Background

The UK Department for International Development (DFID) is considering a new research programme to advance the scientific understanding of sub-Saharan African climate on decadal timescales and, working with African stakeholders, bring this science into use to inform long-term climate-resilient development strategies.

This research programme, entitled Future Climate for Africa (FCFA), is intended as a follow-on to the highly successful Climate Science Research Partnership (CSRP) with the UK Met Office Hadley Centre. The new programme will likely launch early 2015 and will bring together a wider international community of natural and social scientists and stakeholders with the aim of producing and enhancing the availability and accessibility of robust and ‘decision relevant’ climate information products to inform climate-resilient investment, policy and strategies across sub-Saharan Africa.

The Future Climate for Africa programme will address two objectives. These are:

i. To generate a robust and ‘decision-relevant’ body of scientific evidence on medium-term (10 - 40 years) climate change to enable effective long-term planning and climate-resilient development across Africa.

ii. To drive research, knowledge sharing and capacity building on how climate projections can be better designed for, delivered and integrated into real decision making today.

Objectives of Future Climate for Africa case-studies                                                                      

In helping the Future Climate for Africa programme and scoping to achieve the goals set-out above, CDKN is commissioning a series of pilot case studies across sub-Saharan Africa (up to four in total).

Each case study will include:

1. A multi-stakeholder, multi-disciplinary workshop in sub-Saharan Africa, focusing on a real (long-term) development/adaptation challenge. Workshops will bring together scientists, scientific data-users, and policy-makers to discuss how climate science might be better integrated into medium-to-long-term (i.e. 5 years +) decision making. Workshops will explore a real-world adaptation decision, such as: How can climate science support more effective design and delivery of social protection schemes? How can science support national development plans in transitioning towards climate-resilient development? How can climate services be of relevance to district and municipal decision-makers?
2. Analyses, stress-testing and generation of relevant scientific information in support of the country workshop and case study research outputs. Scientific information relevant to the development/adaptation challenge will be sought, and feed directly into the case study activities. Science gaps and needs will be identified through prior systematic analysis of existing evidence as well the application of a number of innovative dialogue methods designed to encourage knowledge exchange between scientists and science users during the workshops. The nature of the information needed will depend on the country context, and the development/adaptation decision in question.
3. A series of reports synthesising lessons learned from the country workshops and recommendations for the FCFA research call. The reports will also help to identify gaps in the underpinning climate science and modelling of medium-term climate change in sub-Saharan Africa for the purpose of informing adaptation and climate-resilient development.

Reporting and other deliverables

The successful bidders will be required to deliver a number of research outputs. These will include:

The core set of qualitative (e.g. interviews and focus groups) and quantitative (e.g. surveys and questionnaires) data collected before, during and after the in-country studies;

• A technical report synthesising key outcomes of the pilot (one per case study). This document will be 15-20 pages in length, and provide guidance on key themes and priority areas for FCFA’s scoping phase based on findings from the pilot. Final details and full structure of the report to be agreed at the inception meeting.
• A briefing paper for policy makers. This document will be 3-4 pages long and summarise key findings (one per case study).
• A blog to feature on the CDKN website (one per case study)

In order to express an interest in this opportunity, please complete the following 2 steps:

Step 1:

Send an email to the CDKN Procurement team (cdknetwork.procurement@uk.pwc.com) including the following information:

• Subject line: “RAGL-0003 - Country Pilot Studies for Future Climate for Africa programme”
• Organization/company name
• A sentence confirming your interest in bidding for the project
• A contact name(s), email address and telephone number for the most appropriate person(s) to send further information to regarding bidding.

Step 2:

Your nominated contact(s) will receive an email from the CDKN Procurement team, including an Invitation to Tender document, a Non-Disclosure Agreement, a copy of CDKN’s Expense Policy and the CDKN Terms and Conditions.  Complete the documents and submit these to the CDKN Procurement team (cdknetwork.procurement@uk.pwc.com) before the deadline stated below.

Your documents must be submitted by the deadline of 17.00 UK time on 17th December 2013.