Background

The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), with support from the CGIAR Scaling for Impact Program, is collaborating with ACRE Africa, an agricultural insurance intermediary, and a Kenyan agricultural microfinance institution (MFI) on a study on de-risking agricultural lending in Kenya. The study examines how bundling agricultural insurance with credit affects smallholder farmers' insurance uptake, loan repayment, agricultural investment and capacity to recover from climate shocks, which is especially relevant ahead of the heavy rainfall forecast for Kenya's 2026 short rains.

The MFI began offering ACRE Africa's crop insurance bundled with its loans in 2026 in pilot branches. About 511 farmers have enrolled since March 2026, and 35 received payouts in August 2026. The farmer survey will document insured farmers' experience with the product and its payouts, identify why other farmers chose not to enroll, assess preferences for product features and willingness to pay, and capture credit use, farming practices, climate shocks and loan repayment. It will also serve as a follow-up survey for randomized insurance subsidy coupons, to analyze the short-term impacts of insurance over the 2026 short rains season.

IFPRI is seeking a survey implementing firm to obtain the required approvals and to collect, clean and deliver the survey data. The firm will survey up to 1,000 MFI client farmers in person across 12 pilot locations, covering (1) farmers who took up the bundled insurance, including all 35 who received payouts, and (2) farmers who were offered insurance but did not enroll. Each interview is expected to last about 60 minutes. The period of performance is November 15, 2026 to March 31, 2027, with fieldwork expected in February 2027.

Scope of work

• Workplan and approvals: Develop a survey workplan and field schedule in consultation with IFPRI and the MFI; obtain the NACOSTI research permit, ethics clearance from a Kenyan accredited ethics review committee, and county-level authorizations, using protocol documents provided by IFPRI. No fieldwork may begin before IFPRI IRB approval, the NACOSTI permit and local ethics clearance are in place.

• Questionnaire programming: Translate the questionnaire and consent forms into local languages as needed and program them in SurveyCTO or equivalent CAPI software, with skip logic and consistency checks, incorporating IFPRI feedback.

• Team recruitment and training: Recruit experienced, gender-balanced enumerators and field supervisors with Kiswahili and relevant local language skills; train them jointly with IFPRI over about 5 days, including field practice mock interviews in a non-sample community; provide tablets for CAPI data collection.

• Data collection: Locate and interview sampled farmers using IFPRI's respondent lists, with informed consent from every respondent; supervise fieldwork with back-checks on at least 10% of interviews and daily data uploads; send IFPRI weekly progress reports against sampling targets.

• Data protection and delivery: Handle personal data in line with Kenya's Data Protection Act, 2019 and the approval conditions; keep respondent lists and partner information confidential; clean and document the data and deliver de-identified datasets, a codebook, a separately secured identifier file and a field implementation report.

Deliverable

• Survey workplan (tranche 1)
• Report on training and field testing (tranche 2)
• Final dataset and fieldwork report (tranche 3)

Required qualifications of the survey firm

• Experience implementing farmer or household surveys in Kenya, including programming of the survey instrument in SurveyCTO or similar CAPI software, and supervision of enumerators.

• A demonstrated record of obtaining NACOSTI research permits, ethics approvals from Kenyan accredited ethics review committees, and county-level authorizations quickly.

• Experience conducting surveys within research consortia, including using survey frames provided by partner organizations and managing these relationships professionally and sensitively.

• Field presence or enumerator networks in or near the survey branches, with Kiswahili and relevant local language skills, and the ability to field gender-balanced enumerator teams.

• Demonstrated timeliness in implementation.

Preferred qualifications

• Experience surveying smallholder farmers on agricultural finance, credit, insurance, or digital financial services.

Application requirements

This requisition is open only to firms meeting the qualifications in the posting above. Interested firms must submit, through the online application by November 09, 2026.

• A technical proposal covering approvals, sampling and respondent tracking, training, fieldwork, quality control and data protection, with a workplan and a feasible timeline for each phase.

• CVs of the survey manager and key field staff.

• Examples of recent surveys in Kenya, including NACOSTI permits obtained and how long each took, with at least 3 client references.

• An itemized cost proposal in KES and USD covering personnel, permit, and ethics fees, training, field costs, tablets and software, and overhead. Programming of the survey instrument should be costed separately. The total cost proposal should not exceed USD 50,000.

Application deadline

November 09, 2026