Terms of Reference for Rwandan implementation company- Collection of midline data for the Nutrition in City Ecosystems (NICE) Project

Date: 7^th October 2024

Project background

The Nutrition in City Ecosystems (NICE) Project is supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). It focuses on two secondary cities in Rwanda to improve health and nutrition and contribute to reducing poverty for populations of city regions, especially women, youth and vulnerable groups.

Working closely with the Local Authorities in the NICE cities, NICE facilitates strong urban governance structures, involving women and youth, and incentivises improved food systems. The project works to strengthen links between demand for and production and availability of nutritious foods produced using agroecological practices. Further, the city-knowledge hubs ensure horizontal and vertical exchange, thereby shaping urban-rural food environments and informing national and global policies

Objectives of the proposed project

Overall, the project is support urban governments to:

• Increase urban governance strategies and incentivize improvements to local food systems;
• Promote sustainable food production and processing to enhance access and distribution of nutritious food;
• Strengthen supply chains and markets that link local producers with urban consumers in secondary cities;
• Increase the demand for a healthy diet based on diverse and agro-ecologically produced local food by engaging in social marketing campaigns;
• Explore novel solutions to reduce food and food-packaging waste;
• Build nutrition literacy in public institutions (through the health and education system);

Context of this consultancy

The first project phase of NICE runs from May 2021 to June 2025. In April to June 2021 the baseline baseline data was collected, analysed and written up to feed into the logframe (monitoring and evaluation framework). This midline data collection is a follow-up data collection and should be collected January/February 2025 so that analysis and data are ready to be shared towards the end of phase.

Objectives of this consultancy

The objectives of this consultancy are to:

• Prepare a budget to prepare for and lead the data collection in Rusizi and Rubavu
• Support the preparation of the study protocol and preparation of documents and handle the submission process for ethical clearance
• Review the tools (ODK questionnaire and excel sheet) that will be used for data collection (Household Food Insecurity Access Score (HFIAS), Household Dietary Diversity Score (HDDS), Minimum Dietary Diversity for Women (MDD-W), anthropometric measurements, household and socioeconomic information, and questions related to food production and consumer behaviour. Further also secondary data on low birthweight and anemia during pregnancy will be collected).
• Plan and organise the logistics – including to find health workers to collect data from Antenatal clinics as required
• Provide access to tablets and set up data collection on ODK
• Train the data collectors
• Ensure a smooth and timely data collection process during January-February 2025
• Clean the data and submit it to Swiss TPH end of February 2025 for analysis and report writing
• Prepare a short report on the data collection process

Approach/activities of the consultancy

The approach can be summarised as follows:

• Desk work to support adaption of protocol and tools (from baseline versions)
• Contribute to preparation and submission of documents for ethical clearance
• Make the preparations for the data collection logistics and planning
• Manage the timelines and quality assure the data collection process
• Hand-over clean datasets and a data collection process report

Selection Criteria and Duration

Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute – NICE project invites you to show your expressions of interest to perform midline data collection as a follow up data collection collected in April to June 2021.

If your company is interested in working with Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute Rwanda to provide the service for providing consultancy service to perform a baseline for NICE project, we kindly request you to submit an expression of interest outlining the following documents:

Essential criteria

• Business registration certificate issued by RDB
• A valid Rwanda Revenue Tax Clearance
• A valid RSSB clearance certificate
• VAT certificate

Capability criteria

• Company profile
• Three contact details References
• Three goods service completion certificates for similar services completed

Business contact address

• Office address
• Contact Personal
• Email Address
• Phone contact.
• Bank account details (Bank Name, Bank account, Account Number and Swift code)

The assignment will last from October 2024-April 2025.

The documents should be submitted no later than 5:00 pm on 22/10/2024 to this email clementine.tumukunde@swisstph.ch 

Any technical queries should be directed to tanja.barth-jaeggi@swisstph.ch