Introduction
AGRA invites qualified Individual consultants to submit proposals for a Consultancy for the development of a multi-country, multi-crop value chain simulation and economic pricing analytics platform with integrated advanced GIS capabilities. This document outlines the requirements and guidelines for the submission of proposals.
Background and Rationale
AGRA is a proudly African-led institution focused on scaling agricultural innovations that help smallholder farmers towards increased incomes, better livelihoods, and improved food security. We understand that African farmers need uniquely African solutions to the environmental and agricultural challenges they face, enabling them to sustainably boost production and gain access to rapidly growing agricultural markets. In short, AGRA’s mission is to transform the lives of smallholder farmers from that of a solitary struggle for survival to a business that thrives.
Since 2006, we have worked with our partners, governments, non-governmental organizations, private sector businesses, and more; to deliver a set of proven solutions to smallholder farmers and indigenous African agricultural enterprises. We put smallholder farmers first on the agenda, recognizing that no country has moved from low income to middle income without agricultural transformation.
AGRA seeks to develop a comprehensive analytical platform capable of simulating multi-crop value chains, evaluating the economic performance of fresh and processed products, and generating risk-adjusted pricing insights that can guide policy formulation and investment decisions.
The consultancy will design and build a robust, modular decision-support application that integrates diverse data sources and applies advanced simulation and economic modeling techniques. The platform will incorporate key analytical parameters relevant to agricultural markets, including competition levels, export dynamics, demand variability, shipping and logistics reliability, cost structures, and processing efficiency. It will also generate geospatial outputs such as mapped production zones with cascading regional selections, spatial comparisons of profitability and production costs, and GIS-based overlays that support district-level and regional economic analysis. In addition, the system will compute estimated net profits, production costs, optimal and floor prices, and comparative profit margins across fresh and processed product pathways.
The initial implementation will be developed and tested using Tanzanian data to validate model performance and user experience in a real-world context. Following successful piloting, the platform will be adapted and rolled out to other AGRA focus countries to ensure a standardized, scalable, and comparable approach to value chain analytics across the continent. Throughout the assignment, the consultant will collaborate closely with AGRA’s technical and country teams to refine the platform, incorporate live datasets, establish a flexible analytical architecture, and prepare the system for multi-country deployment and long-term sustainability.
Objectives of the Consultancy
The consultancy aims to deliver a fully operational, production-grade analytical and intelligence platform designed to evaluate multi-crop value chains and support strategic, evidence-based decision-making across AGRA focus countries. The consultant will be responsible for designing a robust and scalable system architecture, developing advanced simulation and economic pricing engines, integrating diverse and complex datasets, implementing intuitive user interfaces, and ensuring the platform can be seamlessly deployed in multiple country contexts.
The overarching objective is to build a decision-support tool that enables users to simulate production outcomes under various assumptions, estimate net economic returns, and rigorously compare the profitability of fresh versus processed commodity pathways across different regions and export markets. Central to this objective is the development of an enhanced pricing and economic modeling module capable of generating optimal and risk-adjusted floor prices derived from historical data, simulated time series, quality and grade classifications, volatility indicators, and country-specific market characteristics.
In addition to these analytical functions, the platform must incorporate comprehensive multi- source data ingestion capabilities that can handle APIs, local files (Excel files, STATA and SPSS formats), SQL databases, and direct user inputs. The consultant will ensure that all incoming datasets are harmonized, validated, and transformed into structured, analysis-ready formats. Outputs must be presented through dynamic, user-friendly visualizations including dashboards, parameter panels, comparative charts, GIS layers, and spatial maps that highlight production zones, regional cost differences, and profitability patterns at sub-regional and district levels.
Following the core development phase, the system will be piloted in Tanzania to test functionality, refine analytical workflows, validate results, and integrate feedback from AGRA teams, government stakeholders, and private-sector partners. Insights from this pilot will guide the adaptation and scaling of the platform to additional AGRA priority countries, ensuring consistent methodologies, cross-country comparability, and long-term applicability across diverse agricultural environments.
Scope of Work
The consultancy will commence with a comprehensive inception phase during which the consultant will review conceptual framework, prototype, examine all available datasets, assess user needs, and understand institutional workflows and analytical expectations. This phase will result in a refined methodological roadmap, a validated list of crops and value-chain pathways for the Tanzania pilot, parameters and list of variables to be included in datasets, and a detailed implementation plan describing sequencing, dependencies, timelines, and resource requirements.
Following inception, the consultant will commence system development phase, which involves designing a modular, extensible architecture capable of supporting multi-source data ingestion, advanced simulation, economic modeling, visualization, and multi-country deployment. A central task will be constructing a configurable data ingestion layer to integrate inputs from APIs, Excel and CSV files, STATA (.dta) and SPSS (.sav) datasets, relational SQL databases, geospatial files, and direct user inputs. This ingestion framework must include standardized validation rules, transformation and harmonization logic, metadata handling, audit trails, storage protocols, and user interfaces for reviewing, approving, flagging, and updating datasets.
The consultant will develop a flexible and reusable analytics engine that builds upon AGRA’s prototype and supports multi-crop simulations. This engine will incorporate stochastic and deterministic modeling approaches to estimate production outcomes, losses, competition intensity, demand rates, shipping and logistics reliability, processing yields, export-route dynamics, and other parameters influencing profitability. The system must compute detailed revenue and cost structures, simulate net margins under multiple assumptions, and provide sensitivity diagnostics, confidence intervals, and scenario-based comparisons. The engine must also support regional and district-level analysis through integration of geospatial boundary files and produce spatial layers for mapping production zones, cost variations, and profitability differences.
A major component of the assignment is the development of an advanced pricing and economic modeling module capable of producing optimal and risk-adjusted floor prices for both fresh and processed commodities at subregion to national levels. The module must incorporate historical time series, simulated price distributions, volatility measures, grade and quality adjustments, destination-specific market characteristics, and risk parameters. It should enable rigorous comparison of profitability between fresh export and processed product pathways across multiple markets. The module will produce annotated visualizations of price trends, price distributions, and recommended floor price thresholds, and it must integrate seamlessly with the simulation engine results.
The consultant will design and implement a complete user interface aligned with AGRA’s branding standards and usability principles. The interface should provide intuitive navigation across simulation tools, pricing modules, dashboard, geospatial maps, scenario creation panels, results summaries, and data review pages. It must support cascading geographic selections, multi-crop configuration, export route selection, comparative analysis features, and clear visual explanations suitable for both technical and non-technical users. The system should be responsive and optimized for use on desktop, laptop, and tablet devices.
Throughout development, rigorous quality assurance will be essential. The consultant will conduct unit tests, regression tests, integration tests, performance and load testing, and security reviews. User acceptance testing will be carried out with AGRA’s technical teams and selected government stakeholders in Tanzania, and all issues identified must be resolved prior to deployment. The consultant will deploy the system for the Tanzania pilot phase in close coordination with AGRA’s country and technical teams, ensuring smooth configuration, data onboarding, and user onboarding.
The consultancy will conclude with extensive documentation and capacity-building activities. The consultant will prepare comprehensive technical documentation covering system architecture, data schemas, API specifications, configuration steps, and deployment procedures. User manuals, training guides, and configuration instructions for scaling to additional countries will also be developed. The consultant will deliver structured training sessions to AGRA staff and selected government partners, focusing on system usage, interpretation of outputs, data management workflows, and configuration of additional crops or geographies. Lessons learned from the Tanzania rollout will be synthesized into operational guidelines for expanding the platform across AGRA’s focus countries, ensuring consistent methodologies and scalable implementation.
Duration
The consultancy must be completed within a maximum of six (6) months from the commencement date. All stages of development, including inception, system architecture, data integration, simulation and economic modeling, interface development, testing, deployment, training, and handover must fall within this six-month window. The consultant will be responsible for planning activities, allocating personnel, and scheduling milestones to ensure the timely delivery of all components. A detailed schedule will be finalized during the inception phase.
Reporting, Communication
Required Competencies and Experience
AGRA reserves the right to modify these Terms of Reference based on mutual consultations. All proposals will be evaluated based on technical merit and cost-effectiveness.
Deadline: March 4, 2026
