Foreign economic-aid-related services

Tender description

The management of a DFID-CDC Challenge Fund. The challenge fund will focus on unlocking evidence on private sector impacts in emerging markets through open competitive research calls. The challenge fund is a joint initiative between DFID and CDC, the UK's development finance institution. The appointed provider would be required to market the challenge fund, manage all administrative, financial and contractual aspects as well as ensuring deep engagement between researchers and companies and peer review by leading academics. The Department for international development (DFID) would like to contract an organisation for 4,5 years to manage a DFID-CDC challenge fund, with the possibility of a 2-year extension. This challenge fund will be focused on unlocking evidence on private sector impacts in emerging markets through open competitive research calls. The contract will be issued to an organisation to market the challenge fund, manage all administrative, financial and contractual aspects as well as ensuring deep engagement between researchers and companies and peer review by a panel of leading academics. The terms of reference set out guidelines for the scope and timeframe of the challenge fund as well as the functions required of the challenge fund manager. The challenge fund is a joint initiative between DFID and CDC, the UK’s Development finance institution. This is one of a series of pieces of work that will be commissioned to deepen our understanding of the impact of CDC’s work. The challenge fund will be coordinated in parallel with a series of large multi-year evaluations of CDC’s work in each sector (being contracted separately from the challenge fund), as laid out in the DFID-CDC Evaluation and learning programme plan with both complementary work streams helping to build the evidence base for the impact of CDC’s work. The contract will be issued to market, manage, administer and monitor the challenge fund. Purpose of the challenge fund: The purpose of this challenge fund is to crowd in new research that fills critical evidence gaps related to the work of CDC and the impacts of private sector investment, thereby generating useful learnings to enhance development impact. The challenge fund will aim to crowd in research on private sector investment in developing countries, focusing where the current evidence base is weak and where insights are needed on what works, what doesn’t, and why. While the body of research on the impacts of private sector investment in emerging markets has been growing in recent years, this remains a critical area where there is a clear need for more evidence. Research in this area has faced a number of challenges particularly related to gaining access to data, and insights into private sector companies, in order to help ensure that evidence responds to the most pressing and generalisable impact-related questions and needs. The DFID-CDC partnership, given its networks and resources, is well-positioned to crowd in research to help address some of these challenges. The challenge fund will issue calls for proposals that answer a specific set of research questions aligned with the sectoral focus of the DFID-CDC evaluation and learning programme, covering financial institutions, infrastructure, food and agriculture, consumer businesses(including healthcare and education), and industrial businesses, and broader cross-sectoral questions as needed. It could also extend to research to look at cross-cutting issues such as distributional effects (equity, gender), unanticipated effects, environmental effects and economy-wide effects and spillovers. This contract will be let for the management of the challenge fund. The key responsibilities of the supplier will be to: (a) finalise the approach to marketing and managing the challenge fund; (b) proactively market the challenge fund to a wide stakeholder base with potential interest in bidding for research funds; (c) develop required documentation and manage the administration of 3 calls for proposals; (d) implement robust contractual and financial procedures; (e) manage the peer review of draft outputs by academics; (f) assist DFID and CDC with the global dissemination of research.