Consultancy for Water Market Study in Gaza - Palestine

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) is a non-governmental, humanitarian organization with 60 years of experience in helping to create a safer and more dignified life for refugees and internally displaced people. NRC advocates for the rights of displaced populations and offers assistance within the shelter, education, emergency food security, legal assistance, and water, sanitation and hygiene sectors.
The Norwegian Refugee Council has approximately 5000 committed and competent employees involved in projects across four continents. In addition, NRC runs one of the world’s largest standby rosters -NORCAP, with 650 professionals, ready to be deployed on 72 hours notice when a crisis occurs.

Under the guidance of NRC’s Shelter/WASH Programme Manager in Gaza, the consultant will be responsible for conducting a water market study which suitably leads to the development of an informed concept note on how best to address the delivery of safe and desirable water to consumers through non-traditional market driven regulation mechanisms.

Objectives of the Consultancy

• Produce a report providing a detailed understanding of the drinking water market system to shape the intervention design and action, which reflects the complexity of the market, including a visualised market system overview.
• Map the water delivery system and behaviours, incentives, and capacities within the water production value-chains
• Assess consumer behaviour and perceptions (including perception/understanding on consumer’s right to safe water) to determine what drives decisions for the purchase of water. These includes selection of suppliers, price levels, and competitive advantage of existing private desalination plants and water truckers.
• Understand what incentives the population are more inclined to respond to in order to change consumer behaviour for the purchase of water, and explore existing mechanisms and options for consumers to motivate a change of behaviour on the water supply side
• Explore and give recommendations on the feasibility of a smart phone app concept, which links consumers to preferred suppliers including, if feasible, key content, features and USP, and how the app can facilitate changes in behaviour of water market actors (plant owners, vendors, consumers).
•  Produce clear guidance for an intervention action, which addresses the project vision.

Requirements and Skills

• Relevant Master’s degree in business development, economics, public policy, social sciences or other relevant field of study.
• In-depth knowledge and understanding of urban development or public policy in developing countries.
• Demonstrable experience in managing and conducting market surveys and designing quantitative and qualitative data collection; experience in water market studies desirable
• Additional, desirable knowledge includes: knowledge of the water institutional setting in Gaza.
• Exceptional report writing and presentation skills; prior working experience in the Middle East desirable
• Fluency in written English is required
• Excellent team work and communication skills, flexibility and good organisational skills

Additional Information

The market assessment is scheduled to start mid-May with desk research. The Gaza field mission is projected to take place in June/July. The final report submission is due 20^th of August 2018.

How to apply: 

If you are interested, you can access the complete Terms of Reference here. Please upload your technical and financial offer (in English) until 3 May 2018. For questions please contact Mohammed Najjar, mohammed.alnajjar@nrc.no, reference Water Market Study- Gaza.