Company Profile

Established in 2005, Fairtrade Africa is the independent non-profit umbrella organization representing all Fairtrade certified producers in Africa. Currently, the organization represents over 1,083,139 producers across 28 countries in Africa.
Fairtrade Africa is owned by its members, who are African producer organizations certified against international Fairtrade Standards producing traditional export commodities such as coffee, cocoa, tea, cut flowers, cane sugar, wine, cotton, bananas, mango, pineapples and non-traditional commodities including shea butter, rooibos tea, vegetables and fresh and dry fruits. Fairtrade Africa is made up of both Small Producer Organizations (SPOs) and Hired Labour Organizations (HLO). In HLOs, the focus is on supporting companies that employ hired labour to supply better working conditions for their workers while in SPOs the focus is on members who are smallholders who run their farms mainly using their own and their family labour.

Fairtrade Africa’s interventions are guided by the Fairtrade Theory of Change which visually expresses how these ultimately lead to global Fairtrade Goals. You can read more about FTA at www.fairtradeafrica.net

Job Description

Call for show of interest from F3E, Max Havelaar France and Fairtrade Africa: Capitalising on support for the agro-ecological transition of cocoa farming in Ghana

 Activities and stakeholders

Fairtrade International (FI) is a movement that promotes fair international trade. It brings together national NGOs, including Max Havelaar France (MHF), and three producer networks, including Fairtrade Africa (FTA), which gathers Fairtrade-certified producer organisations. MHF and FTA work in partnership to connect producers in African countries with committed businesses and consumers, while developing targeted development projects. FTA has a team dedicated to implementing development programs, including experts in areas such as climate change, gender and youth inclusion.

In this context, FTA is implementing projects that adopt dynamic agroforestry (DAF) approaches on cocoa farms. FTA is convinced DAF is an innovative approach to strengthen the environmental and economic resilience of Fairtrade- certified producers. The GAIM (Ghana Agroforestry for Impact) project is one of the initiatives contributing to this effort and will serve as a case study for the capitalisation process.

The GAIM project, implemented from July 2023 to June 2026 by MHF and FTA, aims to improve the livelihoods and climate resilience of small-scale Fairtrade cocoa farmers in the North and South Asunafo districts, in the Ahafo region of Ghana, by supporting their agroecological transition.

In order to ensure the long-term impact of their projects, MHF and FTA are strongly committed to cooperatives, considering them as both beneficiaries and partners in the transition process. In addition, the project includes specific initiatives focused on women and youth leadership - such as the Women's Leadership School. This component aims at encouraging the intergenerational transfer of knowledge and gender mainstreaming, which are key pillars of the Fairtrade movement's approach.

The capitalisation aims to identify the conditions for success and areas for improvement in the implementation of agroforestry projects in a cocoa-farming context. By doing so, the capitalisation report will identify the conditions for efficient implementation of this type of project, in terms of technical, economic and social aspects.

Various participants will be put to contribution to carry out the study:

• Farmers who have converted their cocoa farm to agroforestry
• Field agents, youth workers and executives of producer organisations
• Participants of the women and youth leadership modules
• The GAIM project teams at Fairtrade Africa and Max Havelaar France
• Experts and representatives from relevant national and international organisations and companies based in Ghana

The capitalisation project

Objectives

The aim of this capitalisation report is to draw on the experience of dynamic agroforestry (DAF) projects that were launched in Ghana. This method will enable to study cross-cutting lessons that can support future agro-ecological transition projects and influence the strategies of stakeholders involved in developing the cocoa sector.

Learnings and improvements expected :

• Organisational within the Fairtrade movement. The study will strengthen support practices for Fairtrade certified producers and more generally for the Fairtrade movement by setting up a continuous learning process and an exchange between peers;
• Finally, this study will be used as a foundation to develop advocacy positioning papers in support of agroforestry for public policies.

Object

This capitalisation study will focus on the following key themes:

• Agroecological innovations: What are the main practices, methods and added value of dynamic agroforestry?
• What factors enable farmers to optimise the adoption of DAF?
• Activities relating to gender and youth: How have activities been carried out to integrate gender and youth- related challenges into agro-ecology projects? What support methods are used to better consider these aspects in programs?
• Support and capacity-building methods: what support and exchange practices are needed to ensure that agro- ecological innovations are adopted and sustained?
• Prospective considerations: what recommendations can be given to support the large-scale adoption of dynamic agroforestry, particularly with regard to the limitations linked to public policies and institutional solutions for the development of agroforestry in the region?

Income from capitalisation

The expected deliverables (produced in English) are :

• A framework note of the methodology for the carrying out of the capitalisation report;
• The questionnaires deployed;
• The raw database containing the information collected thanks to the questionnaires;
• An intermediary and final report presenting the lessons learnt, observations, analyses and proposals in relation to the object of the capitalisation;
• A summary of the final report (no more than 5 pages);
• 3 "factsheets" of 1 page each summarising 3 key questions (to be specified after submission of the intermediary report), in a format that can be used for marketing/fundraising purposes;
• The Power Point presentations used during the presentations

Proposed schedule

This capitalisation process will run from July 2025 to December 2025. The planned stages of capitalisation are as follows:

• Launch and framing, including a methodological note, a pre-framing meeting and a framing meeting, in the presence of the capitalisation steering committee and the F3E.
• Collection of testimonies, experiences and practices in cocoa farming in the Ahafo region of Ghana, to be produced in August-September 2025
• Analysis of the data collected following the interviews, discussions and workshops on the field and remotely.
• Intermediary report and presentation to the remote steering committee.
• Final deliverables and dissemination, with the organisation of 2 final face-to-face or distance learning presentations.

The maximum budget for this study is €28,000 including VAT. This budget includes the consultants' fees, per diems and travel expenses for the consultants when they travel, as well as any communication and administrative expenses incurred by the consultant(s). Some local travel costs may be covered by the GAIM project.

Suggested timetable

• Call-for-proposal: mid-May 2025
• Selection of consultant: end of June 2025
• Signature of agreement and start of assignment: beginning July 2025
• Framing meeting: end of July
• Fieldwork and data collection: August-September
• Intermediary study report: October 2025
• Final report and feedback: December 2025.

Required Skills or Experience

Expected expertise of the consultants

The expertise required is as follows:

• Experience in leading capitalisation processes;
• Experience in working with POs in West Africa, including some knowledge of international supply chains;
• Experience in agronomic projects, preferably in the cocoa sector;
• In-depth knowledge of capacity building processes;
• Expertise in gender equality and the inclusion of young people;
• Perfect command English and French (spoken and written), knowledge of Twi is an additional asset;
• Ability to encourage all participants, regardless of their position, to express themselves;
• Capacity to analyse, summarise and write data and reports;
• Experience working alongside a member of the Fairtrade movement is an additional asset.