Review of Uganda’s National Export Strategy (NES) for the period 2008-2010, and the Preparation of Phase II of NES for the period 2011-2015
Reference: PX/UGA/0493
Location: Uganda
Duration: 100 person days or 20 person weeks
Closing Date: 29 Sep 2011
1. Background
The Uganda National Export Strategy (NES) covering the period 2008-2012 was officially launched by the Ugandan President on 7th October 2007.The NES development and implementation was coordinated by the Uganda Export Promotion Board (UEPB) in pursuit of its statutory role as provided by function 6(e) of the 1996 UEPB statute. The NES Vision is “A dynamic and competitive export driven economy for national prosperity and development”. This Vision is to be realised by pursuing the following principal objectives:
- To increase the contribution of exports to the economic and social transformation of Uganda by focusing on wealth creation, prosperity for all, employment generation, gender equality and regional development.
- To enhance the competitiveness of Uganda’s exports through developing supply side capabilities, improving the quality of the business operating environment, reducing the cost of doing business and enhancing demand side conditions such as market access, in market support and branding.
- To provide effective trade support services (market information, trade finance and competence development, trade promotion, quality management) to enable export enterprises to operate better in international markets.
- To enhance coherence of export support policies, improve inter institutional coordination and strengthen the capacity of export support institutions to effectively provide adequate services to the export sector.
2. Progress made on the implementation of NES
Internal progress reports produced by the Uganda Export Promotion Board show that the implementation of NES has made the following achievements:
Institutional Strengthening: UEPB which serves as a NES Secretariat and lead coordination agency has been strengthened with additional human resources (15 new staff) and a budgetary increment of over 200%. UEPB is now better placed to coordinate the activities of several national institutions involved with the NES implementation.
Heightened Stakeholder Support: Over 25 institutions have committed their staff as NES implementation focal officers. These ensure adequate planning for NES under the institutions and provide regular reports to the UEPB.
Budget Boost to Strategic Cross Cutting Issues of the NES: roads and energy continue to receive major budget support. On infrastructure for example, between 2008/9 and 2008/10, the budget allocation levels have raised from Shs 511 billion to Shs 948 billion representing a 86% increase over the period. In the energy sector, the Government of Uganda continues to expand the energy fund and use the proceeds to build the resource base for investing in additional hydropower generation plants. The fund is now estimated at US$ 350 million and is being used to build plants, the biggest being the 250 MW under construction at Jinja.
Improvement in other sectors: The financial sector is one such sector which has registered remarkable progress as seen by the new products such as commercial bank credit to the private sector has for example been expanding rapidly with Shs 3.5 trillion in 2010 from Shs 2.6 trillion in the 2009. Though the cost of credit remains high, it is evident that with the increasing competition in the banking sector, reductions will be possible very soon.
Development Partner Support to NES: Since the launch of the NES, a number of donors/development partners have been positive and shown considerable support to NES implementation. Details of the NES direct donors and the projects being supported are highlighted below.
Irish Aid: this is funding the ‘Market-linked’ program which supports market development and promotion components of the NES. The program involves training, organizing and leading companies from the manufacturing sub sector of foods and beverages into Uganda’s neighbouring EAC Market. The program is for 5 years and it began in 2008. It has for far supported 30 companies.
Netherlands Trust Fund (NTF) is a 3 year program for improving the competitiveness of Uganda’s coffee sector. The US$ 2million project is being implemented by ITC and CBI focuses on improving the marketability of coffee produced by over 120 producer associations countrywide under National Union of Coffee Agri-business Enterprises (NUCAFE) and Uganda Coffee Farmers Alliance (UCFA). The program began in November 2010.
The Commonwealth Secretariat is supporting 2 projects; one with a focus on improving Uganda’s education as a service export and another on building the capacity of Uganda’s export enterprises to improve trade flows in the EAC region. The two programs began in 2010 and will proceed up to 2011. The former benefits over 22 Ugandan universities while the latter will have trained over 300 Uganda exporters by March 2011.
DANIDA is actively supporting several farmer groups in Eastern Uganda particularly in the agricultural sector where they fund the implementation of production capabilities and competitiveness improvement programs. Although, the program is being implemented interdependent of UEPB, its conception built on recommendations of the NES implementation team at UEPB that was elaborately consulted during the project’s inception phase.
DFID; is funding Trademark East Africa which in turn has extended support to UEPB to implement an EAC market opportunities Outreach Project. The project seeks to support UEPB to adequately provide market intelligence and information services to business community in accordance with NES provisions. The project began in 2010 and it will benefit over 600 enterprises and business support organizations in the market information circuit in the country.
Training, a combined number of 500 exporters, export trainers and business support organizations have benefited from a range of various export development competence and capacity development programs1 . These training interventions are now guided by a professionally developed export training curriculum2. These training programs are expected to produce highly skilled exporters able to effectively manage export operations on various trading houses and environments.
Promotional programmes, a combined total of 150 exporters from various sectors of crafts, fruits, coffee, tourism, have benefited from various promotional events. These have opened more doors of market opportunities in several countries including Japan, Spain, Italy, China, England, Korea, and regionally; in Tanzania, South Sudan, Rwanda to mention but a few3.
Market Information, UEPB established 4 national trade information and export development centres in Northern Uganda (Gulu), Western Uganda (Bushenyi), Eastern Uganda at Mbale, and North-western Uganda at Arua. 2010 performance reports from these centres indicated that over 200 potential and actual exporters are using these centres for export information and other business development services.
The mode of market information delivery via the regional centers has been supplemented by radio and print media campaigns4 and the publication of a strategic market forecast5 for over 50 Uganda exportable products and services from various NES sectors. The forecast details out for exporters market trends and opportunities.
3. This consultancy
We are looking for an experienced consultant to undertake an independent evaluation of the NES project since its launch in October 2007 and to provide technical support in the development of Phase II of NES covering the period 2011-2015.
Scope of work
This project has two components; (i) Evaluation of the NES, 2008-2011 and (ii) Development of the NES Phase II covering the period, 2011-2015.
i) Evaluation of NES 2008 - 2011
This is a summative evaluation. The objective is to provide evidence of achievements and successes. The specific tasks to be undertaken under this component of the assignment are:
- To assess the extent to which the strategy has achieved its aims and objectives
- To assess the impacts, benefits and value of the strategy to the wider Ugandan economy and national development
- To identify achievements and success stories and to engage the community in providing sector feedback
- To synthesize knowledge from the strategy and lessons learnt
- To review the NES implementation structures
- To identify areas that would need to be addressed in the second phase of the NES
The output of this component of the assignment is the production of a report highlighting key findings, successes and shortcomings with recommendations on how to address the latter. The report should include answers to the following questions:
- Have strategy objectives been met?
- Have strategy outcomes been achieved?
- What are the key findings?
- What impact did the strategy have?
- What tangible benefits are there for the stakeholders?
- Was the approach that was used in the development and implementation effective?
- What lessons have we learnt?
- What would we do differently?
ii) Development of NES -Phase II, covering period 2011-2015
The development of the NES Phase II covering the period 2011-2015 will involve the following:
- Creating a working relationship with all key stakeholders in executing the strategy
- Aligning the strategy with the new Uganda national development plan
- Reviewing the NES vision and principal objectives
- Developing an objective and acceptable criteria for sector and cross cutting sectors prioritisation
- Engaging resource holder ministries from the outset in providing resource indicators and direction
- Providing capacity building support to NES implementation institutions as part of the NES development process
The output of this component of the project is a well elaborated national export strategy that responds to the following questions:
- What do we want the NES to achieve?
- What sectors are of strategic importance or have the potential to exploit market opportunities and achieve the NES objectives?
- What structures, services and support do exporters need in order to be more competitive?
- How can we address those needs and create an environment that will enable exporters to be more competitive?
- What is the best way to get all of our organisations to work together to improve export competitiveness?
- How can we manage, monitor and evaluate the implementation of the NES?
4. Deliverables and timeframes
The Consultant will be expected to produce the following deliverables:
i) The NES Review component
This component is expected to take twelve weeks from inception to the submission of the final report. The deliverables are as follows:
- Inception report - 3 weeks on signing the contract. This report should contain a detailed work plan for both the NES review component and the NES Phase II components and should include tools that have been developed to carry out the exercise.
- First draft report of the NES review - four weeks after the submission of inception report. The draft report should include lists of people interviewed and organisations visited and annexure of any testimonials and success stories.
- National symposium on NES review - three weeks after the submission of the first draft report of the NES review. The national symposium will provide the forum for disseminating the NES review report to a wide cross section of stakeholders for their comments and inputs. This forum will also be used to launch the second phase of the NES.
- Final NES review report - two weeks after the national symposium. The final NES review report should incorporate comments and inputs from the national symposium.
ii) The NES Phase II components
This component is expected to take fourteen weeks from start to the production of the final NES document. The deliverables are as follows:
- First draft NES Phase II report - four weeks after the NES review national symposium.
- National symposium on the NES Phase II - four weeks after the submission of first draft NES Phase II report.
- First final draft of NES Phase II and the organisation of an NES implementation action plan workshop for implementing agencies - three weeks after the national symposium.
- Final NES Phase II documents including the NES implementation action plan as an addendum - three weeks after the NES implementation action plan workshop.
5. Consultants competencies
The required competencies for the Consultant or consulting firm to undertake this exercise are as follows:
- The Team Leader should have a minimum of a Masters degree in Business Administration or Economics or the equivalents.
- The Team Leader should have a minimum of 10 years consulting experience and/or working experience in a technical assistance delivery environment part of which should be in the African region.
- The Team Leader should have at least 10 years experience in the design and delivery of trade and export development projects.
- The Team Leader should have at least 10m years experience in project evaluations.
6. Required
Interested Consultants and consulting firms should submit their technical and financial proposals detailing the following:
i) Technical proposal
Consultants understanding of the Terms of reference, work plan and the methodology to be adopted in the execution of the project. The CVs of all consultants to be used in the project should be attached.
ii) Financial proposal
A detailed financial proposal showing level of effort per consultant in days/months, daily fees per consultant and other personnel to be used in the project. The proposal should also show a schedule and cost of travel, accommodation, subsistence and other costs related to the delivery of the project.
Note: The Commonwealth Secretariat will cover the costs of all scheduled workshops separately.
[1] See NES Progress Report for details of the trainings
[2] An Export Development and Promotion Training (EDTP) Curriculum was printed in 2010 and distributed to the country’s main business support organizations to standardize export training across board.
[3] See NES Progress Report and UEPB 2009 Annual Report for the full list of fairs and number of beneficiaries. The report is available on http://www.ugandaexportsonline.com/
[4] See 2009 UEPB Annual Report for frequency of export information media programs
[5] See http://www.ugandaexportsonline.com/ for the Strategic Market Forecast.
Download the Terms of Reference
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