INTRODUCTION

Background

The Government of Ethiopia recognizes the critical role played by Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs) in creating job opportunities especially for young people and women, as well as for boosting national income and wealth that is important in igniting industrial transformation and private sector development. This is also well articulated in the second Growth and Transformation Plan, which prioritizes and identifies the development of micro and small businesses as catalyst for promoting industrial development.

As Ethiopia aspires to reach middle-income status by 2025, the country is investing heavily in building and operationalizing Industrial Parks (IPs) with the expectation that IPs will help drive structural transformation and export-led economic growth. While IPs are expected to create highly productive and decent jobs for its young population, the processes are not automatic for acquisition of industrial skills and create viable jobs in a relatively short time. Number of new jobs in IPs fluctuates heavily (from 700 a month to 4,000 a month) depending on demand, supply and attrition rate. 

With the labor force expanding by two million each year, direct job creation within factories will not be enough. Thus, equally important to direct employment creation is the potential to develop Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs) and create jobs for hundreds of thousands of youth engaged in them. This has been the priority of the government and has shown slight success in creating the MSEs but not necessarily in sustaining them. Lack of necessary infrastructure, access to finance and skills are some of the critical constraints hampering the growth of MSEs.

The overall objective of this assignment is to increase employment through providing exceedingly tailored training and demand driven Business Development Support to unemployed nascent youth, university graduates, higher education & TVET students, micro and small enterprises (MSEs) owners and operators.

ABOUT THE BRIDGES PROGRAMME

BRIDGES is a job creation programme funded by the Mastercard Foundation and implemented by First Consult PLC and DAI Europe. It envisages supporting the creation of close to 600,000 jobs for the youth (80% women) and 15,000 MSMEs, with 300,000 unemployed youth trained through supporting IP job creation initiative and market linkage between IPs and MSMEs.

The BRIDGES Programme will address two fundamental, immediate and complementary challenges to unlock the potential for job creation within IPs and their surrounding ecosystem. (1) Making the industrial workforce markets work, which through the Enterprise Partners Programme, First Consult/DAI have successfully piloted in a few industrial parks and is now ripe for scale-up. (2) Making the IP business linkages (MSME) markets work to enhance domestic manufacturing value-added (MVA) for every given dollar of export. This will be done by substituting the currently-heavy import-dependent operations – itself a constraint on the factories - via local suppliers (MSMEs) in a number of ways.

Labour market: BRIDGES will scale-up proven and successful worker recruitment and retention interventions to additional industrial parks (to be selected in consultation with GoE and other development partners) increasing the total number of IPs that BRIDGES works with to ten. The worker recruitment intervention helps provide platform for factories and workers to create smoother linkage which will help address the quantitative and information mismatch problems in workers recruitment. Once in employment, factories will be supported to provide soft skills training as a key element of induction and managing job expectations. The training modules will use a standardized soft skills curriculum aimed at addressing the “Soft” elements of the transition that stems from workers moving from a village-based, family/community-based and agrarian life to an alien environment in the industrial, individualistic living of an urban setting.

MSMEs market: BRIDGES will work with MSMEs to enable them tap into major market opportunities around 10 major IPs and Anchor Enterprises outside IPs. The work will involve a major information, coordination, capacity development and access to finance initiatives to be undertaken in partnership with key IP, AE and MSME stakeholders at various levels including Demand (IP markets), Supply (MSMEs), Linkage (information, transaction and payment platforms) and Ecosystem (macro and other meso level actors).

The key departure from prior MSME development efforts will be to leverage the demand side to be more than just a passive or reactive customer at the end of the process and to facilitate the linkage at the beginning in a demand-driven way. BRIDGES’ facilitation will enable to bring the AEs, MSMEs and necessary public and private stakeholders together and de-risking the initial rounds of technical assistance and business linkage transactions. In order to ensure the marketability of the various types of BDS delivery as well as outreach, BRIDGES is proposing to create a win-win Public Private Partnership (PPP).

Access to finance: this applies to both direct workers within parks as well as MSMEs that BRIDGES will be working with. Access to finance will be facilitated through SME finance programmes, private equity funds, advisory services, as well as availing grant facility through a crowdsourcing platform. BRIDGES will also facilitate innovative and progressive (pre)payment & risk reduction mechanisms from the customers (factories, workers, government) based on MSME performance and track record (credit scoring via the data from the e-commerce payment platform).

OBJECTIVE

The main objectives of this assignment are:

To recruit and enroll topnotch university graduates in intensive and exceedingly tailored training programme in technical skills, knowledge and work ethics for eventual placement in various organizations;

To provide entrepreneurial training and Business Development Services (BDS) to University and TVET students to enable them to see self-employment as a more viable option;

Recruit, train and coach unemployed nascent young entrepreneurs who have foundational idea of establishing business to enable them to look to self-employment as a more practical alternative; and  

Provide entrepreneurial skills trainings and BDS to Existing MSE owners and operators to enable them run their enterprises competitively, grow and increase their employment creation potential.

SCOPE OF WORK

The Service Provider firm is expected to bring its international/national experience, judgment and best industry knowledge to complete the following tasks and activities:

SOW I. Recruit and enroll topnotch University graduates in intensive and exceedingly tailored training programme in technical skills, knowledge and work ethics for eventual placement in various organizations

Recruit first-rate graduates from selected universities in the country (private and public);

Define and analyze the labor market in terms of human resource requirement with helpful insights;

Provide intensive and tailored trainings in technical skills, knowledge and work ethics; skills development and young graduate support services that address both the professional and personal aspects;

Provide real-time experience of work environments through days-long internships and shadowing; and

Arrange job fairs and ensure eventual placement in various credible organizations;

SOW II. Provide entrepreneurial training and Business Development Services (BDS) to University and TVET students

Profile and recruit aspiring students from universities and TVET;

Provide entrepreneurial skills training and demand based BDS to the registered students;

Support the trained and coached students to produce feasible/bankable business plans;

Support the graduates to start their own MSEs as an individual or group; and

Connect the MSEs with partner financial institutes for access to finance.

SOW III. Identify and train unemployed nascent young entrepreneurs and support establishment of new MSEs

Profile and recruit aspiring unemployed nascent young entrepreneurs;

Provide entrepreneurial skills training and demand based BDS to the recruited youth;

Support the trained and coached youth to produce feasible/bankable business plans;

Support them to start their own MSEs as an individual or group; and

Connect the MSEs with partner financial institutes for access to finance.

 SOW IV.  Support existing MSEs to grow

Identify core characteristics of MSEs with high job creation results and provide necessary support to improve their production and marketing value chains, operational and financial performance to increase their employing/hiring capacity;

Identify the binding constraints MSEs face in starting-up, expanding their business and accessing credit from banks and MFIs and provide necessary support to ease the constraints;

Provide appropriate and continuous support to growth oriented MSEs to accelerate their transformation into SMEs.

APPROCH AND METHODOLOGY

·         Identify and recruit unemployed young people (50% women);

·         Design trainings and business development support fit for the specific target groups (eg. women, literate, illiterate, etc.);

·         Identify small and growing MSEs and their constraints and get them onboard for the support services.

1.       DELIVERABLES AND TIMEFRAME

Deliverables

·         Inception report due at the end of the first week. The inception report should include:

Methodology

The type of training and business development supports to be provided

Staffing and management

Work plan: detailed timeline of activities and meetings

Outline of the table of content for operational manual

Deliverables (how many dignified and fulfilling jobs created)

Risks

Provide training and BDS to the target groups

Place all trained mentored graduates in companies/organizations  they fit in

Identify and support number of established MSEs that need assistance to expand the existing enterprise or sees additional opportunities in creating an entirely new enterprise

Support establishment of number of start ups

Timeframe

The assignment is expected to start in March 2020 and take a total of one year to complete the tasks.

This assignment is open for firms to undertake within the allotted time. The assignment can be divided between firms depending on their specialization (eg. a firm can apply for one or more activities out of the four areas of assignments listed under Section 3 - scope of work)

 WORKING ARRANGEMENTS

 The Consultants will work closely with the Enterprise Development Bridge Team of the BRIDGES programme and will report to the Enterprise Development Bridge Team Lead. 

EXPERTISE REQUIRED

 Understanding of the MSME sector;

Experience in providing training and BDS;

Experience and familiarity with challenges facing MSME’s growth potential;

Excellent analytical, technical and conceptual knowledge about management and grasp of business management principles and practices;

Experience in MSME support design and provision;

Ability to provide the required services will be assessed through submission of:

Company profile, if applicable, with relevance to required work.

References on previous similar assignments.