1.0 The Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund

The AECF, LLC (Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund) is a leading non-profit development organization that supports innovative enterprises in the agribusiness and renewable energy sectors with the aim of reducing rural poverty, promoting climate resilient communities, and creating jobs.

We catalyze the private sector by surfacing and commercializing new ideas, business models and technologies designed to increase agricultural productivity, improve farmer incomes, expand clean energy access, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and improve resilience to the effects of climate change. We finance high risk businesses that struggle to access commercial funding; we are committed to working in frontier markets, fragile contexts, and high-risk economies where few mainstream financing institutions dare to go.

To date, we have supported over 510 businesses in 26 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, impacted more than 33million lives and created over 35,000 direct jobs.

AECF is headquartered in Kenya and has offices in Côte d’Ivoire, Tanzania, Nigeria, South Sudan, Benin, and Somalia.

 

2.0 About Kakuma Kalobeyei Challenge Fund (KKCF)

Kakuma Kalobeyei Challenge Fund (KKCF) is a five-year Program of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), implemented with Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund (AECF), Turkana County Government, and UNHCR. KKCF originates from the market data from IFC’s “Kakuma as a Marketplace” study which quantified Kakuma’s economy and confirmed that it was a dynamic and potential marketplace triggering a lot of interest that resulted in Kakuma Kalobeyei Challenge Fund being developed as an initiative supported by multiple partners.

KKCF is designed to support private sector investment and unlock the economic potential of refugees and their hosts in Kakuma Kalobeyei refugee hosting area in Turkana West District of Turkana County. KKCF aims to attract private companies and grow the local entrepreneurship potential to create jobs and improve service provision in the Kakuma Kalobeyei area. KKCF targets all private sector players from small companies to medium-size family businesses to social enterprises and large firms. For more information, visit https://kkcfke.org/

The KKCF applies a competitive financing mechanism for disbursing donor funding to incentivize for-profit companies, social enterprises, and local and refugee entrepreneurs to start or scale existing operations in the Kakuma-Kalobeyei area. This is achieved through advertising for a call for proposals during which interested businesses submit their proposals and businesses models which are then subjected to a competitive selection process leading to identification of those businesses that are best aligned to the market dynamics and pose the highest socio-economic impact to the host and refugee communities in Kakuma.

Attracting the private sector to the area and supporting local entrepreneurs creates more job opportunities for refugees and the host community, creates more consumption choices, and potentially reduces the prices of commodities and consumables. This, in turn, enhances the self-reliance and socioeconomic integration of refugee and host communities while also contributing to the development of Turkana County.

With Kakuma being a marginalized and fragile setting, KKCF is designed to support the private sector to manage business limitations prevalent in such challenging environments including limited access to financing, low availability of technically qualified and experienced staff, complex social and cultural conditions, slow and bureaucratic regulatory environment and fragmented, low income and remote markets with poor infrastructure. KKCF supports established companies, social enterprises, and local entrepreneurs to address these challenges by providing concessionally costed capital, technical assistance and support at the policy level to encourage new businesses to emerge and existing businesses to move into the operating environment. This collaborative project focuses on building commercially viable and sustainable businesses that can:

• Increase incomes for both refugees and host communities.
• Provide essential goods and services.
• Create jobs and stimulate economic growth.
• Improve living standards for those in the refugee camp and surrounding communities.

The KKCF program therefore fosters socioeconomic integration and self-sufficiency for displaced populations and host communities within Kakuma/Kalobeyei. This is achieved by supporting the development of 104 commercially viable and sustainable micro enterprises and 19 Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) across diverse economic sectors.

 

3.0 About the assignment

Scope I: Develop Qualitative Impact Studies for Beneficiaries

Background of the assignment: AECF has invested in a portfolio of private sector enterprises under the KKCF Programme. To quantify the outcomes delivered, AECF employs a rigorous results measurement approach based on a survey of data from the financed enterprises to estimate the impact generated at the beneficiary level. Here, beneficiaries are end-users directly or indirectly of the goods and services offered by KKCF-funded enterprises. This measurement approach combines reported actual business data with modeled projections for other sources. Because of program cost and time restrictions, this approach is a strong and defendable quantitative outcome estimate. It does not typically, however, quantify the qualitative effects of impact, thus not giving much insight into the performance and change effects of the program beyond quantitative outcomes.

As the KKCF Program advances to its final implementation phase, it is necessary to heighten the understanding of its qualitative impact and explore how best such an impact can be measured. The study will therefore focus on but not solely on the following topics.

• Overall beneficiaries’ satisfaction with the service provided by KKCF investees.
• Improvements in schooling and/or any other metrics that don’t require statistical measures (perceptions of improved health and/or personal safety for women, etc.).
• Measuring unexpected positive externalities of KKCF, for example, perceived reduction in crime due to better street lighting, and increased business activity in Kakuma town.

Focus areas: The KKCF Program operates without sector limitations and collaborates with businesses across a wide array of economic sectors. The primary focus for this initiative encompasses, but is not restricted to health, agribusiness, green energy, waste management, finance, and education.

Within the health sector, the KKCF Program has facilitated projects aimed at enhancing maternal and child healthcare, providing ambulance, dental, and pharmacy services, improving eye care, menstrual health and hygiene, and overall access to quality healthcare.

In agribusiness, the Program is engaged in initiatives designed to advance agricultural practices, enhance water access and irrigation, ensure food security, develop cold storage solutions, produce livestock feed, and offer agrovet services.

The green energy initiatives concentrate on promoting clean cooking solutions, fostering environmental improvements, and supplying energy to critical sectors such as education, communications, and manufacturing.

Regarding waste management, KKCF is backing initiatives that contribute to improved community health and environmental benefits, raise awareness of environmental standards, and encourage the adoption of enhanced waste management practices and standards. In the finance sector, support is aimed at increasing access to savings and loan products, improving business development services, and ensuring the operational sustainability of businesses in Kakuma.

 

From the education perspective, the objectives include boosting student enrollment rates in schools, enhancing student retention and transitions to higher education, improving standards and quality of learning, and establishing child protection initiatives.

Scope of Work: The assignment will entail designing a non-statistical qualitative measurement methodology which will be used to validate the intervention logic for the Program, drawing out a better understanding of the impact achieved. The assessment will assess our current impact measurement methodology, verify the current intervention logic and strengthen or suggest alternative methodologies to impact measurement for KKCF

Scope II: Develop measurement approaches for estimating beneficiaries of service providers

KKCF has, as one of its key performance metrics, the provision of services to people who live in and around the refugee camp. Through KKCF, AECF funds companies that provide new services or those that expand the reach of existing services and this metric is important as it shows how many people are benefiting either directly or indirectly from the investments made in these companies.  However, there are two main challenges in counting how many people benefit from these services:

• In most cases, companies do not know the individual beneficiaries that they reach because they may use third-party distributors for their products, or it is not practical to keep records because the nature of their operations makes it difficult or expensive to record every transaction.
• Double counting: Because individual people can benefit from accessing more than one good or service and in many cases, these businesses do not know who the specific people reached are, it is difficult to credibly measure how many unique people are reached. As noted above, these businesses reach people either directly – where the services are provided to a known person such as buying product from them – or indirectly – where third parties benefit from a directly supported person.

To address this, AECF currently uses an approach whereby the service provider generating the highest reach for all services in a particular sector is used as a measure of the number of people in that sector receiving services in a particular area.  This is a conservative method and is most likely to undercount the total benefit that the funding for KKCF is delivering.

3.1. Purpose of the assignment

The purpose of this assignment is to develop and test a measurement approach for; Improving our measurement of people with improved services and change in final beneficiaries’ incomes.

3.2. Specific duties and responsibilities (the “Services”) of the Consultant

The assignment will consist of:

• A review of the interventions financed under the KKCF programme to gain an appreciation of the scope of services being provided, the structure of the beneficiary population, geographic locations and an understanding of how beneficiaries could be aggregated into different groups for measurement.
• A desk review of current impact measurement approaches for reporting the reach of service providers and beneficiaries in refugee contexts. This should include additional engagement with key stakeholders (Investees, beneficiaries, AECF Comparator organization/Projects) in Kakuma to elicit opinions and perspectives as well identify practices and approaches that are not published.
• Development of proposals for approaches that would improve the process and quality of Impact measurement.

Key focus areas: In the agribusiness sector, the metrics currently documented encompass the number of farmers reached and the number of vendors engaged by these businesses. However, vendors not directly engaged by these businesses, as well as the businesses’ suppliers and the total number of last-mile beneficiaries, are excluded from these reports.

In the green energy sector, reports include the number of business and residential power connections established. Nevertheless, emerging business opportunities arising from power availability, enhancements in educational outcomes due to better lighting, and the environmental and health benefits associated with the adoption of green energy are not included in the reporting.

Within the waste management sector, the reported metrics consist of the number of waste collectors and the total volume of waste collected. However, direct beneficiaries of the collected waste, community environmental improvements, and indirect beneficiaries resulting from processed waste are not accounted for.

In the financial sector, the metrics reported include the number and total amount of loans disbursed, savings accumulated, businesses supported, and individuals benefiting from enhanced services. Other beneficiaries are not included in the reports.

For educational institutions, only the total number of students, categorized by gender, and the number of students sponsored by these businesses are reported.

In the health sector, the number of patients is estimated based on payment transaction data, which is then used to approximate the number of individuals who have benefited from improved services. While a beneficiary may have accessed services from multiple KKCF supported businesses, KKCF needs to report all businesses that have contributed to access to improved services and all beneficiaries reached but at the same time manage this duplication risk.

 

No.	Deliverable
1	Inception report. Provide a description of conceptual and methodological approaches, Data collection tools, Team Organization, Data Quality Assurance, Implementation plan and findings from the desk review. (To identify specific beneficiaries of the program who have accessed services from KKCF supported businesses that will be targeted with interviews coupled with key program partners to validate the list)
2	A report not exceeding 50 Pages. Annexes could be additional and include a collection of 6 narrative impact stories for KKCF’s key focus areas highlighted above and 6 audio visual impact stories to be used to report the program’s success internally as well as externally.
3	Final report with recommendations.

 

4.0 Duration of the assignment

The assignment is expected to be implemented for a total of 60 working days over a period of three months. There is expected to be at least 40 working days in Kakuma.

5.0 Reporting

The Consultant will report to the Head of Impact at the AECF and KKCF Program Manager.

6.0 Proposal submission

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

1. Qualification and experience as indicated in the evaluation criteria.
2. Approach and methodology to undertake this assignment underpinned by a demonstration of value for money.
3. A detailed financial budget (in KES) and work plan.
4. The technical and financial proposals will need to be submitted as separate documents.

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

 

7.0 Qualifications and experience

• A minimum of 10 years of full-time work experience in qualitative and quantitative research, preferably in the refugee context and international development context and working with the private sector.
• Sub-Saharan African experience in either renewable energy or agriculture and with knowledge of the other.
• A master’s degree in international development, Sociology, Economics, Engineering, M&E, Communications, or related fields.
• Excellent communication and writing skills in the English language, with a keen ability to synthesize and present complex data in a simple, compelling, meaningful way (ability to produce data visualization is a plus).
• Confidence in working and engaging externally with the results and evaluation community, donors, the private sector, and Development Finance Institutions.
• Familiarity with the cultural and gender dynamics in a refugee context preferably Kakuma Kalobeyei camp.
• Previous experience designing measurement approaches for beneficiaries is an added advantage.

8.0 Pricing

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

9.0 Evaluation Criteria

MANADATORY EVALUATION CRITERIA.

a. Mandatory Requirements for firms: –

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

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

 

b. An evaluation committee will be formed by the AECF and may include employees of the businesses to be supported. All members will be bound by the same standards of confidentiality. The consultant should ensure that they fully respond to all criteria to be comprehensively evaluated.

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

In deciding the final selection of qualified bidder, the technical quality of the proposal will be given a weighting of 80% based on the evaluation criteria. Only the financial proposal of those bidders who qualify technically will be opened. The financial proposal will be allocated a weighting of 20% and the proposals will be ranked in terms of total points scored.

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

 

No.	Criteria for assessment	Weighted award
Technical Proposal		80
An understanding of the terms of reference
1.	Demonstrate understanding of the assignment and expected outcomes.	10
2.	Demonstrated understanding of qualitative research and analysis	10
Methodology and work plan that will deliver the best value on the assignment
1.	Soundness and feasibility of the proposed technical approach and methodology that provide comprehensive findings and analysis to document company stories, achievements, lessons learned, recommendations, and conclusions.	20
2.	Realistic and well-structured timeline, clear identification of deliverables and milestones, and coherence with the intended program goals.	10
Qualification and Experience
1.	Qualification and experience of the consultant/team and evidence of relevant certification	10
2.	Demonstrated experience and relevant services are undertaken by the applicant in past engagements with evidence links to previous work done / completion certificate	10
3.	All the required registration and certification documents and at least 3 signed reference letters of similar work done.	10
Financial Proposal
1.	Detailed showing the level of effort of the team, Clarity, relevance, and reality to market value/ value for money of cost for the assignment (inclusive of any applicable tax, reimbursable, and travel where applicable).	20

 

 

10l0 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 are requested to submit their technical and financial proposal to aecfprocurement@aecfafrica.org by 15^th June 2025, 5pm (EAT).
• All questions should be directed to the procurement email by 6^th June 2025, 5pm (EAT).
• The subject of the email should be ‘’CONSULTANCY SERVICES TO DEVELOP QUALITATIVE IMPACT STUDIES AND DESIGN MEASUREMENT APPROACHES FOR ESTIMATING BENEFICIARIES OF SERVICE PROVIDERS”. The AECF shall not be liable for not opening proposals that are submitted with a different subject or responding to questions that did not meet the deadline as indicated.

11.0 Disclaimer

AECF reserves the right to determine the structure of the process, 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 reach out directly to the AECF Procurement Department.

1.0 The Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund

The AECF is a leading development organization that supports innovative enterprises in the agribusiness and renewable energy sectors with the aim of reducing rural poverty, promoting climate-resilient communities, and creating jobs.

We catalyze the private sector by surfacing and commercializing new ideas, business models and technologies designed to increase agricultural productivity, improve farmer incomes, expand clean energy access, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and improve resilience to the effects of climate change. We finance high-risk businesses that struggle to access commercial funding; we are committed to working in frontier markets, fragile contexts, and high-risk economies where few mainstream financing institutions dare to go.

To date, we have supported over 510 businesses in 26 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, impacted more than 33 million lives and created over 35,000 direct jobs.

AECF is headquartered in Kenya and has offices in Côte d’Ivoire, Tanzania, Nigeria, South Sudan, Benin, and Somalia.

 

2.0 About Kakuma Kalobeyei Challenge Fund (KKCF)

Kakuma Kalobeyei Challenge Fund (KKCF) is a five-year Program of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), implemented with Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund (AECF), Turkana County Government, and UNHCR. KKCF originates from the market data from IFC’s “Kakuma as a Marketplace” study which quantified Kakuma’s economy and confirmed that it was a dynamic and potential market-place. This triggered a lot of interest that contributed to KKCF’s conceptualization and Program development.

KKCF is designed to support private sector investment and unlock the economic potential of refugees and their hosts in Kakuma Kalobeyei refugee hosting area in Turkana West District of Turkana County. KKCF aims to attract private companies and grow the local entrepreneurship potential to create job opportunities, present more consumption choices, and contribute to fair pricing of products and services. KKCF targets all sizes of companies from small to medium-sized family businesses to social enterprises and large firms. For more information, visit https://kkcfke.org/

KKCF applies a competitive financing mechanism for disbursing donor funding to incentivize companies to start or scale existing operations in the Kakuma-Kalobeyei area. The process begins by advertising a call for proposals, applicants are then subjected to a competitive selection process leading to identification of companies that are best aligned to the Kakuma-Kalobeyei market dynamics to then deliver intended socio-economic impact to the host and refugee communities while also contributing to the development of Turkana County.

With the Kakuma-Kalobeyei area being a marginalized and fragile setting, KKCF supports these companies to manage business limitations prevalent in such challenging environments including limited access to financing, low availability of technically qualified and experienced staff, complex social and cultural conditions, slow and bureaucratic regulatory environment and fragmented, low income and remote markets with poor infrastructure. KKCF support includes provision of concessional capital, technical assistance and policy advocacy to improve the business environment. This collaborative Program focuses on building commercially viable and sustainable businesses that can:

• Increase incomes for both refugees and host communities.
• Provide essential goods and services.
• Create jobs and stimulate economic growth.
• Improve living standards for those in the refugee camp and surrounding communities.
• Promote financial inclusion efforts focused on increasing access to finance for women and youth.

KKCF is currently working with 105 commercially viable and sustainable microenterprises and 19 Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) across diverse economic sectors. One of the 19 SMEs is a Sacco Societies Regulatory Authority (SASRA) deposit-taking Savings and Credit Cooperative Society (SACCO). The SACCO has been in operation for a year in Kakuma and is looking to set up a credit management system and processes customized for the Kakuma Market.

3.0 About the Assignment

AECF is seeking the services of a Consulting Firm to support the SACCO in setting up a credit risk management system and processes customized for the Kakuma Market. The assignment will commence with a comprehensive review of its existing credit policy and procedures and loan underwriting capacity to identify gaps, and end with a customized credit policy framework and supporting manuals. The SACCO has a national membership of over 33,000 members, 3,500 of whom have been enrolled from the Kakuma–Kalobeyei area.

3.1 Purpose of the assignment

The purpose of these TORs is to define the scope, responsibilities, expectations, and deliverables of the engagement expected by AECF from the selected Consultant. The successful service provider must demonstrate experience and understanding of the refugee context and the Islamic banking/finance practices.

4.0 Specific duties and responsibilities (the “Services”) of the Consultant

The Consulting Firm will be expected to deliver on the following scope of the assignment:

a. Credit risk management needs assessment

• Conduct a comprehensive review of SACCO’s existing credit management policies and procedures applicable to the Kakuma Branch operations. This will include identifying gaps in knowledge, skills, and practices related to to loan portfolio monitoring
• Review the Kakuma Branch operations with a focus on risk identification, including concentration risk, operational risk, cybersecurity risk, market risk and, credit risk.
• Identify Kakuma Branch’s capacity to employ best practices in loan origination, loan portfolio monitoring and mitigating risk of loan defaults and loan recovery. This will include assessment of the loan origination process, loan underwriting skills, loan approval, disbursement, portfolio management, loan recovery and, compliance.
• Based on the assessment findings, develop a multiday training program for  SACCO staff involved in the entire loan life cycle. The program should enhance SACCO’s staff capacity in adopting best credit management practices across the loan life cycle. Clearly outline the expected outcomes and learning objectives of the training program.

b. Development of a credit risk management framework

• Design a market-specific credit management framework that aligns with Kakuma Branch operational context, particularly the fragile nature of the market it is operating in given the forced displacement setting.
• Incorporate risk mitigants in the credit policies, procedures and processes that help in identification and management of the various risks identified in managing Kakuma Branch’s loan portfolio. This should also include instituting compliance checks that ensure monitoring and adoption of these mitigants.  Design credit scoring models that will guide digitalization of lending in the MSME fragile market context.
• Develop detailed manuals and guidelines for loan origination and credit administration, incorporating industry best practices and compliance requirements including SASRA regulations.
• Establish clear performance metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of the newly developed framework.

c. Capacity building and training delivery

• Prepare training and capacity-building materials (decks, templates, tools) that address the identified gaps and new framework requirements.
• Facilitate training sessions for the SACCO teams, ensuring practical, hands-on learning and the application of new credit management processes.
• Assess the effectiveness of the training through feedback and post-training evaluations.

d. Reporting and insights

• Prepare and submit a comprehensive report outlining insights gained from the assignment, focusing on challenges and strategies specific to credit management in refugees and other fragile market contexts.
• Include actionable recommendations for sustaining improved credit management practices post-training.
• Provide an executive summary that highlights key findings, outcomes, and strategic recommendations.

e. Stakeholder engagement and communication

• Engage with relevant stakeholders, including loan officers and management, throughout the assignment.
• Conduct periodic progress updates and a final presentation of key deliverables to the company’s management team.

f. Evaluation and monitoring

• Develop a monitoring and evaluation plan to track the impact of the implemented credit management framework and training programs. Include measurable KPIs to assess improvements in credit appraisal and loan origination practices.

4.0 Deliverables

The Consulting Firm is expected to deliver the following:

1. An assessment/analysis report for the SACCO’s credit policies and procedures and loan officers’ skills with a gap analysis. This report will include recommendations on how to improve existing credit management policies to address the Kakuma Branch market dynamics.
2. Fit-to-purpose credit risk management tools that include frameworks and manuals for loan origination and administration and recovery customized for the Kakuma-Kalobeyei business environment and financial industry trends. These will also include clear paths to the attainment of competitive advantage and sustainability.
3. A training and capacity-building program and training materials for use by the SACCO for onward refresher training for their teams.
4. Metrics and tools to track and evaluate improvements made in the implementation of the credit management system over time.
5. An insights paper from this assignment highlighting the expected impact of adoption of the enhanced credit management framework for the SACCO.

5.0 Duration of the Assignment

The assignment is expected to be completed in three (3) months from the commencement date.

6.0 Reporting

The Consultant will report to the Senior Advisory Officer at the AECF and the KKCF Program Manager.

7.0 Proposal Submission

Interested and qualified consulting individuals or teams are invited to submit their proposal(s) comprising the following:

a) A technical proposal, max 10 pages (excluding annexes)

• An understanding of the consultancy requirements.
• Methodology and work plan for performing the assignment underpinned by a demonstration of value for money
• Detailed reference list indicating the scope and magnitude of similar assignments.
• Relevant services undertaken in the last five (5) years.
• Letters of reference from at least 3 previous companies/assignments
• Registration and other relevant statutory documents (this applies to Institutional consultants).
• All documents related to the technical proposal must be compiled into a single PDF file, organized with a clear Table of Contents

b) A financial proposal

• Clearly showing the proposed team member, roles, and proposed days and the proposed professional fee (daily rate and total amount per team member). The financial proposal shall also include an indication of reimbursables (travel, communication etc.). Currency to be in KES.

 

N/B: TECHNICAL AND FINANCIAL PROPOSALS BE SUBMITTED SEPARATELY. COMBINING THE FINANCIAL AND TECHNICAL DOCUMENT AS ONE DOCUMENT WILL AUTOMATICALLY DISQUALIFY THE APPLICANT.

 

8.0 Qualifications and Experience

The Consulting Firm should possess the following skills and/or credentials:

• Minimum of 5 years of experience in working with SACCOS and MSMEs in credit risk management or similar assignments for lead consultants.
• Experience in developing a credit management framework and manuals for SACCOs.
• Strong understanding of SACCO operations and business model.
• Experience in training teams and developing effective credit risk management policies and procedures.
• Experience in providing implementation oversight and staff training.
• Excellent analytical, communication, and reporting skills.
• Knowledge of the development sector and in particular, working in the Kakuma/Kalobeyei area is an added advantage.
• An advanced degree in credit risk management, banking, or a related field for the lead consultant(s) will be a plus.
• Experience in Islamic Finance will be a plus.

9.0 Evaluation Criteria

MANDATORY EVALUATION CRITERIA.

a)  Mandatory Requirements for firms: –

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

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 to be supported. All members will be bound by the same standards of confidentiality. The consultant should ensure that they fully respond to all criteria to be comprehensively evaluated.

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

In deciding the final selection of qualified bidder, the technical quality of the proposal will be given a weighting of 80% based on the evaluation criteria. Only the financial proposal of those bidders who qualify technically will be opened. The financial proposal will be allocated a weighting of 20% and the proposals will be ranked in terms of total points scored.

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

Key Areas for Evaluation/ Assessment	Weighted Award
(i)  TECHNICAL PROPOSAL	80
a) An understanding of the consultancy requirements;	10
b) Methodology and detailed work-plan that will deliver the best value on the assignment:	30
c) Relevant services undertaken by the bidder in past engagements:
–          Minimum of 5 years of experience in working with SACCOS and MSMEs in credit risk management or similar assignments for lead consultants. –          Experience in developing a credit management framework and manuals for SACCOs. –          Strong understanding of SACCO operations and business model. –          Experience in training teams and developing effective credit risk management policies and procedures. –          Experience in providing implementation oversight and staff training. –          Excellent analytical, communication, and reporting skills. –          Knowledge of the development sector and in particular, working in the Kakuma/Kalobeyei area is an added advantage. –          An advanced degree in credit risk management, banking, or a related field for the lead consultant(s) will be a plus. –          Experience in Islamic Finance will be a plus.	30
d) Detailed reference list indicating the scope and magnitude of similar assignments and at least 2 signed Letters of reference from past customers or associates to the consulting firm/ consultant:	10
ii)  FINANCIAL PROPOSAL	20
–          Clarity, relevance, reality to market value/ value for money of cost for the assignment (inclusive of any applicable tax)

 

10.0 Pricing

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

11.0 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 consultancy firms are requested to submit their technical and financial proposal to aecfprocurement@aecfafrica.org by 12^th June, 5pm EAT
• All questions should be directed to the procurement email by 5^th June 2025, 5pm EAT.
• The subject of the email should be “TERMS OF REFERENCE FOR CONSULTANCY SERVICES TO DEVELOP CREDIT RISK MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK IN KAKUMA-KALOBEYEI AREA”. The AECF shall not be liable for not opening proposals that are submitted with a different subject or responding to questions that did not meet the deadline as indicated.

 12.0 Disclaimer

AECF reserves the right to determine the structure of the process, 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 reach out directly to the AECF Procurement Department.