International Labour Organization. Terms of Reference

Transcription

1 International Labour Organization Terms of Reference Development of a Simplified Business Registration & Training Application for Young (Male and Female) Entrepreneurs I. Background and justification January 2019, Dar es Salaam The small entrepreneur holds the key to rapid technological development and full employment. He offers a means whereby new employment opportunities can be created in rural areas. The small entrepreneur would not only provide himself with livelihood, but would create employment for others, thereby easing up social tension growing in an atmosphere where so many are deprived Nelson (1977, p. 889) 1 In the past few years Tanzania sustained a strong economic growth averaging around 7% per annum. However, the transformation is based on few capital-intensive sectors, is largely urban based, and has failed to translate into meaningful poverty reduction due to, among other things, its failure to create enough jobs to hasten the reduction of income inequalities among people and regions and improve livelihoods. On the other hand, the Tanzania demographic structure is characterized by a large population of young people. For example, the proportion of the population aged is the second highest age group, 34.6% of the mainland population and 36.2% of Zanzibar. Such developments point towards an increasing demand for employment opportunities among industry and service sector especially for youth, a necessary ingredient in maintaining social harmony and progress towards poverty reduction targets. Nevertheless, Tanzania lacks targeted interventions to capitalize on the demographic dividends, e.g. development and application of facilitative policies and regulations to support youth enterprise development, enable business development and the formalization of informal businesses owned by youth. This could provide more opportunities for decent jobs and income generation for youth. ILO believes that enterprises are a principal source of growth, wealth creation, employment and decent work and are fundamental for sustainable development, a major tool for achieving decent work, sustainable development and innovation to improve standards of living and social conditions and are principal source of growth, wealth creation, employment and decent work in most countries. Likewise, organization for economic cooperation and development (OECD) admits that small and medium-sized enterprises account for 60 to 70 per cent of jobs in most OECD countries, yet, it enlists critical problems confronted by SMEs to be financing and regulatory burdens 2. A survey of SMEs in 2012 estimated that there were 2.75 million MSME owners and about 3.16 million MSMEs in Tanzania, contributing around 27% of the GDP and employing more than 5.2 million people. Of these enterprises, 97.1% were micro, with 66.1% of the total being own account (one person) activities. Problems that persist for SMEs, according to experts, include: an unfavorable legal and regulatory framework, underdeveloped 1 Nelson, E.R. (1977). Entrepreneurship Education in Developing Countries. Journal of Asian Survey. 17( 9), OECD, Small Businesses, Job Creation and Growth: Facts, Obstacles and Best Practices on Accessed on 26/09/2018 1

2 infrastructure, weak business development services, limited access to finance, and ineffective and poorly coordinated institutional support 1. Tanzania government aims to promote SME development by maintaining macroeconomic stability; reviewing the tax regime; simplifying licensing procedures; and implementing a competition policy and a program called Business Environment Strengthening for Tanzania (BEST) 4 The Small and Medium Enterprise Development Policy outlines strategies for implementing the SME development policy, which focuses on three main areas: creating an enabling business environment, developing financial and nonfinancial services, and putting in place supportive institutional infrastructure. This includes strategies for a legal and regulatory framework, physical infrastructure, business development services (including entrepreneurship development, business training, information, technology, marketing and access to finance), and an institutional framework for SME development. Along, there have been efforts by the development partners in collaboration with the government agencies to easy access to information related to business regulation. An example is the eregulations (developed by UNCTAD); an online database designed to provide investors and entrepreneurs with full transparency on investment related procedures in Tanzania. Nonetheless, the policy frameworks and efforts have always been general with more focus to foreign investors and experienced, well financed local entrepreneurs with no focus on young entrepreneurs, as a result this group could not keep the preferred speed in enterprise development irrespective of their unemployment challenges. There are many other reasons; lack of experience and business skills among youth and the absence of mechanisms for mentoring and business counseling, lack of access to finance and capital. Overall bureaucratic and long registration processes and general business environment add to their difficulties in setting up businesses, coupled with the lacking information and access. Worse still, Tanzania was ranked 137 for doing business and 162 for starting a business out of 190 economies in the World Bank s 2018 ranking 5. This reality albeit affecting every startup business, it bears more impacts for already marginalized groupings such as unexperienced young women and men entrepreneurs. Furthermore, young entrepreneurs are facing different hindrances to realize their entrepreneurial drives and establish enterprises, as such they need a different approach in which a more interesting and friendly guidance is packaged. They need a youth-friendly environment, enabling, encouraging and supportive policy, regulatory and information frameworks. Information must be available about the nature of the labor market; functioning of welfare, social protection and health systems as well as the entrepreneurship related knowledge that is required to set up a business. Access to information about regulations should be made available to them at minimum cost. This assignment seeks to address some of these challenges, specifically, it intends to ease the business registration and regulatory burdens for youth as well as introducing targeted and basic business concepts for them in a more focused and suitable manner. Linkage to the Reporting Frameworks This activity is linked to ILO P&B Outcome 4 Promoting Sustainable Enterprises and Indicator 4.2: Number of member States in which effective interventions to directly assist sustainable enterprises as well as potential entrepreneurs have been designed and implemented. It contributes to the country program outcome (CPO); TZA102; Strengthened women and youth entrepreneurship development policies and programmes especially in rural economy to create more decent work and a just transition to environmental sustainability and relates to CPO; TZA 100: Poverty reduction through creation of decent work opportunities for young women and men, ILO recommendation R.189 on Job Creation in Small 1 Argidius Foundation by Enabling Outcomes Ltd (May 20170, Tanzania Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Growth Landscape 2

3 and Medium-Sized Enterprises as well as to the resolution and conclusions concerning the promotion of sustainable enterprises adopted by the ILC at its 96th Session (2007), including support to micro, small and medium-sized enterprises and entrepreneurship. ILO Recommendation 204 concerning the Transition from the Informal to the Formal Economy. Within UNDAP the activity merges two activities; 1) Facilitation of BDS simplified including business registration processes for young male and female entrepreneurs and 3) Increased business knowledge and social security for young entrepreneurs links with activity 2) Improved access to finance and markets for World Bank. Doing Business Ranking; accessed on 26/09/2018 young male and female entrepreneurs, together they contribute to the Key Activity : Promoting employment through Sustainable Enterprise Development, which in turn contributes to the UNDAP Output 3: Targeted enterprises (individual, cooperatives) enabled to expand, add value to their products and move up the value chain across the country with a focus on youth. It will be measured and reported under indicator of targeted informal (product, manufacturing and agro processing) enterprises formalized. II. Overall Objective This particular assignment, focuses on Facilitation of BDS simplified including business registration processes for young male and female entrepreneurs to contribute to the promoting employment through Enterprise Development. This will be done through the development of an application that will allow young entrepreneurs to easily access business related information and register their business on their smart phone and thus start the process of formalization. It will entail the recruitment and engagement of an application/system development organization (consultant) who will work closely with the Business registration and regulatory authorities as well as business support and facilitation organizations; Business Registration and Licensing Authority, Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA), other ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), Local Government Authorities (LGAs), National Identification Authority (NIDA), Community Social organization (CSOs), UN Agencies and development partners to link and develop an on-line registration information available to young entrepreneurs, including those based in rural areas and especially young women entrepreneurs. Preference will be given young Tanzania Information and Communication Technology entrepreneurs so as to link with the objective of the assignment as well as the Regional Director s initiative on Digital Skills for Decent Jobs for Youth in Africa The consultant will work directly with the ILO Economic Growth and Employment (EG&E) team to design and develop the application and will host and manage throughout the system development life cycle phases (SDLC). There after ILO in consultation with the regulatory authorities, the beneficiaries, constituents, and stakeholders will agree on who should host the application. III. Scope of Work Specific tasks: i. System Concept Development; define the scope or boundary of the concepts; e.g. what are the registration processes requirements and stages for the different registration points we are focusing 3

4 on including system/application documents and risk management plan. This will be presentation to the ILO team before we move to the subsequent stages. ii. iii. Requirements Analysis; Analyse user needs and develops user requirements to ensure the new system/app can meet their expectations. This is the phase at which end users can discuss and determine their specific business registration information needs for the proposed system/app. Contact relevant authorities and existing platforms for the linkages and endorsement; at this stage we will need to justify why we need to develop a youth friendly application basing on their specific requirements. What value and use are we adding to the existing systems; mobile interface, integration of business related information, and focus provide starting selling points iv. Planning; develop assignment management plan and other planning documents. This is the stage at which, and taking into consideration the existing systems, application and platforms, identify whether or not there is the need for a new system to achieve the anticipated objectives. The purpose is to find out the scope of the problem and determine solutions. v. Systems Design; Transform detailed requirements into complete, detailed system design documents focusing on how to deliver the required functionality. Describes, in detail, the necessary specifications, features and operations that will satisfy the functional requirements of the proposed system/app which will be in place. Consideration of the essential components (hardware and/or software) structure (networking capabilities), processing and procedures for the system to accomplish its objectives is also done at this stage. vi. vii. viii. Development; design is converted into a complete information system; acquiring and installing systems environment; creating and testing databases, preparing test case, coding, compiling, refining programs. Integration and Testing; quality assurance to ensure the developed system conforms to requirements as specified in the functional requirements document. Produce Test Analysis Reports. A Quality Assurance (QA) professional or a regulator could be engaged at this stage. The testing will be performed until the end user finds it acceptable. Verification and validation is also done at this stage. Implementation; Application of the system into use and resolution of problems identified in the integration and test phases. Both system analysts and end-users should now see the realization and observe the changes. ix. Operations and Maintenance; Describing tasks to operate and maintain the application/system, it includes post-implementation and in-phase process review and regular updates. i.e. fine-tuning the system, to boost performance, add new capabilities or meet additional user requirements. x. Registration and uploading/publishing; Submit the App to the mobile phone platforms for access and use, i.e. creation of a Google Play developer account (Google Play for android systems), App store for (ios system) and for Windows xi. Introduction and Launching; this will be a media campaign to introduce the application to the potential users, we may need to monitor use, effectiveness and impact at this stage. 4

5 IV. Expected Outputs The assignment should result in the following specific outputs: 1. Assignment reports 2. A hybrid application to be used across multiple platforms i.e. that can be deployed on both ios and Android platforms as well as and Windows 3. Application test and feedback reports 4. Initial use monitoring report and audit trail V. Reporting Lines The comapny(s) will work under overall guidance of the project implementation team in ILO Dar es Salaam. VI. Timeline (tentative) End of 2 nd Week of February 2019 End of February 2019 End of 1 st Week of March 2019 End of March 2019 End of 2nd Week of April End of 2nd Week of April End of April 2019 By May 2019: System Concept Development completed Assignment management plan developed & presented Requirements Analysis report submitted Systems Design presented Actual App Development complete Integration and Testing/quality assurance Implementation/application, operations and maintenance Registration/uploading/publishing/introduction/ launch VII. Requirements i. Young entrepreneur company with deep knowledge and significant experience working in the ICT with bias in applications and computer/mobile systems development ii. Knowledge and Experience developing integrated applications, platforms and systems that links to the government and regulatory portals iii. Knowledge and Experience in Tanzania business regulatory environment and their implication for youth enterprise development initiatives iv. Ability to provide analysis of the youth specific business development requirements v. Excellent communication and coordination skills vi. Fluency in both English & Swahili vii. Advanced training in ICT 5