1. Background

The Ethiopian Youth Entrepreneurs Association /EYEA/ is a registered association, as per the Civil Rights Proclamation, that has been registered and accorded legal personality as a local organization by the Organizations of Civil Societies. EYEA was founded to address the challenges facing Young Ethiopian Entrepreneurs in their pursuits, especially in the areas of skills gaps, financial constraints, policy advocacy, networking, information sharing, and bureaucratic bottlenecks. EYEA takes the step to create a favorable youth entrepreneurs’ ecosystem by supporting start-ups and youth-owned businesses. EYEA works to enable the financially disadvantaged youth by supporting start-ups to be involved & take action on socioeconomic challenges in the country and help them overcome challenges/obstacles that they face while setting up, managing, growing, and scaling their businesses. EYEA works to understand, support, empower, advocate, and promote the social, economic, and entrepreneurial interests of its members.

The work of the association has three pillars: capacity building, advocacy, and networking and exposure.

• Capacity Building: EYEA works to build the capacity of its member entrepreneurs. It provides training, business development services, mentorship, coaching, and other activities to this end.

• Advocacy: This is one of the areas EYEA has become successful within a short period of time. EYEA launched a regular monthly policy advocacy and networking platform titled “Zelela” – meaning a bunch in the Amharic language, signifying harmony for a cause. This is a platform that is geared towards creating a favorable business environment and policies supporting youth entrepreneurship in Ethiopia to have access to finance, capacity, and work towards a connected entrepreneurial and startup ecosystem.

• Networking and Exposure: The third pillar is networking and exposure provided for young entrepreneurs who are members of the association. Under this pillar, EYEA works to create networks between members and help entrepreneurs learn from each other as well as create market linkages. EYEA has partnered with several institutions including government ministries, financial institutions, associations, and others. Furthermore, the association was able to register more than 400 youth-led enterprises located in different regions of the country. Some of these entrepreneurs are start-ups while others have grown and become medium and large-sized enterprises.

2. Objective of ToR

The general objective for developing the strategic roadmap is for EYEA to have an internationally competent strategic roadmap, which will enable the association to play its role of being the catalyst in the development of an inclusive and conducive entrepreneurship and startup ecosystem.

The specific objectives are as follows,

• To assess and understand the strengths, gaps of existing strategy documents,

• To redesign the association’s mission, vision, objectives, and mandate of EYEA,

• To establish the institutional setup and structure of EYEA, that considers the possibilities of EYEA’s expansion (to regions, sector-specific sub-entities.) along with the human capacity needed for the governance structure,

• To identify key stakeholders and their roles and responsibilities in relation to EYEA,

• To identify and prioritize areas of intervention needed from EYEA based on its strategic pillars (i.e., access to information, networking, access to finance, advocacy, and capacity building) and based on adequate data,

• To develop the five-year strategic plan of EYEA which includes, activities, projects and programs, implementation strategy, time frame (short-, mid-and long-term activities), resource mobilization plan,

• To identify the resources needed to undertake the strategic plan,

• To determine the categories of members and determine membership engagement mechanisms (including registration, communication, mobilization, support e.t.c)

• To indicate the services the association will provide through different mechanisms,

• To determine monitoring and evaluation mechanisms for the association’s work.

3. Outcomes

• Create an ecosystem that encourages active participation of youths and promote entrepreneurial skill

• Determine the domains influencing the entrepreneurship choice to foster an entrepreneurial mindset, attitude and culture

1. attitude (The attitude of youth towards self-employment)

2. education (education attainment level)

3. financial capital (financial capital for the youth)

• Accelerate resource mobilization efforts and facilitate partnership solutions to advance the implementation for youth-focused programming and youth-led actions at all levels.

• Support youth leadership across the association and build youth awareness and capacity on youth related issues.

• Clearly identified roles and responsibilities and contribution of EYE-A in the ecosystem,

• Identified and selected initiatives, programs, and projects with clear understanding of areas of engagement with members, stakeholders, and partners,

• Guide the monitoring and evaluation of the strategy implementation through strengthened knowledge production and management systems and facilitate evidence-based awareness on the realities and needs of the young Ethiopians.

4. Scope of work

The scope of work of the Consultant(s) will include, but not be limited to:

• Review the mandate of EYEA, including all in EYEA’s strategic road map and institutional setup

• Consult the high-level working group for input throughout the process.

• Develop data collection tool, training data collectors and collect data from regions to understand the youth ecosystem, respective sectors and stakeholders who are participating in the ecosystem.

• Undertake a situation analysis of EYEA, including institutions and strategic components based on the collected data

• Through a consultative process identify focus areas and develop strategic objectives and key result areas.

• Review institutional capacity and set-up against their mandates and identify strategic objectives and key results areas and make recommendations, if any.

• Propose a strategic roadmap for achieving strategic objectives and key results.

• Develop a result and resources framework & Monitoring and Evaluation framework for 2023-2030.

• Share drafts on all components of the strategic roadmap and institutional setup with the high-level working group for feedback along the development process.

• Finalize and validate the strategic roadmap and institutional setup.

6. Required qualifications

The consultant must have:

• At least 10 years of proven experience in the development of policy, strategic roadmap, and institutional setup in similar situations who could bring testimonies.

• Sound understanding and knowledge of standard management tools and techniques to schedule, plan and measure performance.

• Excellent research and analytical skills and facilitation methodology proven experience working with a wide range of stakeholders from the private and public sectors to generate collective effort.

• Proven experience working with civil society organizations (CSOs), and diverse range of stakeholders like government institutions, universities, private sectors, etc

• Excellent English fluency, including proven report writing and presentation skils

Timelines

• EYEA expect that this assignment will be finalized within 3 months (60working days) starting the day the contract signed.

• Breakdown of specific milestones including inception report and its content, periodic check ins to monitor progress and submission of draft and final documents should be developed by the consultant.

7. General responsibilities of the consultant

• The Consultant is required to participate in working group meetings with experts to coordinate and discuss research and consultation materials.

• The Consultant must participate in the Interim Reporting Workshop and Final Reporting Workshop and other platforms as needed

• The Consultant must submit his final report by date, year. The Consultant may revise the final report to fulfill the assignment upon the request of the steering committee and validation workshop inputs.

• The date of submission above can be adjusted by mutual consent between EYEA and the Consultant.

• Any other responsibilities not stated above should be decided through close consultation between EYEA and the Consultant.

8. Responsibilities of EYEA

• Onboard the consultant.

• Set up a relevant steering and ad hoc team to follow up the process.

• Provide necessary information/inputs and facilitate and support the team whenever needed.

• Effect payments as per the schedule

• Take responsibility in setting up interim, final and stakeholder engagement on time.

9. Milestone

The duration of assignment is 60 days and the consultant will align activities with the following milestones

• Inception report (Milestorne1)

• Context, stakeholder, Situation analysis and benchmarking report (Milestone 2)

• Draft strategy document (milestone 3)

• Stakeholder validation workshop (milestone 4)

• Submission of complied final document (milestone 5)

Selection Criteria

Upon the advertisement of the procurement notice, qualified firms are expected to submit both Technical and Financial Proposals. In this regard, the respective weight of the proposals is:

a. Technical Criteria weight is 70%

b. Financial Criteria weight is 30%

How to apply:

• Submit your financial and technical proposals via email: info@eyea.et