International Water Management Institute (IWMI) seeks applications from suitably qualified candidates for a short-term assignment under the project titled « MENAdrought – empowering and enhancing drought management systems in the Middle East North Africa ».
Project Background
IWMI, in partnership with the National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) and Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute (DWFI) at the University of Nebraska work with other international and regional partner organizations to implement the Project, with the objective to:
- deliver enhanced drought monitoring/early warning and seasonal forecasting
- drought impact and vulnerability mapping and economic assessment of costs
- drought preparedness planning and resilience building
The project centers on facilitating technology and policy planning solutions for governments in Morocco, Jordan, and Lebanon to build self-reliance and capabilities for monitoring and managing drought risk. While drought events cannot be stopped, risk management can reduce drought impacts and costs for communities, the economy, and the environment. The project also supports intervention strategies that pro-actively mitigate drought impacts, respond to drought conditions, and support recovery from drought in agricultural systems.
Objective of the Assignment
Drought is a natural hazard affecting agricultural systems. The impacts of drought – particularly stresses to crops from extreme heat, water deficits, and pests – depress yields and hence reduce farmers’ income. At the same time, costs of production increase during drought due to inflation in the prices of agricultural inputs and hardware supplies. The ability of farmers and farm managers to cope with and recover from drought conditions is largely shaped by their assets, access to goods, services and capital, and financial literacy.
The MENADrought project has completed a drought risk audit in Morocco, assessing the risk level and risk profile (probabilistic hazard, exposure, and underlying vulnerabilities). This has audit supported the government to develop a risk-informed Drought Action Plan, identifying investments and interventions for the public authorities to prepare for, mitigate, and respond to drought risks.
This consultancy work is initial research to explore drought finance in Morocco and highlight opportunities for further deeper investigation to design interventions, by:
- Identify, prioritize, and select in consultation with IWMI 3 specific products, among existing underperforming and/or not existing due to a luck of capacities, enabling environment, incentives, support systems, and constraints and blockages.
- Conducting, a light-touch, qualitative market system analysis of demand & supply for each of the 3 products selected in step 1: a) how does the market operate? how it has changed over time, and identifying what/who is underperforming / not-working; b) identifying constraints and blockages in the market system. c) assessing root causes of these constraints and blockages – i.e. needs for policy, institutional and legislative reform.
- Synthesising the 3 case studies to suggest starting points for thinking about an intervention programme using market-system approaches to support markets in drought-related finance, including required additional studies/investigations.
Scope of Work
A wide range of risk management instruments will be screened, under a focus on drought priority impacts as defined in the Moroccan Drought Vulnerability Pillar Report, to select (according to 5-6 criteria to define) one product for each of the following categories:
- risk reduction financial instruments: loans, micro-credits including deposit-less plans, (green)- bonds, grants, subsidies and tax breaks, crediting including Corporate Social Responsibility and other mitigation banking solutions, and impact bonds.
- risk retention instruments: national/district/community levels budget contingency (e.g., donor-supported financing of agricultural activities at drought termination), politically safe reserve funds, contingent loans, and forecast trigger-based instruments (e.g. red cross/croissant)
- risk transfer instruments: affordable pro-poor micro-insurance, agricultural insurance (with a focus on rainfed agriculture and index-based livestock), Takaful and mutual insurance (including for livestock), insurance and reinsurance, catastrophe (famine related) bonds at exceptional/prolonged droughts locally, and risk pools.
The consultant will use secondary data/information of published and grey literature and reports from Government, donors, and NGOs projects and sources; previous IWMI assessments; studies and reports from other USAID climate change interventions in Morocco, and expert knowledge (preferably validated in focus group).
The selected products (1 risk reduction instrument, 1 risk retention instrument, and 1 risk transfer instrument) that either exist but are underperforming or have been tried recently and failed or are failing, are used as cases for market system analysis to:
- Map the market system to understand how it works and identify what is underperforming
- Understand the market constraints (i.e. why is it underperforming) – lack of capacities, poorly aligned incentives for suppliers, etc
- Identify the root causes of the market constraints, and what needs to change to create an enabling environment, e.g. policy, institutional & legislative reform, etc.
This offer-side assessment will be based on intervening risk financers among:
- Key professionals/expert interviews: including financial institutions (ACC, Agricultural Credit Cooperation; MFI’s, Microfinance Institutions; both Moroccan commercial and Islamic banks; and CBJ, the Central Bank of Morocco) and actors that could integrate the market of drought risk reduction, retention, and transfer (with focus on (micro)- insurance companies, loan-guarantee providers, and the Ministry of Agriculture Risk Fund), government entities (policymakers in Social Development and Finance), and donors and development and humanitarian agencies that could play supporting functions to enable the market foundation and acceleration.
- Key informant: including manufacturers, wholesale and retailers of input and hardware agricultural supplies, and technical advisory companies’ representatives and individual experts.
After this first step of offer side assessment, a light screening of the demand-side market (risk holders) will be conducted to better advise on affordable solutions to be customized to reduce the effects of drought hazard. This screening will be conducted through two focus group discussions where results of the offer side assessment are discussed with:
- Local influencers and community/municipalities leaders/heads, and farmers associations that know well commercial farms; agribusinesses (SMEs), and agri-food industry setups.
- Drought vulnerable communities’ representatives among gender categories (refugees not included) with a focus on poor women-led farming/herding families.
This Initial Market Assessment should use semi-structured interviews supported by interview guides to support interview sessions. Respondents will be selected to ensure a broad representation amongst all market actors and stakeholders. The farming industry representatives should be from irrigated-based agriculture (Azraq and/or Mafraq). Input and hardware suppliers, and financial institutions are mainly located in Amman and should be selected based on the secondary data outputs. IWMI will provide the consultant with all relevant risk audit data and information necessary for negotiating with financial institutions preliminary business pitches.
The Initial Market Assessment outcomes will be discussed in a national workshop organized by IWMI and USAID-Morocco and facilitated by the consultant and the IWMI focal point for this study. The invitee will be selected among the categories of respondents and active donors in Morocco. The findings of this study will be discussed to provide recommendations on the general preliminary intervention rationale. The discussions will focus on responding to the question of what the major obstacles and opportunities for are opening up viable markets in drought-related finance including through policy, institutional and legislative reform.
Duration: Forty (40) days during February to June 2022
Your application must include a copy of your curriculum vitae, a cover letter that addresses IWMI’s requirements stated above, and contact information of three professional referees who may be contacted if you are short-listed for the position.
Please note that only short-listed candidates will be contacted.
Requirements
The consultant / consultant team must have the following capabilities:
- Engineering or Master degree in agricultural economics, business administration, communication and environmental technologies and management, public policy or related fields.
- Experience and expertise in conducting market system analysis and market system approaches.
- Experience expertise in financial products and services for farmers, the agricultural sector, and rural communities Experience and expertise in drought risks for and impacts on farmers and the rural economy.
- Expertise in the Moroccan development context, public and private institutions, and the agricultural market and economy
- Knowledge of natural hazards prevention, management and/or response, a plus
- Fluency in Arabic and English (written and spoken).
Benefits
IWMI believes that diversity powers our innovation, contributes to our excellence, and is critical for our mission. We offer a multi-cultural, multi-color, multi-generational and multi-disciplinary working environment. We are consciously creating an inclusive organization that reflects our global character and our commitment to gender equity. We, therefore, encourage applicants from all cultures, races, ethnicities, religions, sexes, national or regional origins, ages, disability status, sexual orientations, and gender identities.
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