The Tony Elumelu Foundation

Project title: The Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme Subject of the RFP: Consulting Services to provide comprehensive business plan review for the Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurs programme

Background

The Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF) is the leading philanthropy empowering a new generation of African entrepreneurs, driving poverty eradication, catalyzing job creation across all 54 African countries, and increasing women economic empowerment. Since the launch of the TEF Entrepreneurship Programme in 2015, the Foundation has trained over 1.5 million young Africans on its digital hub, TEFConnect, and disbursed nearly USD$100 million in direct funding to 18,000 African women and men, who have collectively created over 400,000 direct and indirect jobs. The Foundation’s mission is rooted in Africapitalism, which positions the private sector, and most importantly entrepreneurs, as the catalyst for the social and economic development of the African continent.

The Foundations aims to:

• Promote entrepreneurship development in Africa with a focus on startups and existing MSMEs (Micro Small and Medium Enterprises).
• Provide entrepreneurship skills training to startups and emerging African entrepreneurs.
• Deliver Business Development Services (BDS) necessary for startups and existing MSMEs across Africa for growth and diversification.
• Promote innovation, mentoring, technology development, networks, and market linkages among African Entrepreneurs.
• Undertake initiatives that promote access to affordable credit, working capital, guarantees, and other financial services suitable for startups and small businesses in Africa.
• Advance policy advocacy by facilitating partnerships with state and non-state actors to improve the operating business environment for local enterprises’ development in Africa.
• Setting up systematic monitoring and evaluation of the impact on African Entrepreneurs.
• Engage private sector leaders, corporations, and businesses to support the development of African entrepreneurs.

The TEF Entrepreneurship Programme directly addresses some of the most endemic challenges to African start-ups through a 4-step process:

• An online toolkit– The TEF Entrepreneurship Programme provides access to TEF’s proprietary online Start-up Toolkit training, which is comprehensive, practical training that equips entrepreneurs with resources on financial planning, market analysis, product marketing, business management skills, and many more. Over a period of 8 weeks, the entrepreneurs are assigned training modules with assignments that are completed with dedicated mentors. A weekly webinar is held by TEF to facilitate a deeper understanding of the principles covered and respond to questions. Interpretation in French, Portuguese and Arabic are available for non-English speaking entrepreneurs to follow the training as well.
• Mentoring– The TEF Entrepreneurship Programme matches mentors selected from all over the world with entrepreneurs to coach and guide them through the training window. The mentorship leverages online tools such as the TEFconnect platform, emails, social media, etc. Mentor selection and matching is carefully conducted to ensure alignment with the entrepreneurs’ goals and objective
• Business plan preparation and review– The TEF Entrepreneurship Programme further supports entrepreneurs that have been through the training to develop a business plan using a simplified template provided. After this, a business plan certification competitive process occurs to review, provide feedback, and refine the document to ensure feasibility.
• Seed capital investment– Upon certification of the business plan, the TEF Entrepreneurship Programme and its funding partner will provide a non- refundable seed capital investment of up to USD2,000 or its equivalent in local currency in a corporate bank account in the business name of the entrepreneur. A due diligence exercise is conducted in which the entrepreneur is required to fulfill certain compliance criteria before being eligible for the funding.

 

SCOPE of Work

1. Undertake a review of 396 submitted business plans from participants from 7 focus states of Lagos, FCT, Kano, Kaduna, Nasarawa, Niger, and Plateau to
   1. Establish the extent through which the entrepreneur has imbibed/utilized the key learnings from the TEF Business Management Training to advance their ideas/businesses.
   1. Determine the level of readiness (or otherwise) of the business with respect to receiving the non-returnable seed capital investment.
   1. Categorize all TEF EP entrepreneurs/businesses based on the degree of effort required by the entrepreneur for her business to be considered ready for the seed capital and select the top 220. [It is worthy to note that exceptional consideration will be given to 69 uniqueparticipants; the selected vendor will be informed of whom they are and why].

REVIEW CRITERIA

The criteria below should be used as the metric for review:

Criteria	Description
Clarity of Value Proposition	Clear description of the business products/services and how this will solve the customers ‘problem or need or meet the desired need.
Financial Preparation	Evidence of understanding financial management and accounting concepts.
Application of TEF Business Management Training	A demonstration of the knowledge gained during the TEF Business Management Training Programme.
Clarity of Milestones/Implementation Plan	Clear identification of milestones during the execution of the business.
Quality of Key Assumptions	Use sound assumptions in arriving at market share assumptions, sales estimates, cost estimates and other indicated financial valuations in the plan.

Methodology

• The provider will use the methodology/criteria listed above for the business plan reviews.
  • Recommendations should have a clear audience and be specific, accessible, and actionable.
  • Appendices should include a list of evaluators, evaluator(s) brief biography, and measured indicator metrics.

Ethical Considerations

It is expected that this business plan review will be ethically conducted. Proposals submitted should adhere to inclusion principles (i.e fair representation across all states for selected participants.) in the review.

In addition, the vendor is required to respect the following Ethical Principles1:

• Comprehensive and systematic inquiry: The consultant should make the most of the existing information and the full range of stakeholders available at the time of the review. He or she should communicate his or her methods and approaches accurately and in sufficient detail to allow others to understand, interpret and critique his or her work. He or she should make clear the limitations of the review and its results.
• Competence: The consultant should possess the abilities, skills, and experience appropriate to undertake the tasks proposed and should practice within the limits of his or her professional training and competence.
• Honesty and integrity: The consultant should be transparent with any conflict of interest, any change made in the negotiated project plan and the reasons why those changes were made, any risk that certain procedures or activities produce misleading review information.
• Respect for people: the firm respects the security, dignity, and self-worth of respondents and program participants. The consultant has the responsibility to be sensitive to and respect differences amongst participants in culture, religion, gender, disability, age, and ethnicity.

Quality Assurance and Management

All proposals will be reviewed and approved by TEF Team prior to acceptance and selection of the final vendor. The proposal detailing the proposed method and work plan is also to be approved by the TEF team.

Timeline

2 weeks (commencing on October 1, 2023)

Minimum Organizational Requirements

• Sound general organizational capacity and demonstrated ability to provide sound business plan review services.
• Have suitably qualified key experts for the provision of the services including experts in Business Strategy, Finance/Accounting experience, and Market Research.
• Experience in similar work with top tier organizations on similar programme or projects.

Criteria for Selection

Upon the advertisement of the RFP, a qualified Consultancy Firm is expected to submit the proposal with an inclusive commercial:

• Having received the highest score out of a pre-determined set of weighted technical and financial criteria specific to the solicitation. In this regard, the respective weight of the proposals are:

STANDARD TECHNICAL PROPOSAL EVALUATION CRITERIA

S/N	Summary of Technical Proposal Evaluation Forms	Score weight	Points Obtainable
1	The Expertise of Firm/Organization	20%	200
2	Proposed Methodology, approach and implementation plan	40%	400
3	Management structure and key personnel	20%	200
4	Budget	20%	200
	Total	100%	1000

 

Confidentiality and PROPRIETARY Interests

The consultants shall not either during the term or after the termination of the assignment, disclose any proprietary or confidential information related to the project without prior written consent. Proprietary interests in all materials and documents prepared by the consultants under the assignment shall become and remain properties of the Tony Elumelu Foundation.

Annex

Annex I. Vendor Deliverables and timeline

	Vendor Deliverables	Beneficiaries	Timeline
A	Business Plan review of 396 women	220 Women	2 Weeks

Send your proposals to Tender@tonyelumelufoundation.org