African smallholder farmers are among the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change while supplying up to 80% of produce for sub- Saharan Africa’s food markets. If no adaptation action is taken, yields of cereal crops could decline by 5-25% over the next decades in the region. Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) provides ways to build farmers’ resilience and adapt to climate change, while sustainably increasing productivity and incomes. However, the financing needed to help them adapt and build resilience is largely missing.

One critical source of climate finance is the Green Climate Fund (GCF). GCF aims to deliver a 50:50 balance between mitigation and adaptation allocations in its portfolio. However, as of October 2021, only 38% of committed funding supports adaptation projects. GCF also aims to significantly increase funding channeled through national and regional accredited entities. Yet, most of GCF funding or 80% is being channeled through international accredited entities. With regards to GCF adaptation portfolio, it is concentrated within a handful of accredited entities and that over 80% of all committed finance for adaptation projects will go to international accredited entities. This is due partly to national and regional entities’ capacity, experience, and network limitations in originating and implementing adaptation projects.

The Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) with the support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation aims to support NARES institutions on their accreditation application which includes improving their capacity to take on executing role; facilitating the consolidation of climate data and CSA knowledge and sharing amongst NARES to support their proposal development in the long-term. With this consultancy, the GGGI aims to support CORAF through its GCF Direct accreditation process as well as supporting selected Researchers on an upcoming climate smart agriculture knowledge report.

Based in Dakar, Senegal, CORAF is the Council for Agricultural Research and Development for West and Central Africa. CORAF’s mission is to improve livelihoods in West and Central Africa through sustainable increases in agricultural production and productivity as well as promoting competitiveness and markets.

CORAF has just undergone an accreditation gap assessment of its fiduciary, environmental and social safeguards (ESS) and gender policies against GCF standards. From this assessment, an action plan was developed to align these policies to GCF standards and enable the CORAF to achieve GCF Direct Access Entity Accreditation. Consequently, the action plan proposed a clear roadmap for the GCF accreditation application. For this, GGGI is looking for an individual consultant to support CORAF towards its accreditation process.

The objective of the consultancy is to assist CORAF towards its GCF accreditation application, by performing the following activities:

• Support CORAF towards its GCF accreditation process
• Provide capacity building to implement selected activities from the CORAF’s GCF Gap assessment actions plan.
• Train CORAF on use of the GCF Digital Accreditation Platform (DAP)
• Enhance CORAF staff capacity to write climate finance resources proposals.

• This is a time-based consulting position that will provide expert climate finance capacity building services to support CORAF access to climate finance including its GCF accreditation application process.
• The consultant will be required to provide technical training to the client to enhance the probability of getting access to the GCF.
• This consulting assignment would require the outlined deliverables (below) across and within 8 months (approx. 60 days of work)from the starting date of the assignment. The “Scope of Work” section outlines the list of deliverables for this consulting assignment.
• The consultant is required to interact closely with relevant project members and stakeholders on a regular basis, primarily GGGI Africa Regional Office.
• A non-disclosure agreement of the data and information obtained and reviewed during this assignment may be required. All data, information, decisions, and discussions held within the scope of this assignment and within GGGI offices are confidential.

The Consultant will provide support to build CORAF’s overall climate finance access institutional capacity including in climate change project development. He or She is expecting to perform the following key activities:

• Gather and organize relevant documentation for application and draft initial processes.
• Support the preparation and submission of the GCF accreditation application.
• Train and conduct GCF Digital Accreditation Platform (DAP) handling.
• Support of Digital Accreditation Platform (DAP) to upload documentation, complete and submit the application.
• Support CORAF to address comments from the GCF accreditation review panel.
• Deliverable: CORAF GCF application is submitted (25 days).
• Coordinate the overall workshops:
• The consultant will conduct at least 3 capacity buildings with CORAF as part of this assignment including the initial workshop scheduled for March 2023.
• The training content is to be designed by GGGI in accordance with CORAF GCF Gap assessment actions plan and with inputs from the Consultant.
• Deliverable: effective training with final memo report including the training of no more than 10 pages of each training workshop in a management presentation in PowerPoint including summary report training and lessons learned (15 days). 

• Strengthen CORAF climate finance concept note writing:
  • Conduct training on climate finance proposal writing (GCF template, etc).
  • Support CORAF in finalizing at least one selected climate finance writing proposal in a form of a concept note ready for submission.
  • Support CORAF regarding the editing of the upcoming co-joint knowledge report with GGGI
  • 20 days.

• Provide a final memo report on the overall consultancy of no more than 20 pages of the training and lessons learned from the process. 

The consultant will be paid upon delivery of the following deliverables:

• The Consultant shall submit the Final Report which should reflect the outcome of all activities prepared by the consultant. The report should also give recommendations for further activities to be carried out in order to secure a long-term sustainable development of the measure.
• All relevant technical papers, reports, and other documents prepared from the start to the end of the assignment shall be attached to the Final Report.
• The Consultant shall submit the report in both hard copies and electronic versions readable by a Microsoft Office application.
• All outputs must be in English. In addition, the Consultant may be required to submit the outputs in other languages. 
• Final report must be approved by the GGGI with the agreement of the CORAF. The Consultant shall consider the comments and necessary revisions proposed. Within 14 days from the receipt of the comments or modification proposal from the GGGI, the Consultant shall prepare and submit the final versions of the report. 

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