BACKGROUND

WUSC is a leading Canadian international development organization that works with and through its southern partners to promote sustainable development. Founded in 1957 and currently working in 25 countries worldwide with an annual budget of approximately $40 million dollars, WUSC’s mission is to foster human development and global understanding through education and training. Our internationally recognized programs support youth, women and other marginalized populations, focusing on three thematic areas of education, employment and empowerment. Globally, WUSC works with a network of higher education institutions, civil society organizations, private sector partners, professionals, students, volunteers, faculty and community leaders that can be leveraged to support our work. 

The Accelerating Change Through InnoVation in Agricultural TVET (ACTIVATE) project is a 5-year collaborative initiative that will contribute to a stronger, gender-responsive, socially inclusive and market-driven Agriculture Technical, Vocational Education and Training (ATVET) System that facilitates sustainable employment pathways, well-being and resilience of young women and men in Ghana. The ACTIVATE Project encourages innovation with a focus on agriculture TVET, agri-business skills development and transition to employment & economic opportunities for young people.
 

The project will reduce gender specific barriers, elevate the voice and aspirations of youth and integrate a strong inclusivity lens, with respect to gender and disability while building collaboration and linkages among key stakeholders such as public and private actors, academia, and agriculture value chain actors to create decent work for young people.
ACTIVATE will respond to key challenges facing the agriculture and adjacent sectors (defined as sectors  that are directly or indirectly aligned with agriculture such as ICT and logistics) including insufficient management capacity of ATVET sector facilitation bodies, non-alignment of new TVET policies and reforms across sector ministries, low quality of ATVET instruction, curriculum and equipment, lack of ATVET engagement with industry, poor business skills among others.

Our theory of change is premised on the idea that if the functions within the ATVET system are strengthened (skills, coordination, regulatory environment) with respect to productivity and accessibility and agriculture related training programmes provided to youth are quality, innovative and industry relevant, then Ghanaian youth will access decent, fulfilling and sustained work through diverse employability pathways. 

 

 

1. Pre-tertiary level - farm and secondary technical institutes which provide training for the majority of basic level occupations for those who have not finished their schooling or have completed junior school. These audiences have lower literacy and numeracy levels and typically have no formal training before entering the sector.
2. Tertiary level - Agriculture colleges which offer a variety of programmes including Diploma in Agriculture, Agricultural extension and Certificate in General Agriculture. These programs support the development of skills for technicians and associate professionals and professionals and middle level manager occupations in Agriculture engineering, agripreneurship, food and post harvest technology etc offered by the technical universities (formerly polytechnics) and some traditional and private universities.
3. Short courses - In addition to formal ATVET institutions, the project will also work with formal and informal training providers to deliver short courses to out of school youth in recognition of the significant numbers of rural youth and women who are often unable to access formal training opportunities. Short courses through training providers will primarily target out of school and rural youth as well as youth actively working in agriculture and desiring recognition or top-up for economic and/or career growth. For this reason, the training will be complementary to the curriculum at formal institutes. 

WUSC wishes to retain a firm, consultant, or group of consultants to conduct a GESI-integrated labour market analysis (LMA) for agriculture and adjacent sectors in Ghana focused on validating potential sectors and sub-sectors of focus for the ACTIVATE project and exploring GESI considerations within this work. The analysis should be conducted in collaboration with WUSC and its project partners, building on preliminary research conducted during the project design and start-up stage. The assignment will be completed in close coordination with the WUSC Economic Opportunity Advisor, GESI Advisor(s) and ATVET Advisor who will share key initial research in an inception meeting to be held at the start of the assignment. 

The GESI-LMA will employ a market systems approach to understanding supply and demand constraints facing young men and young women in promising agriculture and adjacent sectors/sub-sectors graduating from agricultural technical vocational education and training institutions (ATVETs) at both the pre-tertiary and tertiary levels. The goal of the GESI-integrated LMA will be to validate and further research priority agriculture and adjacent sectors/sub-sectors for support through the project, identify specific occupations important to those sectors and relevant sub-sectors, identify key private and public sector actors, explore questions related to GESI within the analysis,  identify key challenges and opportunities as well as focus key actions for capacity building and change. 

This LMA should integrate gender equality and considerations throughout and include an in-depth GESI analysis.

 

 

The study should capture key elements of the economic, agriculture, climate change and ATVET context at both a national and regional level.    

 

• To what extent do current laws, policies, regulations, and institutional practices promote gender equality and equal protections within the agriculture and TVET context? 
• Do laws, policies, regulations, and institutional practices have explicit or inexplicit biases? 
• Are there any secondary or unintentional consequences of existing policies and practices on various groups (consider intersecting power differentials e.g., gender, age, disability, location, religion)? 
• To what extent are laws, regulations, and policies implemented? 
• Are there any gaps in legislation? If so, what are the impacts? On whom? 
• Are there any risks related to gender-based violence to be aware of? (consider intersecting power differentials e.g., gender, age, disability, location, religion) 
• What protections exist? For whom? 
• What, if any, changes have there been to laws, policies, regulations, and institutional practices? How do these changes affect who has power? 

• What other programs exist that are supporting gender equality in agriculture and TVET?
• What are the institutional capacity gaps that hinder advancing gender equality within key actors in the sectors?
• What is the relationship regarding gender equality between the intervention and other actions and organizations — national, regional or international?
• Who are the women’s rights organizations operating in the economic opportunities/agriculture/TVET space, women’s rights more broadly, shifting social norms to promote gender equality, and/or gender-based violence?

In addition, this section should include an overview of services, institutions and programs operating in the GESI space which may provide opportunities for change or entry points for working on GESI within the agriculture and ATVET sectors. Some questions to consider: 

Dimension	Key questions to explored within each region of Ghana
Access to and control over resources, and assets;	How does access, use, and control of resources vary based on intersecting power differentials, like gender, age, disability, location? Do women and men have equal access to resources including finance, technologies, information, and services within the specific intervention areas of the project? What inhibits or promotes access to resources? Who manages or controls access to resources? How do social institutions and practices shape access? Do women and men have equal access to education, technical knowledge, and/or skill upgrading?  Document any gaps in enrollment/attainment disaggregated by subject area (including gender gaps in applications, enrollment, and graduation).  Consider how changing access and control dynamics could affect women’s safety.
Cultural norms, social norms and beliefs;	What norms, beliefs, and practices related to women’s and men’s roles and responsibilities in agricultural work, education and at home are widely accepted or shunned in this setting? Are they related to intersecting power differentials like gender, minority group, economic status or other? How do these common norms, beliefs and practices uphold gender and social inequalities? How do they shape who has power or privilege? To what extent are social norms and beliefs upheld by community and societal institutions (e.g., ATVET institutions, governance structures)? Who promotes popular beliefs, norms, or practices? Who is most impacted? What are the consequences of violating social norms for different groups? How do these perceptions about norms differ between men and women? Other groups?
Patterns of power and decision-making;	What barriers prevent, or drivers help people make decisions about their own activities (e.g., education, work, agricultural products etc.)? Who has power to influence household decisions? How are decisions made (e.g., is there joint/shared decision- making between spouses, with parents, with children)? To what extent can young women and men influence household decision-making within their families? Who participates in the decision making in the household and agriculture operations? Are the bargaining positions of women and men different? What formal/informal rules dictate a woman’s decision-making abilities?

• Who are the most important core market actors in the system? Which agricultural value chains show the most opportunities for growth? To what extent are young men and young women active market actors in these core value chains? Where is there potential for young men and young women to be increasingly engaged in these roles?  Where is the potential for transformative changes related to gender equality?
• What are the most important supporting functions, and who are the most important actors within? To what extent are young men and young women able to access these supporting functions? Are there specific social norms impacting how young women and young men access (or not) these supporting functions? Where are young men and young women active in providing these services/where are their opportunities to increase their engagement? What actions are needed to change/expand their roles and access to supporting functions? 
• What are the core rules and policies and norms that impact labour markets within the chosen sub-sectors/sectors and occupations? What rules (formal and informal) impact young men and young women specifically? What changes are needed to improve the participation of these groups in this sector?   

• Co-develop a detailed work plan in close consultation with WUSC and key partners. The workplan will clarify and refine the overall approach, methodology and timing for the study.
• Review and provide feedback on draft tools and templates developed by WUSC, including key research questions, GESI-integrated information and data collection tools, preliminary sector scoring, analysis approach and report template 
• Collect quantitative and qualitative data, including reviews of secondary information, focus groups and key informant interviews
• Prepare reports as documented in deliverables below.
• Participate in a review and interpretation workshop with WUSC and key stakeholders
• Revise reports and recommendations following workshop results.

• Review and feedback on design methodology, tools and templates to be shared by WUSC 
• Detailed notes from interviews conducted with key stakeholders and summary of relevant data collected through baseline study for selected sector/sub-sector assessments (4 agricultural sub sectors/adjacent sectors)
• A summary report of GESI-integrated labour market study findings co-developed with WUSC’s Economic Opportunity Advisor, GESI Advisor(s) and ATVET Specialist, incorporating all key questions and using the table of contents co-developed with WUSC 
• An interpretation workshop with key stakeholders to analyze key findings from sector-specific research  (organized by WUSC)