Terms of Reference (TOR)- Impact Assessment of the Access to Agricultural Markets and Trade Co-Guarantee Fund

Background

Since 2012, GROOTS Kenya has been implementing the “Accelerating Rural Women’s Access to Agricultural Markets and Trade” Project with funding from the Japan Social Development Fund (JSDF) through the World Bank. The project was conceived against the backdrop of entrenched gender inequalities in Kenya’s agricultural sector, where women, despite being the backbone of smallholder farming, face systemic barriers in accessing markets, finance, productive assets, extension services, infrastructure, and decision-making spaces. These barriers have historically limited women’s productivity, reduced their returns from agricultural labour, and constrained their ability to benefit meaningfully from agricultural markets and trade. It also built on GROOTS Kenya’s longstanding experience as a national women-led movement that has, since 1995, organized grassroots women to engage in collective action, leadership, advocacy, and community development. The project drew from GROOTS Kenya’s existing strengths in women’s group formation, participatory community processes, community-led advocacy, peer learning, mentorship, and practical livelihood support. In this sense, the initiative represented both a response to structural inequalities in agriculture and an organic progression of GROOTS Kenya’s broader mission to strengthen grassroots women as agents of social and economic transformation. The original project design was informed by participatory consultations and prior analytical work on women’s access to markets and trade, and it was anchored in approaches that GROOTS Kenya had already tested and refined through its movement practice.

From the onset, the project adopted a value chain approach, focusing on three enterprises: horticulture, dairy, and indigenous poultry. In Nakuru, the selected value chains were horticulture and dairy, while in Kitui, the project focused on horticulture and indigenous poultry, reflecting the differing agro-ecological and livelihood realities of the two counties. The project was further designed around five mutually reinforcing components: organizing women farmers to work collectively for economic empowerment; enhancing women’s lobbying and advocacy capacities for essential services and factors of production; strengthening women’s business capacities and market linkages; improving women’s access to financial services and enterprise support; and ensuring project management, monitoring, and evaluation. Since then, the project has organized 677 farmer groups across Kitui and Nakuru in the following constituencies: Molo, Kuresoi North, Kuresoi South, Naivasha, Subukia, Bahati, Nakuru town West, Rongai, Njoro in Nakuru County, and Kitui Rural, Kitui West, Kitui Central, Kitui South, Kitui East, Mwingi North, Mwingi Central, and Mwingi West in Kitui County.

The project also sought to strengthen women’s market participation through business development, coaching, and enterprise support. The project supported 401 women to emerge as lead entrepreneurs, while many others now run small-scale and group-based enterprises. Women farmers were linked to formal and informal markets through market champions, collective marketing structures, and relationships with buyers and processors. An evaluation conducted in 2017 found that the project had substantially improved women’s business participation and incomes, noting that the average monthly farm income of participating farmers rose by 488.6% from KES 8,396 at the baseline to KES 49,416, while many beneficiaries reported stronger decision-making power, higher productivity, and improved household wellbeing. The farmers were also able to secure and service market contracts with Happy Cow, Olenguruone Cooperative, Norda Industries, among others.

A further distinguishing element of the project was its financial inclusion component. The original design envisioned a pathway through which women would progressively strengthen their savings culture, financial literacy, access to affordable credit, and enterprise growth through structured financial mechanisms. This included grant and loan instruments under the wider Seed Grant Fund architecture, and later the operationalization of a co-guarantee based financing arrangement to support women’s access to credit through formal banking channels. As such, in 2015, GROOTS Kenya entered into a partnertship with a commercial bank to operationalize Group Revolving Funds (GRF) for amounts below KES 100,000 and Lead Entrepreneur Funds (LEF) for larger individual enterprise investments above KES 100,000, which formed the foundation of the financial inclusion model. This co-guarantee financing model has undergone several iterations to adapt to borrower feedback and changes in the external market. To date, the partnership with the commercial bank has advanced loans amounting to KES 106,118,600 to 1825 borrowers.

Parallel to the Guaranteed Fund, GROOTS Kenya, drawing from its historical experience in advancing affordable credit to rural women, established a SACCO in 2017 and continues to provide credit to the target group and beyond to date. This trajectory is important because it reflects a longer-term institutional intention to build sustainable, women-responsive financing pathways beyond the life of externally supported guarantee arrangements. The SACCO, therefore, forms part of the broader story of how GROOTS Kenya has sought to deepen women’s access to appropriate financial services over time, drawing lessons from the project while exploring more sustainable internal and community-rooted financing mechanisms.

Purpose and objectives of the Assignment

The purpose of this assignment is to undertake an impact assessment of the Access to Agricultural Markets and Trade Fund (Co- Guarantee Fund) held by the Commercial bank. The assessment will aim to analyse the barriers and enablers to accessing the co-guarantee fund. The assessment will further document lessons learned, unintended outcomes, and viable options for strengthening or redesigning financial inclusion approaches.

Specific Objectives:

1. Assess the extent to which the objectives of the partnership with the commercial bank were achieved.
2. Assess the effectiveness of the guarantee facility towards enhancing financial inclusion for grassroots women in their intersectionality.
3. Identify challenges, gaps, and unintended outcomes that affected fund performance.
4. Capture lessons learned and best practices under the fund implementation for replication, scaling, and sustainability.
5. Document compelling stories of change to support internal learning, partner reporting, and public communication.
6. Generate evidence and strategic recommendations to inform GROOTS Kenya’s strategy, donor reporting, and potential future investments towards maximizing financial inclusion impacts in agriculture for grassroots women.

Key Deliverables

The consultant will be responsible for delivering the following outputs:

• Inception Report: A concise inception report detailing the consultant’s understanding of the assignment, refined methodology, evaluation framework, sampling strategy, data collection tools, analysis plan, quality assurance measures, and work plan.
• Data Collection Tools and Protocols: Finalized quantitative and qualitative tools, including interview guides, discussion guides, survey instruments, consent protocols, and any case study templates.
• Draft Impact Assessment Report: A draft report presenting preliminary findings, analysis, conclusions, lessons learned, and recommendations for review by GROOTS Kenya.
• Final Impact Assessment Report: A revised and finalized report of not more than 30 pages excluding annexes, incorporating comments from GROOTS Kenya and other designated reviewers.

Knowledge Products: Include a success story and case study compendium; and a PowerPoint presentation summarizing key findings, lessons, and recommendations for the board, funding partners, and management users.

Consultant Qualifications and Experience

• Master’s degree (or equivalent experience) in banking, finance, agricultural economics, development finance, rural development and financing, and other relevant financial inclusion fields.
• Experience in feminist evaluation methodologies, participatory research, or monitoring and evaluation (M&E).
• Over 10 years of experience in related assignments
• Demonstrated track record of conducting impact assessments for movements, networks, or advocacy organizations.
• Experience working with grassroots communities, especially women in rural and marginalized settings.
• Demonstrated ability to facilitate participatory processes with grassroots women.
• Commitment to valuing lived experience as knowledge, not just academic or institutional expertise.
• Ability to speak fluently in Kiswahili & English, and preferably other relevant local languages.
• Strong knowledge of gender mainstreaming in alternative financial and market systems in Kenya.

Commencement of Consultancy

The consultancy is expected to commence on 25th May 2026.

Application Requirements and Process

Interested consultants/firms must submit:

• Technical Proposal (max 10 pages) including:
  • Understanding of the ToRs
  • Proposed approach, methodology, and work plan
  • Composition and qualifications of the team (if applicable)
  • At least 2 relevant examples of similar work (links or summaries)
  
  
• Financial Proposal in Kenya Shillings with a detailed budget breakdown
• References from previous clients.

Applications should be sent to talent@grootskenya.org with the subject line. Impact Assessment Consultancy by EOD 6th May 2026

Tagged as: Agriculture, Food Security and Livelihoods