NIRAS-WWB Technical Proposal for Preferred Provider for MEF/GGSF TAF

Our Frameworks and Facilities for Gender Equality and Economic Empowerment

Discover some of our experiences below

NIRAS is Sidas trusted Framework and HelpDesk Partner

For over 15 years, NIRAS has been working closely with the Swedish Development Agency (Sida) headquarters to provide various frameworks and helpdesks services. Through these frameworks, we have helped Sida to develop and implement effective policies, tools, training programs and capacity building initiatives for its staff and partners.

We are committed to advancing the rights, representation and access to resources of women and girls, especially those who face multiple forms of discrimination and marginalisation. We use an intersectional approach that recognises and addresses the diverse realities and needs of women and girls in different contexts.

European Union: EU4Gender Equality: Reform Help Desk

NIRAS runs a Helpdesk service for six countries: Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, and Moldova. The Helpdesk helps these countries and EU delegations to use gender analysis in their decisions and reforms. The goal is to make sure that everyone benefits from the changes.

The Helpdesk does many things to share knowledge and build skills. For example, it organises trainings, visits, conferences, and research. It also collects and organises useful information. These activities help the people in charge to include gender issues in their work and policies.

One of the Helpdesk’s projects is to support the people involved in the Ukraine conflict. The Helpdesk works with the UN Resolution 1325 to protect women’s rights and prevent violence. It also helps the government to inform people about the dangers of trafficking and sexual violence. It also trains civil servants to help people who had to leave their homes because of the war.

Civil Society Roadmap Facility

Roadmaps (RMs) are meant to improve the impact, predictability and visibility of EU actions and to ensure consistency and synergy of support to Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) through the various sectors covered by EU external relations.

NIRAS’s support covers any of the countries eligible under the Development Cooperation Instrument (DCI), depending on the request formulated by the delegations (EUD). The specific aim of this assignment is to provide strategic support and guidance to the EU (namely EUDs and DG INTPA) – and conceivably to other relevant stakeholders, including Members States, other international organisations at country level, and CSOs at global, regional and/or country level – in the process of developing, implementing and monitoring the RMs. This will be achieved through the establishment and running of a dedicated demand-driven support mechanism – the Roadmap Facility – acting both at global and country level, and allowing for the mobilisation of highly qualified technical assistance.

An important aspect of the Roadmap Facility is the amplification of women and youth voices. During the contract period the EU Delegations have developed regular and effective dialogue with women CSOs, ensuring that valuable perspectives in order to understand and address gender challenges and discrimination across social, economic, and political domains in the partner countries.

AFD’s Partner for Gender Equality

NIRAS works with AFD, the French development agency, to make sure all its projects improve gender equality. The framework contract has two types of projects:

Gender-specific projects: These projects focus on gender equality.
Mainstreamed gender projects: These projects include gender issues as part of their goals.

We support AFD project teams in their headquarters and regions and help them to find and plan new projects in all sectors, using gender analysis and tools. Our services are gender diagnostics, technical assistance, gender equality action plans, project appraisals, review of gender strategies, and training courses.

Some examples of our work are:

Making a gender diagnostic and plan for Nigelec, the public electricity company in Niger.
Making a diagnostic and gender plan for an employment and education/training center in Guinea.
Helping AFD HQ with gender toolkits in areas like governance, public finance, climate change, justice and prison, migration, and public administration reform.

Framework Contract: Financial Intermediaries under the EFSD Guarantee ‘NASIRA’ (TA2)

Within the NASIRA framework, the NIRAS-led consortium was selected to provide TA to Equity Bank Kenya and Equity Foundation Kenya with the expansion of their services to end beneficiaries. Through the framework, NIRAS has supported the development or strengthening of business development services (BDS) programmes as well as the development of new non-financial services (NFS).

The programme aims to support Financial Intermediary (FI) clients of FMO which participate in the ‘NASIRA’ Risk Sharing Facility, as well as their end beneficiaries (migrant, women and youth entrepreneurs) across Sub-Saharan Africa and the European Neighbourhood countries. NASIRA is a €75 million programme which works to reduce the risk of lending to these end beneficiaries by working with the FIs to share the risk of lending to the end beneficiaries (a bilateral risk-sharing approach) and providing technical assistance to FIs in strengthening their internal capacity and service offerings.

The instrument for mobilising and delivering Technical Assistance is the TA2 Framework which sits alongside the NASIRA Facility and has a total possible TA budget of 2,5 million EUR. The goal of the TA2 Framework is to deliver services which strengthen the FIs’ ability to effectively provide finance and high-quality offerings to migrant, women and youth entrepreneurs.

NIRAS and the EU Framework Contract SIEA 2018, Lot 3

In the FWC SIEA 2018, the Directorate-General for International Partnerships (DG INTPA) uses these FWCs to support the implementation of EU external aid by facilitating the formulation and implementation of EU’s international partnership and development policy, with the ultimate goal of reducing poverty, ensure sustainable development, promote democracy and human rights and the rule of law across the globe. FWCs support the European Commission and decentralised authorities in their efforts to achieve the 17 SDGs.

NIRAS is part of five of six awarded lots in the FWC SIEA 2018, covering a broad range of technical areas. NIRAS leads Lot 1 (Sustainable Management of Natural Resources and Resilience) and Lot 3 (Human Rights, Democracy and Peace). NIRAS is a partner in Lot 2 (Infrastructure, Sustainable Growth and Jobs), Lot 4: (Human Development and Safety Net), and Lot 6 (Innovative Financing for Development).

The objective of this Framework Contract is to provide expertise via individual assignments defined and contracted through Specific Contracts for various EC Delegations and Beneficiary countries covering any geographic area in the world, either inside or outside the EU. The list of main sectors covered by the specific calls under FWC LOT 3 is as follows: Human rights, democracy and rule of law; Enhancement of the role of civil society; Local Authorities and Decentralisation; Migration; Conflict prevention and resolution, Peace and Security.

Framework Contract for the Provision of Services to SADC Secretariat

Since the beginning of 2021, NIRAS has also been managing the FWC for the provision of services for the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC). Committed to regional integration and poverty reduction, SADC encompasses 16 member states from Southern Africa with the common aim of improving people’s living standards through collective self-reliance. The economic community achieves this by pooling of resources and ensuring a high degree of harmonisation and rationalisation across the region.

The SADC Framework Contract (FWC) is a is a rapid and specialised recruitment, deployment and implementation response mechanism that ensures timely and relevant technical inputs to the specific activities and projects of the SADC Secretariat.

Under a two-year FWC, NIRAS is delivering bids with the aim to support the SADC Secretariat with individual consultancies for three priority areas for cooperation, namely peace, security & regional stability; regional economic integration; and regional natural resource management. We also deliver services in the cross-cutting area of institutional capacity building. NIRAS’s engagement in the FWC reflects our aspiration to empower local experts and staying committed in the long run.