the respective sites.

BE in MENA needs to adapt to a rapidly changing environment and overcome key challenges: booming demand in some countries versus slow off take in others, emerging segments to serve (e.g. farmers, youth, women in business, clients of financial institutions), a network of accredited training providers constrained by the current delivery models and capacities, and an increased focus on scale, job creation etc.

Accordingly, IFC AS MENA is seeking to recruit a local firm to conduct a strategic assessment of BE in MENA, starting on February 15, 2012 and ending on June 30, 2012.

The local firm will work in team with an international firm (for complementary inputs), report directly to the FaST MENA task leader (based in Beirut) and the program manager (based in Cairo). The local firm will work closely with a steering committee: representatives from the FAST Global team (based in Washington DC) leading the global strategy review process, the FAST MENA marketing coordinator, a FAST Manager (based in Pakistan). The local firm will implement significant amount of desk research and consult with BE accredited TP, trainers and master trainers (MT), FAST colleagues from other regions, and relevant key stakeholders involved in SME development/management training (focus groups, one-to-one interviews).