Short-Term International Consultant to Improve and Consolidate Programme level Decision Logframe and Six Local Councils’ Logframes.

Job Description

“Support to Civil Society and Local Authorities for local development in Sierra Leone” Project

Project describtion: The project aims at contributing to the country’s long-term stability, equitable growth, poverty reduction, democratisation, and the rule of law, and to fostering an integrated local development approach by strengthening the capacities of relevant actors involved with a view to achieving integrated and gender sensitive development strategies and initiatives.

Description of the Assignment

The assignment entails a thorough review of the Financing Agreement of the project and grant contracts of the district councils by the consultant for an in-depth understanding of the description of the Project and district councils’ Actions, especially the intervention logic and the logical framework (Logframe) for guidance in determining appropriate thematic areas of research. A critical district contextual examination, data collection and analysis of accurate baseline information/data related to Outcomes, Outputs/Results Areas and Activities in the Councils’ prioritised sectors of Agriculture, Social Protection, WASH, Infrastructure Energy and COVID-19 among others are central to the survey deliverables.

It is also expected that the consultant will, in collaboration with two individual national consultants, and through visits to institutions and communities engage relevant stakeholders in the districts and obtain accurate and crucial information/data needed to inform the research findings and establish the baseline conditions as related to each Council’s Action. The data/information should meet the quality of being objectively used to measure the project progress/results/changes in each District Council. In executing the assignment, the chosen consultant is expected to collaborate with two national consultants to be recruited and involve designated officials of the Councils so as to impart expert knowledge and the chosen methodology to such officials. In addition, the assignment will involve data collection, analysis, drafting and dissemination of findings to council officials for their validation prior to submission of a final report on validated findings to the Programme Management Unit.

The Consultant shall report to the Team Leader at the PMU through the Human Development Expert and will work closely with two recruited individual national consultants and Chief Administrators in the districts.

Core Tasks

Working in collaboration with the PMU, Two (2) National Consultants, Chief Administrators of the councils and any other designated officials, the consultant will:

• Examine and improve/fine-tune/ update the programme decision level logframe particularly related indicators, and align same to the programme priorities/focus areas/sectors as contained in the council’s Contracts/Actions;
• Analyse logframes of the six councils to identify and organise indicators including on COVID-19 and other cross-cutting issues that can be consolidated and easily/objectively tracked/measured to reflect programme induced changes under district councils’ prioritised sectors such as agriculture, infrastructure, WASH, social protection, rural energy among others. This will be done among others, by collating and quality assuring inputs from two recruited national consultants;
• Propose improvement in district councils’ indictors and providing baseline values under appropriate priority sectors and the coherence and measurability of such sectoral indicators in feeding into/ reinforcing the programme decision level logframe.
• Examine indicators of CSOs implementing EU grants in the councils and identify how they are aligned with the decision level logframe;;
• Work in collaboration with the EUD and PMU to propose relevant issues that can be adjusted in the councils’ logframes’
• Propose a framework for collecting and consolidating data from CSOs’ and Councils’ Actions

Working days - 40

Qualifications and skills

The consultant must possess the following background and experiences:

• Seven (7) years’ working experience with a focus on development evaluation and in particular undertaking research;
• Experience of conducting baseline surveys;
• Excellent understanding and experience of the current environment of local governance in Sierra Leone or in other developing countries;
• Excellent verbal and written communication and presentation skills.

Application Process

Interested candidates must submit:
• a cover letter
• expression of interest including detailed methodology
• all-inclusive costs and budget
• two samples of previous relevant work