UN Women invites Proposals from CSOs in Nigeria

Deadline: 24-Jan-23

UN Women is inviting proposals for mapping capacities of women-owned/led businesses to participate and benefit from public procurement opportunities in Lagos and Kaduna State.

Under this Call for Proposal (CFP), UN Women will recruit a partner to conduct a mapping and capacity assessment off women-owned businesses in Kaduna and Lagos States. The partner will document active women-led organizations, identify their capacity gaps/needs and challenges in the cause of business operations, and provide key recommendations including but not limited to capacity building needs, resources mobilization and partnership strategies and opportunities towards building leadership and promoting their participation in gender responsive procurement processes in the respective states. The mapping will also identify the main capacity gaps as a result of the pandemic, as well as opportunities for entering new sectors for women owned businesses.

Barriers

Women entrepreneurs face significant structural barriers, which limit their growth and development. Common barriers that limit women led businesses include.
- Their overrepresentation in the informal sector, which excludes them from the participation threshold outlined in the Public Procurement Act. The Act requires businesses, which seek to supply public goods and services to be formally registered. Since most women-led businesses are unregistered and function within the informal economy, they are automatically excluded. Also, there are other requirements relating to tax and annual turnover which the majority of women entrepreneurs do not meet either.
- For women-led businesses in the formal sector, participation is still limited due to factors such as high pre-qualification costs and inability to secure pre-financing commitments from financial institutions.
- Women led businesses associate government procurement with cumbersome, time consuming, and complex processes and therefore are not interested in engaging with the Government.
- Many women access information about procurement opportunities through men (male colleagues, relatives, and staff). This points to limited procurement information, but also to insufficient mentoring and networking relationships among women led businesses.
- Awareness and understanding of the various steps in the public procurement process is low among women-led businesses. There is confusion as to how the process works with respect to stakeholder roles and responsibilities.
- Women who engage with the public procurement process are sometimes vulnerable to sexual harassment and gender-based violence. This situation is exacerbated by the absence of a grievance redress mechanism within the government procurement space, as well as the lack of gender indicators in the annual procurement audits conducted by the Bureau for Public Procurement (BPP).
- Long delays in payments from public sector institutions, which only firms of a larger size can afford, is also a reason identified by women to not do businesses with the public sector.
To address the structural barriers faced by women in business, a comprehensive and sustained engagement both on the supply and demand side is required. Hence, the project supports reform and institutional strengthening to improve women led businesses access to public procurement and the development of gender responsive procurement initiatives as part of the COVID-19 response strategies, as well as capacity building of selected women entrepreneurs in the targeted states.

Funding Information

The budget range for this proposal should not exceed: Nigerian Naira 11,074,50.
The duration of the activity is for 30 working days starting from 31st January 2023 to 14th March 2023.

Outcomes

Submit an inception report with clearly designed and detailed mapping methodology and data collection tools for conducting the capacity needs assessment and mapping exercise.
Develop a digital database of women owned businesses and MSMEs in Lagos and Kaduna State, using formal government sources and known business networks and associations, as sources of information.
Conduct a mapping and assessment of capacities of selected women owned businesses and MSMEs in Lagos and Kaduna States. Using clearly defined criteria (established in collaboration with UN Women), collate, and analyze data from Lagos and Kaduna States according to most active, years of existence, technical capacity, resources including financial strength, geographical spread, number of employees, turnover, experience in public and private procurements, etc.
Document 450 active women-led organizations in Lagos and Kaduna identified from the mapping exercise, identify their capacity gaps/needs and challenges in the cause of business operations and access to procurement opportunities.
Provide key recommendations including but not limited to capacity building needs and promoting their participation in gender responsive procurement in respective states.
Conduct a workshop with relevant stakeholders, including key government institutions, women owned MSMEs to review and validate findings from the two reports:
- Report on the Mapping and Assessment of Women Owned Businesses in Lagos and Kaduna State
- Report on the conducted Mapping and Assessment of the capacities for 450 selected Women Owned Businesses in Lagos and Kaduna States
Develop and submit a final report on the capacity needs of the targeted Women Owned Businesses with actionable recommendations to UN Women to support capacity strengthening to enhance access to procurement opportunities.
Develop a PowerPoint presentation on the overall report focusing on findings and recommendations.

Competencies

Technical/functional competencies required
- Reputation of Organisation and Staff:
  - Documented successful track record (for newly formed organizations, the personnel to be assigned to the UN Women project should have a proven track record of 5 years in the subject field);
  - A proven commitment to results (able to provide records of successful projects);
- General Organizational Capability:
  - Excellent methods for content analysis of large bodies of qualitative and quantitative information.
  - Demonstrates outstanding skilled knowledge of qualitative and quantitative data analysis methods.
  - Demonstrates excellent ability to prioritize and focus research questions to produce relevant and useful recommendations.
  - Objectivity and ability to analyze large datasets in short period.
  - Excellent knowledge and technical skills on community engagement approaches
  - Excellent written and verbal communication skills, particularly to summarize complex findings and convey complex achievements in clear results language.
  - Strong skills in data presentation.
- Organizational expertise in specified programme Area:
  - Evidence that the organization has previous experience and expertise of successfully managing projects of the same nature, related to mapping and capacity assessments of women owned businesses and conducting research.
Other competencies, which while not required, can be an asset for the performance of services
- Accountability and Financial Control:
  - A functioning internal control framework and process to deliver quality and timely project results against budget.
  - Evidence of registration in Nigeria with Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC)
  - Audit reports for last two years
  - Certificate of job completion issued to the organization in the past for similar activities implemented
UN Women is soliciting proposals from Civil Society Organizations (CSOs). Women’s organizations or entities are highly encouraged to apply.
The proposal prepared by the proponent and all correspondence and documents relating to the proposal exchanged between the proponent and UN Women, shall be written in English.

For more information, visit UN Women.