AGRA is an African-led organization focused on putting farmers at the center of our continent’s growing economy. AGRA advances uniquely African solutions to sustainably raise farmers’ productivity and connect them to a growing marketplace. Together with its partners—including researchers, donors, African governments, the private sector, and civil society—AGRA seeks to create an environment where Africa sustainably feeds itself.

Agriculture plays a very key role in SSA, contributing to over 20% to GDP in most countries and employing over 70% of the population inspite of its low productivity and low incomes. While there has been significant improvement in Governments commitment to the sector, there is need to rally all key stakeholders around a common vision of eradicating food insecurity by 2030, a target that calls for concerted efforts, alliances, and narratives across the Fourth Estate.

Through our AGRA 2023-2027 Corporate Strategy, AGRA sets out to catalyze the growth of sustainable food systems across Africa by influencing and leveraging partners to build a robust enabling environment where the private sector thrives, and smallholders are empowered to produce sufficient, healthy food.

As a convener of actors in the food systems sector, AGRA is seeking contract experienced, knowledgeable and well networked communicators or journalists with capacity to produce multi-media content specifically for the agricultural development sector. They will most likely be highly networked professionals with interest and experience in the public sector and be excited about contributing to the development of relevant sector intelligence, insights, stories, and documentaries aligned to AGRA’s country change narratives and business line focused. The agriculture sector is a critical sector of discussion in relevant fora (public, private and academia) hence to need to support Africa’s agenda to building resilient food systems by 2030.

OBJECTIVES OF CONSULTANCY

a) Produce comprehensive, nuanced stories and content across media formats that highlight the systemic challenges, opportunities, and interconnections within the food system landscape in AGRA Zambia’s areas of Agriculture transformation based on CIEA’s strategy and AGRA Zambia change narrative.

b) Leverage most influential networks in Zambia and collaborate with key opinion leaders to effectively amplify AGRA’s advocacy messages and drive dialogue around food system transformation.

c) Facilitate direct engagement and knowledge sharing between AGRA Zambia, the Southern Region and in-country decision makers to drive policy and systems change practices.

d) Deliver a consistent cadence of high-quality, impactful content including feature stories, op-eds, and innovative impact/knowledge stories to influence public discourse and private sector investments.

e) Provide robust media monitoring, analysis, and insights to support AGRA’s broader advocacy and engagement efforts at the country, regional, and continental levels.

SCOPE OF WORKS
To achieve the above objective, AGRA associates or partner media institutions must be able to do the following:

a) Research, interview and put together comprehensive stories in the sector on any topic relevant to what is happening in the food system landscape, nuanced to the countries we operate in.

b) Have a strong grasp of what the challenges and opportunities exist within the food system space, and more specifically, in the countries in which we operate. They should also be able to understand the linkages between policy, job creation, trade, health, poverty, gender, and malnutrition and the impact this may have on food systems and small holder farming livelihoods.

c) Have excellent networks, contacts and collaborations with key opinion leaders that can amplify advocacy messages across multi-media.

d) Well-networked and respected in the country to be able to directly seek and get appointments with the decision makers in the country for discourse and knowledge sharing.

e) Must be able to curate content across multi-media formats and can produce quality work on time and in full.

DELIVERABLES

• Mobilize key stakeholders for sector dialogues and discourses in their respective countries.
• Ensure country events are regularly covered -generate and publish at least one substantive feature story per month across multi-media.
• Facilitate at least one media interview per month and write and place at least one Op-ed per Month
• Write and publish a minimum of one innovative impact story or knowledge-inspiring / influencing story per quarter across relevant media outlets.
• Undertake multi-media coverage tracking and insights development for key stakeholders in-country and regionally/ continental.
• Contribute to other AGRA conveying engagements e.g. AGRF, Africa Food Prize, CALA, Value4Her and Generation Africa et al.