The Eastern African Farmers’ Federation (EAFF) was formed in 2001 as a non-political, nonprofit and democratic organization, whose role is to voice the concerns and interests of farmers of the region to enhance their social-economic status and regional cohesiveness.

EAFF’s establishment was championed by national farmers’ organizations from Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and DR Congo. Membership was subsequently extended to Rwanda, Burundi, Eritrea, Djibouti, Ethiopia and South Sudan. EAFF membership is now composed of 23 farmer organizations serving about 20 million farmers. EAFF is one of the IFAD funded investment projects in East Africa and will benefit directly from the outcomes, results and best practices that will be generated and disseminated in this project.

EAFF secured grant funding from IFAD to implement a youth project dubbed “scaling up rural youth access to inclusive financial services for entrepreneurship and employment’. This project is being implemented in 4 countries i.e. Kenya, Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda.

The overall goal of this project is to enhance the current process of raising capital for poor rural youth enterprises (start-up/existing/scale-ups) by mitigating financial institutions risks, increasing interactions with industry experts, acquiring new knowledge and sharing success stories. One in four businesses generally fail before their second year, and half do not survive beyond the fifth year; a situation experienced by many youth-led agri-enterprises in Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda. This is a growing concern in a countries which has very young population coupled with a high youth unemployment rate. Economically viable agribusinesses could help to address this challenge; thriving youth-led agribusinesses are vital for job creation, make agri-enterprises attractive to the youth and hence could contribute towards alleviating youth unemployment.

Many youth agri-enterprises are confronted with a web of complex challenges that impede their growth, profitability and sustainability. The COVID-19 situation is further aggravating the situation of businesses and thus inhibiting them from reaching their full potential. EAFF has seen the rise of pandemic created trade barriers that inhibit movement of goods or services within the country and across borders. EAFF therefore would like to develop an online market place where youth in agriculture can learn and interact with each other.

• More than 1.3 billion people worldwide live in poverty – nearly three-fourths of them in rural areas.
• Virtually all depend directly or indirectly on agriculture for their livelihoods.
• Many are farmers or pastoralists, while others eke out a living from forestry or fishing.
• Today more than 80 low income developing countries suffer from chronic food deficits and about 800 million people live in hunger (FAO,2000). By 2025, the world's population may exceed 8 billion and food needs in developing countries may nearly double. To the extent that extra raw food and other raw materials can be produced competitively by small farmers within food deficit countries, this has the triple benefit of increasing supplies, reducing rural poverty and improving household food security. If unmatched by increases in food production mounting demand for food will raise prices and aggravate food insecurity worldwide while swelling the ranks of the hungry.
• EAFF is among other organizations involved in a youth project for youth in Agribusiness.
• One of the findings from the project is that many youth in order to be successful agriprenuers, will need more practical agricultural information. This type of information is hard for them to get. EAFF has started to develop a website http://www.youth.eaffu.org/ to provide youth agribusiness with news, information and agribusiness opportunities. In this era of developed communications and computer technologies, the overall use of information in business performance has become de-facto standard. Competitive advantages depend on good decision making, which in turn based on availability of pertinent information. Practical organization of information provision may reduce a number of obstacles which impede access to needed business information.

1. Facilitate trade through knowledge management: Availability of practical information on input and output markets for agribusiness production or value addition e.g. access to certified input suppliers, tractor services, standards and technical guidelines among others.
2. Capacity building through targeted online/physical learning: the platform seeks to ignite thought processes on how to do something through value addition and subsequent creation of cottage industries, this will be done through demand driven trainings as well as linkages to mentors and agribusiness incubators.
3. Strategic linkages through networking: AYA seeks to provide a safe space where youth agrienterprises can network with financial service providers and mentors. EAFF is looking for concept developer who can help us in developing such a space where youth in agribusiness can interact learn and grow their enterprises to the next level.

• Conduct needs assessment on youth on feasibility of access and use of an online market place dedicated to youth agriprenuers
• Development of website market place: logo, front and backend sections. To be discussed with EAFF on how this will work
• Training of staff to populate the market place and use it effectively
• Sustainability plan for the AYA market place.

• Regional consultancy firms/networks of agribusinesses to apply for this consultancy opportunity
• The consultant needs to show proof of work to develop successful agribusiness market places.
• The consultant should be willing to share more information on improving the market place than it is defined in the scope of work to ensure success of the project.
• Detailed scope of work indicating both technical implementation of the assignment
• Detailed financial proposal to support the technical implementation of the project.

• This assignment will run for 6 months from 29th June –30th December 2020

• General Experience: Firm has been in existence for 10 years 10

• Experience in development of online market places 15
• Experience in data modelling and content development Experience in setting up agricultural or similar online market places for input and output markets 40
• Knowledge on block chain management 15