KUNGAHARA: Resilient Systems for Food and Nutrition

Terms of Reference for a Consultancy to Conduct the final evaluation

1. Background 

 Founded in 1945 with the creation of the CARE Package®, CARE is a leading humanitarian organization fighting global poverty. CARE places special focus on working alongside women and girls. Equipped with the proper resources, women and girls have the power to lift whole families and entire communities out of poverty.

CARE Austria, together with CARE International in Rwanda (CARE Rwanda), in partnership with DUHARANIRE AMAJYAMBERE Y’ICYARO (DUHAMIC-ADRI) are implementing KUNGAHARA: Resilient Systems for Food and Nutrition action, running between 1st January 2024 and 31st December 2026, funded by the European Union and co-funded by the Austrian Development Agency (ADA) in Rulindo, Gakenke and Gicumbi districts. The project’s aimed at strengthening equitable, nutrition-sensitive agricultural value chains (supply side) and improving nutrition practices and demand for diverse foods (demand side), smallholder farmers and vulnerable households will achieve improved food and nutrition security and resilience. KUNGAHARA overall objective is to strengthen resilient food systems and nutrition security in Rwanda. The action has 2 outcomes.

Outcome 1: Equitable, sustainable, inclusive, productive and nutrition sensitive agricultural value chains in Gicumbi, Rulindo and Gakenke districts are strengthened; 

Outcome 2: The consumption of diverse and nutrient rich foods by vulnerable households, in particular women and children, in Gicumbi, Rulindo and Gakenke district is increased.

The project targets smallholder farmers and uses a holistic set of interventions to enhance food systems in a sustainable manner, equipping women and youth farmers ‘groups and cooperatives within the selected environment and nutrition-sensitive value chains with the skills, connections, and support to improve production and access to markets, and as a result, nutritious food availability and increase in its consumption.

The project’s target groups include:

• 31,000 Smallholder farmers
• 90 Farmer Promoters 
• 150 Nutrition Champions 60 Market actors
• 825 Members of local authorities and nutrition-related stakeholders

As the project reaches completion, an independent final evaluation will be conducted to assess achievements, results, sustainability, and lessons learned inline with EU/ OECD-DAC criteria

3. Objective of final evaluation

The primary purpose of this final evaluation is accountability and learning. . Specifically, the objectives of this assignment are to:

• Assess Kungahara progress in achieving its intended objectives and provide relevant stakeholders with an independent assessment of the project’s results and performance.
• Analyze the implementation strategies and how they helped achieve intended objectivestaking into external context and adaptations made.
• Document andanalyzechallenges, unintended consequences and best practices in project implementation

Generate practical lessons and recommendations to inform the design of future food systems and nutrition programming in Rwanda and similar contexts.

4. Evaluation Questions

The final evaluations seek to answer the following questions in line with the EU/OECD-DAC evaluation criteria:

Relevance

• To what extent did the project design and interventions address the needs, priorities, and vulnerabilities of smallholder farmers, women, youth, and vulnerable households in the target districts?
• How well did the project design address the key constraints affecting agricultural productivity, market access, income generation, and nutrition outcomes? 
•  How, and how well, did the project adapt its design and activities to evolving context, risks and opportunities (e.g. climate shocks, market changes, policy shifts, social norms) in the three districts?

Coherence

• To what extent was the project aligned and coordinated with relevant Government of Rwanda policies, strategies, and District Development Plans 
• To what extent did collaboration with government institutions, private sector actors, and other stakeholders enhance the achievement of project results?

Effectiveness

• To what extent did the project achieve its intended outcomes related to strengthening agricultural production and market participation (supply side)? 
• To what extent did the project achieve its intended outcomes related to improved nutrition practices, dietary diversity, and consumption of nutritious foods (demand side)?
• How effective were the main approaches and tools used by the project in achieving the above results?
• What key internal and external factors (e.g. capacity of partners, local institutions, participation of women and youth, market dynamics, climate events, social norms) enabled or constrained achievement of the expected outcomes and outputs?

Efficiency

• To what extent were financial, human, and technical resources used efficiently to achieve the project's intended results? 
• How efficient were the chosen implementation modalities (e.g. working through existing farmers’ groups and CHWs, use of community-based facilitators, digital data collection, use of CSC and SAA) in reaching the target numbers and quality of services, relative to alternative approaches?

Impact

• What evidence exists that the project contributed to improved livelihoods, income, and resilience among smallholder farmers and vulnerable households? 
• To what extent has the project contributed to longer-term changes in agricultural productivity, food security, nutrition, local governance and accountability for nutrition, and economic opportunities for beneficiaries, as well as gender relations and women’s economic empowerment? 
• Were there any significant unintended positive or negative effects of the project (on markets, workloads, social norms, inclusion/exclusion of specific groups, environment, etc.)? How did the project respond to these?

Sustainability

• To what extent are the benefits generated by the project, including agribusiness clusters, market linkages, and nutrition practices, likely to be sustained after project completion? 
•  What institutional, financial, social, environmental, and political factors promote or threaten the sustainability of the project's outcomes? 
• What factors are likely to support or hinder the sustainability and scaling of project achievements beyond EU and ADA funding?

Cross cutting issues 

Across all Evaluation Questions, the evaluation will assess the extent to which the project integrated and contributed to; Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment in line with the EU Gender Action Plan III (GAP III); Environmental sustainability, climate change adaptation, and climate resilience; Human Rights-Based Approach (HRBA), including participation, accountability, inclusion, non-discrimination, and empowerment. The evaluation will assess; 

•  What specific lessons can be drawn regarding integration of gender equality, Human Rights Based Approach (HRBA), inclusion, and environmental/climate considerations into food systems and nutrition programming
• To what extent did the project promote gender equality and women’s empowerment, apply a Human Rights-Based Approach (HRBA), ensure inclusion of young people and persons with disabilities, and contribute to environmental sustainability and climate resilience?

4. Methodology

The final evaluation will use a mixed-methods approach including:

• Desk review. CARE will provide the consultant with all relevant project documentation, including the logframe, Theory of Change, baseline study report and datasets, annual reports, monitoring data, and any previous assessments
• Quantitative tools. The consultant/firm will conduct a quantitative survey at household level and is expected to use electronic tools to collect data. 
• Qualitative tools. Participatory qualitative exercises such as Focus Group Discussions and Key Informant Interviews (KII), which will be required to fully capture knowledge, attitudes, and practices towards equitable, sustainable, inclusive, productive and nutrition sensitive agricultural value chains. All qualitative data will be fully transcribed and translated. The consultant is expected to carry out KIIs with stakeholders at both national and local level. 

The methodology should be participatory, ensuring the meaningful involvement of key stakeholders (including women, youth, and persons with disabilities) in data collection and interpretation, while safeguarding participants’ safety and confidentiality.

5. Data analysis

The assessment shall triangulate results and interpret them before formulating (a) findings, (b) conclusions, and (c) programmatic recommendations, each of which should show how they relate to each other. Data analysis must ensure it provides demographics of population sampled, disaggregated where required and give statistical relationships where sample sizes and data quality permit (i.e., tests of significance, predictive analyses, etc.) between variables where applicable. The consultant(s) is expected to share an objective data analysis plan, considering data quality, coding, and analysis procedures (both qualitative and quantitative).

6. Ethical approaches & Data disclosure

The approach to the final evaluation must consider the safety of participants at all stages of the survey. The bidder will need to demonstrate how they have considered Prevention of Sexual Harassment, Exploitation, and Abuse (PSHEA); through the different data collection stages, including recruitment and training of research staff, data collection and data analysis and report writing. Bidders are required to set out their approach to ensuring complete compliance with international good practice with regards to research ethics and protocols. The consultant must show how they will comply with the Rwanda data privacy and protection law.

Data disclosure

• CARE requires that the datasets that are compiled or used in the process of external evaluation are submitted to CARE when the evaluation is completed. 
• Data must be disaggregated by gender, age, disability and other relevant diversity, in line with the project’s Theory of Change.
• Datasets must be anonymized with all identifying information removed. Everyone or household should be assigned a unique identifier. Datasets which have been anonymized will be accompanied by a password protected identifier key document to ensure that we are able to return to households or individuals for follow up. Stakeholders with access to this document will be limited and defined in collaboration with CARE during evaluation inception. 
• In the case of textual variables, textual datasets or transcripts please ensure that the data is suitable for dissemination with no de-anonymizing information unless these are case studies designed for external communication and suitable permission has been granted from the person who provided the data. In these circumstances, please submit, with the case study, a record of the permission granted, for example a release form.
• Where there are multiple datasets (for example both tabular and textual datasets) identifiers must be consistent to ensure that cases can be traced across data lines and forms.
• CARE must be provided with a final template of any surveys, interview guides, or other materials used during data collection. Questions within surveys should be assigned numbers and these should be consistent with variable labelling within final datasets.
• Formats for transcripts (for example: summary; notes and quotes; or full transcript) should be defined in collaboration between CARE and the external evaluator at the evaluation inception
• In the case of tabular datasets, variable names and variable labels should be clear and indicative of the data that sits under them. Additionally, the labelling convention must be internally consistent, and a full codebook/data dictionary must be provided. 
• All temporary or dummy variables created for the purposes of analysis must be removed from the dataset before submission. All output files including calculations, and formular used in analysis will be provided along with any Syntax developed for the purposes of cleaning.
• We require that datasets are submitted in one of our acceptable format types.
• CARE must be informed of and approve the intended format to be delivered at evaluation inception phase. Should this need to be altered during the project CARE will be notified and approval will be needed for the new format. 

7. Expected Tasks and roles

7.1. Responsibility of the consultant/firm

The consultant(s) will be responsible for setting up procedures and guidelines to:

• Develop and present an inception report and tools to CARE team for inputs and feedback. 
• Finalize and submit the final inception report.
• Train enumerators for the data collection exercise. One component of the data collection training should include procedures on safely managing disclosure of any safeguarding issues/cases of safeguarding. 
• Conduct data collection including pretesting of tools in the 3 districts covered by the project.
• Provide the itinerary plan of the data collection 
• Ensure that datasets are clean, complete, and consistent. 
• Analyze data and write final evaluation survey report. CARE will provide report template to be used in line with CARE evaluation policy
• The consultant/firm will be liable to secure any prior visa or approvals that might be required to conduct the survey.
• The consultant shall be liable for ethical procedures including obtaining informed consent from respondents.
• All documents and data collected will be treated as confidential and used solely to facilitate analysis. 
• The production of the final evaluation survey report will be the responsibility of the consultant, covering all the aspects as outlined in this ToR.
• All training and logistics costs for the enumerators, including transport and data collection materials before or during data collection will be covered by the consultant including logistical support for participants to participant in the evaluation. Logistical support for participants might include transport to access interview venues 

7.2. Responsibility of CARE 

• Assume all the responsibilities pertaining to the consultant hiring process.
• Ensure that all necessary documentation is availed of the consultant.
• Facilitate initial connections with the consultant with different stakeholders. 
• Overall data quality control and technical review report
• Provide any other technical or operational support to the consultant as needed, for example review of the questionnaires and participate in the selection and training of enumerators.
• Inception report review. 
• Approved draft and final report.

8. Supervision

The Task Manager for this work will be the Quality Assurance Specialist. The Consultant is also expected to liaise closely at the design stage and subsequently with other key personnel in CARE.

9. Expectations and Deliverables 

The consultant (s) is expected to provide the following:

1. Inception report including:

• Research methodology including the sampling methodology, and the analysis framework 
• The Inception Report must include an Evaluation Matrix linking each Evaluation Question (EQ) to specific judgment criteria, quantitative/qualitative indicators (including log frame indicators), data sources, and data collection tools. 
• Draft data collection tools and protocols
• Data analysis plan
• Detailed work plan outlining all tasks to be completed by each of the members of the consultant team for the duration of the final evaluation.
• Ethical approach, quality control plan, limitations to the study design and mitigation strategies, enumerator training plan,

2. Upload data collection tools Kobo collect or any other online data collection platform and share with CARE for approval before commencement of actual fieldwork.

3. A complete set of raw and clean datasets, including complete codebooks for quantitative files generated and analyzed for the report. For the qualitative data, this includes the audio recording files, original transcripts, and translated transcripts summaries. 

4. SPSS / Stata syntax and output files reflecting the analysis conducted.

5. Draft and final report (format to be provided by CARE). The consultant will submit two rounds of reports for review and comments, before submitting the report as final. For this purpose, the consultant will convene a validation meeting of final evaluation results and documentation of the validation (prepare and make a power-point presentation) and meeting notes with questions raised. CARE will share the format for reporting.

6. The consultants will submit a complete final editable (MS Word) soft copy of the report in English after incorporating comments and feedback from the validation meeting. The final report must strictly follow this logical structure:

• Findings: Factual statements based on triangulated data, answering the Evaluation Questions.
• Conclusions: Evaluative judgments derived directly and logically from the findings.
• Recommendations: Actionable, prioritized, and targeted recommendations (clearly identifying who should do what) derived directly from the conclusions. Recommendations must not introduce new topics not covered in the findings

7. Updated Performance Monitoring and Evaluation, Accountability and Learning framework (MEAL)framework with all the final evaluation value for the indicators 

10. Evaluation Timelines

The evaluation will take place between October and November 2026 for a maximum of 40 working days. 

11. Professional Skills and Qualifications 

Qualifications: bidders are required to clearly identify and provide Curriculum Vitae (

CVs) for all those proposed in the Evaluation Team, clearly stating their roles and responsibilities for this final evaluation. The lead consultant should have a master’s degree (PhD preferred) demonstrating thematic and/or research qualifications and a minimum of five years of experience in delivering rigorous program evaluations. The consultants’ proposed evaluation team should include the technical expertise and practical experience required to deliver the scope of work and final evaluation outputs with regards to:

• Study design: the team should include skills and expertise required to design, plan and conduct mixed-methods impact evaluation.
• Skills in quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis (including merging datasets), drawing findings from multiple sources and handling potential contradictions between data sets; using justified approaches for analysis of qualitative data.
• Relevant subject matter knowledge and experience: knowledge and experience required on conducting research with Women and youth, the agriculture sector, nutrition, disability, gender equality and social inclusion to ensure that the evaluation design and research methods are as relevant and meaningful as possible given the aims and objectives of the project and the context in which it is being delivered.
• Evaluation management: manage a medium-scale and complex research process from end-to-end including final evaluation studies.
• Primary research: gender-sensitive design, management, and implementation of primary quantitative and qualitative research could include the design of longitudinal household panel surveys, in-depth interviews, focus groups, participatory qualitative exercises with youth, etc.
• Country experience: it is particularly important that the team has the appropriate country knowledge /experience and ability to interpret findings from a contextual perspective, as required to conduct the research.
• Statistical analysis: a range of statistical modelling and analysis of impact data; highly proficient user of: SPSS or STATA; and qualitative data analysis techniques.
• Data management and data cleaning. Ability to supervise the collection, entry (if required), cleaning and management of large data sets. Digital data collection processes are preferred.

12. Proposal Evaluation Criteria

The technical and financial proposal will be assessed using the below criteria.

13. Application procedures

The application file should contain the following documents:

• A technical proposal, with a clear timeframe and a description of the proposed methodology detailing how the deliverables will be achieved, and the team credentials for similar assignments.
• Detailed Curriculum Vitae of the proposed team to carry out the assignment with clear roles and functions.
• A financial offer detailing the various costs associated with the delivery of the above services, in PDF format and must be a separate document from the technical offer.
• Evidence of the consultant’s experience in doing similar assignments: At least 3 copies of similar assignments (with evidence for good completion of the previous similar assignments);
• Submit at least 3 references with their contacts and addresses. 
• Bank account information including the scanned copy of blank check or document from the bank confirming bank account information (name, account number, swift code, …)
• Consultant firm profile; VAT registration certificate; RRA tax clearance certificate; RSSB tax clearance certificate (when applicable). For applicants without registration in Rwanda, submit the above requirements from the country of registration as applicable. 
• Must be registered as Data processor with Rwanda National Cyber Security Authority (NCSA)

 and provider a certificate. 

Interested consultants or consultancy firms are requested to submit their offers not later July 20th ,2026COB to the following e-mail address: rwa.procurement@care.org, with mention of “Consultancy to conduct a final evaluation for Kungahara project” in the subject line.

Applications that do not meet requirements will not be considered.