Tenders are invited for Consultancy for Development of User Requirements, Specifications, and Implementation Guidelines for Information Sharing Platform Closing Date: 22 Jan 2025 Type: Consultancy The Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASALs) region of Northern Kenya is a vast and heterogeneous region, characterized by extremes of poverty and climate change related risks. With limited investment from the Kenyan government compared to high potential agricultural areas, the ASALs face significant environmental and socio-economic challenges, exacerbated by high rates of insecurity and conflict, poor infrastructure, low Human Development Index (HDI) numbers, thin markets, and a generally weak enabling environment. Crippling gender norms and patriarchal social systems and patterns of inheritance limit the influence of women, youth, and other disadvantaged groups in accessing and controlling resources such as land and livestock, and limit their decision-making power in community affairs.The region is further defined and bounded by its complexity: ethnic divisions, clannism, cultural differences, shifting political affiliations, religious extremism, herd and pastoral mobility, influx of groups from neighbouring counties and countries, arms proliferation, and high levels of conflict driven by compound combinations of the above all invest the landscape with added complexity at every turn. Climate change is having an outsize impact on the region, and climate projections indicate that the region may become hotter and drier in coming decades. In recent years, weather variability has seen increase in frequency of extreme weather events such as drought and flooding has risen significantly, enabling the spread of water and vector-borne diseases, loss of forests and wetland ecosystems, land degradation and desertification, and driving scarcity of potable water. These recurring climate-related shocks and stresses trigger humanitarian crises, threatening resilience and livelihoods of the local populations. Trends of increased urbanization, sedentarisation and land use changes across the region have contributed to the loss of traditional livelihoods and social structures. Continued high birth rate across the region have resulted in a population bulge of young people, leading to an increased demand for food and driving additional loss of land, from a pastoral perspective, for food production; instead of a demographic dividend, the regions inability to absorb the extra population growth is turning it into a demographic burden. In order to enhance resilience and adaptation by local communities to these extreme events, in the counties of Marsabit, Isiolo and Samburu, Mercy Corps and its consortium partners, Frontier Counties Development Council (FCDC) and Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation of the University of Twente (ITC), present Resilient Approaches in Natural ranGeland Ecosystems (RANGE), a 5 year, 15 million euro programme with the aim of strengthening communities to improve sustainable economic and social development in a well-managed landscape in the three ASAL counties of Marsabit, Isiolo and Samburu. RANGE is designed to reach an approximate total figure of 569,019 (Direct and Indirect beneficiaries) small-scale pastoralists and agro-pastoralists, male and female, through producer associations, community structures, women and youth groups, as well as government stakeholders, private sector actors and development partners. RANGE proposes an integrated package of activities and interventions that will: strengthen rangeland management and encourage regenerative practices, ensuring migratory and sedentary livelihoods can peacefully co-exist; improve herd management and market access for small-scale producers; strengthen the institutions and policy frameworks that govern the livestock sector, and prioritize the development of robust spatio-temporal data sets to strengthen outcomes and help mitigate the impact of climate change and prevent further land and rangeland degradation. RANGE programme is built on the premise that transformative, inclusive growth in the livestock sector requires a commitment to a systems strengthening approach that will address root causes of disfunction and encourages local capacity building and partnerships. Our approach is integrated and holistic, operating at a landscape level to capture people, animals, and information flows across an interconnected ecosystem, and relies on extensive collaboration and coordination with a wide array of partnerships. Activities are designed to reinforce key resilience capacities at the community, ward, and county levels, including access to productive assets and information; rangeland resilience; womens empowerment; financial and social capital, and social behavior change. RANGE will back all interventions with a focus on quality data, and support resilience of the interventions goals with a Programme Modifier to respond to unexpected shocks and stresses and ensure continuation of programme activities. The regional economic bloc Frontier Counties Development Council (FCDC) represents the 10 ASAL counties and is a leader in championing devolution within the region, promoting cooperation, coordination, and information flows between counties and with the national government. FCDC has extensive experience working closely with governance structures within the livestock sector, Natural Resources Management (NRM) including water, land, range, and other socio-economic, environmental fields. FCDC seeks to tap into its experience in the region and with the support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of Netherlands (EKN) through the RANGE programme to develop and strengthen information collection, storage and sharing platform in the Programme counties and build on the learning to expand to the rest of FCDC counties. The strategy aims at strengthening the information storage and sharing across the sectors for future use and reference in decision making in the region. 2. Task purpose The RANGE programme document under outcome 3 envisages development and use of a Web-based knowledge and data repository platform. This is further reinforced by the need to develop a robust data repository supporting county stakeholders to be able to capture and store critical information for access and decision. The information sharing platform will serve as a tool to foster a culture of information sharing among the various actors and provide a unified platform for sharing and accessing county through information outputs including scientific among other emerging study areas. The platform will also ensure that all information collected is archived and is ease of searching and finding online, easily accessible from a central repository to facilitate evidence-based decision making and practice. There is a wealth of accumulated knowledge among the ASALs development actors, which needs to be consolidated and made available under the central repository or clearing house. The platform seeks to address the non-storage of accumulated knowledge, this knowledge is hard to access for practitioners and County staff, making it difficult to learn from existing successes and failures related to the effective management of natural resources, climate change adaptation among other thematic fields.The information sharing platform will provide the necessary infrastructure for collection, analysis and consolidation and centralisation of the existing vast volumes of data and information, for fast and authenticated access by partners and practitioners for enhanced collaboration, communication and learning. The availability of the central repository calls for collective efforts in consolidating the data cross all sectors, stakeholders while respecting the established data sharing protocols both at national and county levels. Though preliminary needs assessment reports for the counties of Marsabit, Isiolo and Samburu are available, the consultancy firm or consultatn in consultation with the RANGE programme Manager and the Monitoring and Evaluation Officer will assess the adequacy of these reports. They will identify any gaps and incorporate the findings into the stakeholder engagement plan to address the identified needs. 2.1 Overall objective Develop and sustainably manage an information collection, storage and sharing platform in the FCDC counties starting with the programme counties of Marsabit, Samburu and Isiolo and thereafter expand to the rest of FCDC counties. 2.1.1 Specific objectives Development of a Knowledge Management, Information Storage and Sharing (KMISS) system. The following specific objectives will be guiding the process; Mapping and understanding different stakeholders and associated information needs to inform the platform scope Enhance the capacities of FCDC and consortium partners, national and county levels teams to be able to manage and sustain the KM&ISS functions. Develop the KM&ISS software facilitating the information collection, storage and sharing Operationalize the repository in the counties of Marsabit, Samburu and Isiolo counites and thereafter expand to the other 7 FCDC counties. 2.2 Assignment Scope The consultancy firm or consultant is expected to actively engage the FCDC CEO, RANGE team ( Programme Manager and the M&E Officer who is the focal point) on the execution and delivery of the repository. The rest of the consortium partners of Mercy Corps and ITC will also be engaged. Other stakeholders (national and County levels) will also be engaged at different stages of the project to understand the available information on diverse thematic fields of sustainable development, Disaster risk reduction, Climate change, socio-economic and other thematic areas information flow, needs and gaps among National and County stakeholders. The target stakeholders for the proposed platform goes beyond the above mentioned but the consultant is Tender Link : https://reliefweb.int/job/4125357/consultancy-development-user-requirements-specifications-and-implementation-guidelines-information-sharing-platform
