Title of Assignment: Developing a country report to constitute the Guinea Bissau chapter of ECOWAS investment profile on the mango sector
Duty Station: Home-based
Expected Start Date: 20 November 2021
Expected End Date: 30 Avril 2022
BACKGROUND
The International Trade Centre (ITC), a joint agency of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the United Nations (UN), is the only multilateral agency fully dedicated to supporting internationalisation of SMEs. ITC’s mission is to foster inclusive and sustainable growth and development through trade and international business development. ITC’s projects and programmes contribute to the global efforts to achieve UN Global Goals for Sustainable Development and Aid for Trade Agenda.
ITC is an implementing agency of the West Africa Competitiveness (WACOMP) programme along with United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), in collaboration with the ECOWAS Commission.
WACOMP aims to support a number of selected value chains at national and regional levels to promote structural transformation and better access to regional and international markets, while taking into account social and environmental concerns.
It consists of one regional component (WACOMP Regional) and sixteen national components (15 ECOWAS Member States and Mauritania).
The overall objective of WACOMP Regional, which covers the 16 countries, is to strengthen the competitiveness of West African countries and enhance their integration into the regional and international trading system, through an enhanced level of production, transformation and export capacities of the private sectors in line with the regional and national industrial and SME strategies.
Its specific objectives are to:
1) to improve the performance, growth and contribution to the industry, regional trade and exports of selected value chains;
2) to improve the climate for business at national and regional levels.
To achieve the above-mentioned objective 2, ITC’s Trade Facilitation and Policy for Business section (TFPB) is responsible for the achievement of:
- Output 2.2: Regional policy and framework to improve industrial competitiveness are harmonised, formulated and monitored.
Under this output, TFPB is in charge of implementing:
- Activity 2.2.1: Promoting FDI partnership agreements with counterparts in the South (e.g. India, Brazil) and in the North (with EU countries) that foster increased advanced technology and know-how transfer.
Despite its national and regional investment promotion schemes, there is indeed a dire need to increase FDI in the region, in particular, value-chain driven investments. For this purpose, ECOWAS and ECOWAS Member States networking capacities need to be improved with North and South investors.
In this regard, WACOMP Regional will support ECOWAS in the development of sector investment profiles covering selected Member States for the target value chains covered by the project, namely mango, cassava, textiles and garments, and ICT. The objective of these Investment Profiles is two-fold:
- to assist foreign investors, in terms of understanding the investment climate, receiving the latest research and market insights, and identifying investment opportunities in the selected sectors; and
- to enable public and private sector representatives to promote investment in the selected value chains, particularly in the ECOWAS countries presenting a high potential for increased value-chain driven investment that can contribute to improved participation in regional and international trade and value chains.
The present terms of reference (ToR) concern the development of a sector-specific Investment Profile type of report to be incorporated as the Guinea Bissau Chapter of the ECOWAS Investment Profile on the Mango Sector. This report will provide an in-depth value chain analysis, with recommendations for very precise and most bankable investment opportunities in the mango sector.
To the extent relevant, the report should be developed bearing in mind the objective of promoting increased value-chain investments that can contribute to enhanced intra-regional trade, increased added value created within the region, and to the development of regional value chains. Thus, it should also address existing and potential backward and forward linkages including with ECOWAS countries that are not dedicated to a specific chapter.
To undertake this activity, ITC will contract a National Consultant (NC) to produce this report (subsequently referred to as “Guinea Bissau Report” in this ToR), working in close collaboration with a Consulting Firm (CF) contracted to lead the development of the Sectoral Parts of the ECOWAS Investment Profile on the Mango Sector.
To learn more about this opening, Download the full TOR via the link below
