Consultant, Community Resilience

Consultancy Service for co-creation and Proposal Development of a community resilience programme within the Lake Chad Basin region, to scale up response efforts bridging humanitarian relief to recovery to community resilience and peacebuilding in face of disasters, food insecurity crises and climate change.

Background

The humanitarian crisis in the Lake Chad Basin (LCB) continues to be severe, with more than 11 million people requiring wide-ranging life-saving assistance, protection, and resilience-building interventions. The Lake Chad region is one of the world’s most protracted conflict and crisis environments. Despite some positive developments, high levels of violence continue to have a devastating impact on millions of people in Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria. Conflict and climate change continue to fuel large-scale human suffering in north-east Nigeria and parts of Niger, Chad and Cameroon. Some 5.6 million people are expected to be severely food insecure during the 2022 lean season – the highest figure in four years. Furthermore, 3.0 million people are internally displaced (IDPs), including 2 million in Nigeria alone. Instability and armed violence in the Lake Chad Basin have disrupted the population’s lives, making displaced people (refugees and IDPs) and local communities vulnerable to a range of protection risks. Over 5.3 million people have been forced to flee within or outside their countries.

Climate change and extreme weather events are increasingly causing vulnerable families to fall into crisis. Heavy rains and floods in late 2022, have significantly affected the Lake Chad Basin causing loss of human life, property, farmlands, and livestock, affecting 866,000 people, killing over 250 and displacing 214,000. Some 122,000 houses and over 131,000 hectares of agricultural farmland were damaged or destroyed. Many affected regions already struggled with high food insecurity, malnutrition, instability, and violence.

The LCB is a highly complex protracted crisis context where Humanitarian, Development, Peace and Stabilisation efforts should complement each other in areas such as local development, community resilience building, social cohesion, community engagement and accountability (CEA), Protection, Gender and Inclusion (PGI).

The National Red Cross Red Societies are present throughout the Lake Chad Basin in each of the five countries; Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, Central Africa Republic and Chad as auxiliary to their governments. The IFRC has presence of its delegations in 4 countries (Cameroon, CAR, Niger, and Nigeria). The Red Cross’s ongoing humanitarian activities, the extensive network of local volunteers, branches and unique mandate and capabilities to serve hard-to-reach communities provide a unique comparative advantage for Building Community Resilience to Disasters and Climate Change in Lake Chad Basin.

Organizational Context

In dialogue with the Lake Chad Basin Commission, the IFRC and its member National Red Cross Societies, are looking to jointly develop community resilience programme within the region, to scale up response efforts bridging humanitarian relief to recovery to community resilience and peacebuilding in face of disasters, food insecurity crises and climate change.

The programme is envisaged to significantly contribute to the humanitarian response plans, the Lake Chad Basin Commission Regional Strategy for the Stabilisation, Recovery and Resilience and Strategic Action’s Plan. Programming design will also benefit from integration with the IFRC’s existing humanitarian response activities and Pan African Key Initiatives and the joint AU-IFRC Food and Nutrition Resilience Programme (FNRP), which seeks to enhance food security of the most vulnerable people through investment in sustainable agricultural practices, water management, health and nutrition, and by strengthening economic potential of small-scale food producers and their communities. Close collaboration between National Governments and Red Cross/Red Crescent National Societies; will support tailored analysis and programme design with national needs and aligned with the broader regional objectives of this initiative.

Purpose of the consultancy

In close collaboration with the Lake Chad Basin Commission, national governments, RCRC national societies and other stakeholders, IFRC is seeking to:

• Update regional context analysis and stakeholder mapping.
• Develop framework with programme options for consultation.
• Support consultation and dialogue, through interviews and workshops with Government, Lake Chad Basin, RCRC movement partners
• Develop multi-country/regional multi-year community resilience programme, aligned to Lake Chad Basin Commission Regional Strategy for the Stabilisation, Recovery and Resilience; humanitarian response plans; National Society and IFRC strategic plans and the joint AU-IFRC Food and Nutrition Resilience Programme (FNRP).
• Conduct joint donor mapping and consultations.

Tasks

• Review of relevant background documentation and materials, including:
  • Lake Chad Basin Commission Regional Strategy for the Stabilisation, Recovery and Resilience.
  • Lake Chad Basin Strategic Action’s Plan
  • Humanitarian response plans
  • National Society plans expressed through the unified planning process and Regional IRFR strategies and Pan African Initiatives
  • AU-IFRC Food and Nutrition Resilience Programme (FNRP),
  • Relevant programmes developed by NS and partners NS in the region.
  • Relevant programmes developed by LCBC in the region,
  • Secondary data and analysis of needs in the region
  • Key programmes and plans by external stakeholders in the region
• In-depth analysis of contextual challenges and opportunities related to system priorities i.e. problem space analysis using the systems approach
• Development of templates for stakeholder inputs to context analysis and stakeholder mapping
• Structured consultations with National Societies, Government, and relevant partners
• Frequent liaison with project steering committee, drawn from Lake Chad Basin Commission, National Government line ministries, National Societies, IFRC and other partners.
• Written report(s) of context analysis, stakeholder mapping and framework for programming options.
• Supporting IFRC, NS and Lake Chad Basin Commission stakeholder workshop(s) at national/regional level
• Consolidation of inputs into a coherent programme proposal following steering committee’s guidance.
• Ensure proposal, budget and annexes align with the identified plans and priorities are internally approved and submitted in an appropriate format and to the highest possible quality in time for the deadline.

Deliverables

• National and regional consultations
• Context analysis report
• Stakeholder maps
• Framework for programming options.
• Materials to support IFRC, NS and Lake Chad Basin Commission stakeholder co-creation workshop(s) at national/regional level
• First draft of the multi-country/regional multi-year community resilience programme, aligned to Lake Chad Basin Commission Regional Strategy for the Stabilisation, Recovery and Resilience; humanitarian response plans; National Society and IFRC strategic plans and the joint AU-IFRC Food and Nutrition Resilience Programme (FNRP), with annexes and budget submitted to the steering committee by 45-50 days after starting of consultancy
• Following feedback from the steering committee, revise the draft multi-country/regional multi-year community resilience programme with annexes, and budget and draft of the proposal with the French Red Cross targeting the French Government for support to the Sahel part of the Global Route Based Migration Programme, annexes and budget submitted to the steering committee by (date TBA) 2024

Timeframe

The consultancy will be for up to 60 days, to be delivered between October 2024 and January 2025 or until final submission is completed, if earlier.

Qualification of the Consultant

• Demonstrated a minimum of 10 years’ experience and success in working on Major Donors application (ECHO, DB, Governments…)
• Programmatic design experience and technical knowledge about community resilience, last/first mile populations, livelihoods and humanitarian-peace-development nexus.
• Candidates will be asked to show proof of working in complementarity with both communities and systems actors at various level and of the integration of scalability and sustainability considerations into the design of innovative or new solutions.
• Familiar with IFRC, Africa context and migration/resilience operations
• Strong experience in problem space analysis using systems approach for programme design at scale
• Proficient in spoken and written English and French.