1.0 Background

The Investing in Women in Benin and Burkina Faso (IIW-B&BF) is a six-year gender transformation and economic inclusion programme implemented by AECF with funding from Global Affairs Canada. The programme aims to economically empower women as entrepreneurs in sectors of activity that have a high positive impact on the climate, including technological innovation, digital technology, agriculture, production, processing, crafts, and trade, to remove obstacles preventing them from contributing to the development of their activities.

The programme aims to improve the participation and economic resilience of women entrepreneurs in a greener economy in Benin and Burkina Faso. These include access to finance for women-owned SMEs, women’s cooperatives, and emerging women entrepreneurs; improving the capacity of women owners and managers of SMEs and women’s cooperatives to sustainably develop the value chains in which they primarily value chains in which they mainly work, using climate-smart approaches; and overcoming entrenched social and cultural resistance to women’s empowerment at national, sectoral, and community levels.

2.0 About the assignment

This assignment is intended to support the delivery of practical, demand-driven venture-building and enterprise development support to women entrepreneurs and women-led SMEs participating in programme-supported value chains under the IIW-B&BF program. The support will focus on strengthening business and financial management, improving governance, enhancing operational efficiency and production systems, promoting climate-smart and climate-resilient practices, and enhancing beneficiaries’ capacity to meet market and quality standards. In addition, the assignment will support business formalization, financial literacy, market access, and strategic partnerships, while ensuring interventions are responsive to the specific barriers women face, including limited access to professional advisory services, mobility constraints, and competing time demands.

The Venture Builder will primarily support a defined cohort of 13 SMEs (9 in Burkina Faso and 4 in Benin). Where relevant, and only as agreed by AECF, the assignment may also provide light-touch business support tools, coaching, or referrals for selected women-led micro-enterprises and women’s groups linked to the supported enterprises and value chains.

Against this backdrop, AECF seeks to engage a highly experienced Venture Builder to strengthen the operational capacity, business performance, and growth readiness of selected beneficiary enterprises under the IIW-B&BF programme.

1. The assignment will first focus on diagnosing enterprise-level constraints that could slow delivery of programme-supported activities and on designing practical business improvement plans to address them.
2. The Venture Builder will then support implementation of the agreed improvement plans through hands-on advisory, coaching, and monitoring of enterprise-level capacity-building actions, while flagging material risks and support needs to AECF.

Through this combined support, the programme aims to strengthen enterprise performance and implementation success while nurturing a portfolio of women-led and women-serving businesses that demonstrate gender-responsive, climate-smart, and market-oriented practices in Benin and Burkina Faso.

3.0 Objectives of the assignment

Overall Objective: To strengthen the capacity, business performance, and climate resilience of selected beneficiary enterprises under the IIW-B&BF through enterprise diagnostics, tailored improvement plans, and hands-on implementation support that improves their ability to deliver, grow, and become more market- and investment-ready.

Specific Objectives (Expected Outcomes):

The specific objectives of the assignment are to:

• Diagnose enterprise-level capacity, operational, financial, governance, and market gaps that may affect implementation, performance, and growth.
• Develop practical, enterprise-specific business improvement plans with clear priorities, actions, and support needs.
• Strengthen business model clarity, organizational systems, and management practices of selected enterprises.
• Improve financial management, record keeping, budgeting, costing, pricing, and financial reporting.
• Support the adoption of climate-smart and climate-resilient business practices that strengthen sustainability and reduce risk.
• Strengthen operational efficiency, product and service quality, and compliance with relevant market and business standards.
• Improve market readiness, commercial linkages, and strategic partnerships that can enhance growth.
• Support selected enterprises to implement agreed improvement actions and monitor progress against those plans.
• Generate practical lessons and portfolio insights for AECF on common enterprise constraints, support priorities, and emerging risks.

4.0 Scope of work

The assignment shall be implemented as a two-step process comprising diagnostics and planning, followed by support for implementation and monitoring of agreed business improvement actions.

4.1 Phase 1: Enterprise Diagnostics and Improvement Planning

Under this phase, the Venture Builder will review relevant enterprise and programme information and undertake enterprise assessments to identify weaknesses that may constrain implementation, performance, and growth. The Venture Builder shall:

• Review relevant investee documents, enterprise agreements, business plans, budgets, milestones, and prior assessments made available by AECF.
• Undertake enterprise diagnostics covering business model, management, operations, financial management, governance, market readiness, and climate resilience.
• Assess enterprise capacity to operationalize planned activities and identify constraints that could slow or weaken results.
• Identify material enterprise-level risks, bottlenecks, and capability gaps requiring support.
• Classify and prioritize support needs by enterprise type, maturity, and urgency.
• Develop enterprise-specific business improvement or capacity-building plans with clear actions, timelines, responsibilities, and expected results.
• Validate proposed support plans with AECF and the relevant beneficiary enterprises.
• Recommend where specialist support or referrals may be required beyond the Venture Builder’s core mandate.
• Prepare concise diagnostic summaries highlighting the main issues, risks, and priority actions for each supported enterprise.
• Provide AECF with a portfolio-level synthesis of recurring enterprise constraints and recommended support priorities.

4.2 Phase 2: Implementation Support and Monitoring of Improvement Plans

During this phase, the Venture Builder will provide practical advisory and coaching support to help selected enterprises implement the agreed-upon business improvement plans. The Venture Builder will monitor progress on those plans and flag material enterprise-level risks or support needs to AECF.  The Venture Builder shall:

• Support enterprises to strengthen business model clarity, planning, and decision-making.
• Strengthen financial management systems and practices, including budgeting, cash flow management, costing, pricing, controls, and reporting.
• Support improvement of organizational systems, internal coordination, record keeping, and performance management.
• Improve operational efficiency, production planning, workflow, inventory management, and quality assurance, where relevant.
• Support enterprises to improve market readiness, customer orientation, product positioning, branding, and packaging, where relevant.
• Facilitate compliance with relevant market, quality, and business standards required for growth and market access.
• Promote practical, climate-smart, and climate-resilient measures tailored to the enterprises and value chains supported.
• Support selected enterprises, where relevant, on formalization, basic business practices, and access to appropriate business development services.
• Facilitate linkages to buyers, input suppliers, financial institutions, technical experts, and other ecosystem actors, where relevant.
• Provide coaching and mentoring to enterprise teams to strengthen management capability and execution discipline.
• Monitor the implementation of agreed business improvement actions and document progress, challenges, and any required support adjustments.
• Flag material enterprise-level risks, delays, or capability constraints to AECF for further action.
• Provide support in a gender-responsive manner that recognizes the time, mobility, and access constraints faced by women entrepreneurs.

4.3 Cross-Cutting Delivery Requirements

Across both workstreams, the Venture Builder shall:

• Apply gender-responsive delivery approaches that are accessible and relevant to women entrepreneurs and women’s groups.
• Ensure support is tailored to the varying capacities and maturity levels of SMEs.
• Use strong local context knowledge and market understanding in both Benin and Burkina Faso.
• Deliver support in a manner that is sensitive to climate risks, local value chain realities, and enterprise operating environments.
• Coordinate closely with AECF and relevant stakeholders to ensure alignment, avoid duplication, and strengthen programme effectiveness.
• Document key lessons, success factors, and recurring challenges emerging from the assignment to inform programme learning and adaptive management.

5.0 Deliverables

The successful firm will be expected to deliver, at a minimum:

• An inception report setting out the methodology, work plan, staffing, beneficiary selection approach, and reporting framework.
• A portfolio scan and beneficiary profiling note identifying the enterprises to be directly supported and the proposed support segmentation.
• Enterprise diagnostic reports and/or diagnostic summaries for the selected beneficiary enterprises.
• Enterprise-specific business improvement plans or capacity-building action plans.
• Periodic implementation progress reports on the delivery of the agreed improvement plans, including key issues, risks, and required actions.
• Technical assistance completion notes or progress updates for supported enterprises, as agreed with AECF.
• Brief case studies, lessons learned notes, or success stories, where applicable.
• A final report summarizing diagnostics conducted, support delivered, enterprise progress, unresolved risks, lessons learned, and recommendations for AECF.

AECF reserves the right to refine the final list, format, and frequency of deliverables during the contracting process.

6.0 Duration of service

The assignment is expected to be implemented over 12 months. The first phase will focus on diagnostics and improvement planning, while the remainder of the period will focus on implementation support and monitoring of the agreed business improvement plans. The consultant shall propose a realistic level of effort and sequencing aligned to the number and profile of enterprises selected by AECF.

7.0 Reporting

The Venture Builder will be accountable and report to the Program Managers IIW-B&BF and the Senior Advisory Specialist.

8.0 Qualifications and experience from the firm and team

Firm-Level Experience

The Venture Builder should demonstrate:

• Over 7 years of proven experience supporting SMEs, growth-stage enterprises, or women-led businesses.
• Strong capability in business advisory, financial management, operations improvement, governance, market access, and enterprise growth support.
• Demonstrated understanding of women’s economic empowerment and gender-responsive enterprise support.
• Experience supporting climate-smart, climate-resilient, or green economy enterprises.
• Experience working in West Africa, preferably in Benin and/or Burkina Faso.
• Strong English and French language capabilities across the team members.
• Ability to deploy multidisciplinary expertise, including enterprise development, finance, operations, climate-smart business support, and market systems support.

Team-Level Experience

The proposal must include CVs for the following key experts:

• Team Lead / Assignment Coordinator: At least 10 years of experience in enterprise support, venture building, portfolio oversight, or SME advisory, with proven ability to lead multi-entity technical assistance assignments.
• Business Model and Enterprise Growth Expert: Experience in business model strengthening, growth strategy, enterprise diagnostics, commercialization, and market readiness support for SMEs and cooperatives.
• Financial Management and Investment Readiness Expert: Experience in budgeting, cash flow management, costing, pricing, financial controls, financial reporting, and preparing businesses for follow-on financing or investment.
• Operations and Market Linkages Expert: Experience in production systems, operational efficiency, quality improvement, market standards, customer orientation, and business linkages.
• Governance, Compliance, and Risk Expert: At least 5 years of experience in corporate governance, internal controls, compliance, formalization, reporting systems, and enterprise risk management.
• Gender and Inclusive Enterprise Development Expert: Experience in women’s economic empowerment, gender-responsive enterprise support, and delivery approaches suited to women-led SMEs, cooperatives, and micro-enterprises.

9.0 Proposal submission

Qualified consultants are invited to submit a proposal that includes the following:

• An understanding of the consultancy requirements.
• Methodology and work plan for performing the assignment.
• Detailed reference list indicating the scope and magnitude of similar assignments.
• Signed letters of reference from 3 previous institutions/programmes.
• Registration and other relevant statutory documents.
• The technical and financial proposals are to be submitted separately in PDF format.
• The financial (USD) proposal must clearly show the budgeted cost for the work to be conducted by the Venture Builder under the scope of the work above.
• The technical and financial proposals will need to be submitted as separate documents. NO LINKS.

N/B: SUBMITTING THE FINANCIAL AND TECHNICAL DOCUMENT AS ONE DOCUMENT WILL AUTOMATICALLY LEAD TO DISQUALIFICATION OF THE APPLICANT.

10.0 Pricing

The AECF is obliged by the Kenyan tax authorities to withhold taxes on service contract fees and to ensure that VAT is charged where applicable. Applicants are advised to ensure they have a clear understanding of their tax position under Kenyan tax legislation when developing their proposals.

11.0 Evaluation Criteria

Mandatory evaluation criteria

Mandatory Requirements for firms: –

1. Company profile.
2. Trading license, Certificate of incorporation, Certificate of Registration, and other statutory documents.
3. Valid Tax Compliance certificate or an Equivalent document. (Applicable to firms).
4. Passport/National Identification of the lead consultant.

N/B: FAILURE TO ATTACH AND ADHERE TO THE ABOVE REQUIREMENTS WILL RESULT IN AUTOMATIC DISQUALIFICATION

An evaluation committee will be formed by the AECF and may include employees of the businesses it supports. All members will be bound by the same standards of confidentiality. The consultant should ensure that they fully address all criteria for comprehensive evaluation.

The AECF may request and receive clarification from any consultant when evaluating a proposal. The evaluation committee may invite some or all of the consultants to appear before it to clarify their proposals. In such an event, the evaluation committee may consider such clarifications in evaluating proposals.

In making the final selection of a qualified bidder, the technical quality of the proposal will be weighted 70% in the evaluation. Only the financial proposal of those bidders who qualify technically will be opened. The financial proposal will be assigned a weight of 30%, and all proposals will be ranked by total points.

The mandatory and desirable criteria against which proposals will be evaluated are identified in the table below.

12.0 Application details

The AECF is an Equal Opportunity Employer. The AECF considers all interested candidates based on merit without regard to race, gender, colour, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.

• Interested firms/consultants or consortia are requested to submit their technical and financial proposals via the procurement portal https://procurement.aecfafrica.org/ by 25th May 2026, 5pm (EAT).
• All questions should be directed to the procurement email aecfprocurement@aecfafrica.org by 15 May 2026, 5pm (EAT).
• The subject of the email should be ‘TERMS OF REFERENCE FOR CONSULTANCY SERVICES FOR PROVISION OF VENTURE BUILDING AND BUSINESS GROWTH SUPPORT TO MID-SIZE SMES IN BENIN AND BURKINA FASO‘. The AECF shall not be liable for not opening proposals submitted with a different subject or for not responding to questions that did not meet the indicated deadline.

13.0 Disclaimer

AECF reserves the right to determine the structure of the process, the number of short-listed participants, the right to withdraw from the proposal process, the right to change this timetable at any time without notice, and reserves the right to withdraw this tender at any time, without prior notice and without liability to compensate and/or reimburse any party.

The AECF does not charge an application fee for participation in the tendering process and has not appointed any agents or intermediaries to facilitate applications. Applicants are advised to contact the AECF Procurement Department directly.