DEVELOPMENT OF PASTORAL DATA COLLECTION & PAN-AFRICAN STANDARDS & GUIDELINES CONSULTANT

AFRICAN UNION – INTERAFRICAN BUREAU FOR ANIMAL RESOURCES TENDER OCTOBER 2025 

DEVELOPMENT OF PASTORAL DATA COLLECTION & PAN-AFRICAN STANDARDS & GUIDELINES CONSULTANT

Closing date: 29 Oct 2025

Introduction

The Assignment

AU IBAR is operationalizing the African Pastoral Markets Development (APMD) Platform, a continental initiative structured around three pillars: (i) Policy strengthening & implementation, (ii) Private sector engagement, and (iii) Strengthening & diffusion of functional data ecosystems. Kenya and Nigeria are prioritized lighthouse geographies for early operationalization, with lessons to inform broader regional scale up.
Fragmentation of pastoral data systems across institutions (ministries, statistical bureaus, livestock and drought agencies, county/state governments, research bodies, private data vendors, and RECs) leads to inconsistent methods, vocabularies, and classifications. The result is limited interoperability, weak comparability across countries, and constrained use of data for policy, investment, and resilience. A harmonized Pan African standards package for collection and sharing is required to enable consistent, interoperable, and secure exchange of pastoral data across countries and actors.

Contracting Authority Rationale

This consultancy will design a generalized package of Pastoral Data Collection and Sharing Standards & Guidelines (protocols, metadata templates, governance arrangements, and sharing mechanisms) that countries can adopt and adapt while maintaining continental comparability/interoperability—thereby laying the foundation for an integrated pastoral data ecosystem across Africa in line with APMD Data Pillar priorities.

Background

The African Union Inter-African Bureau for Animal Resources (AU-IBAR) is leading the establishment and operationalization of the African Pastoral Markets Development (APMD) Platform, a continental initiative that promotes market-driven, adaptive, and inclusive transformations in pastoralism. The platform is structured around three strategic pillars: policy strengthening and implementation; private sector engagement; and strengthening and diffusion of functional data ecosystems. Kenya and Nigeria have been identified as lighthouse geographies for early operationalization, with lessons intended to inform wider adoption across the Horn of Africa and the Sahel regions.
Pastoralist systems are central to Africa’s rural economies, food security, and trade. They contribute significantly to national GDPs—ranging between 2% and 7% in many countries—and sustain the livelihoods of millions of households. Despite this importance, the pastoral data ecosystems are fragmented, not just across the continent, but even on national levels. Multiple institutions—including ministries, statistical bureaus, livestock and drought management agencies, research organizations, county/state governments, private data vendors, and regional bodies—collect and manage data. Yet these efforts are often siloed, duplicative, and guided by incompatible methodologies, vocabularies, and classifications. Limited coordination and lack of harmonized standards undermine the consistency, usability, and comparability of pastoral data. This, in turn, restricts the ability of governments, market actors, and development partners to design responsive policies, mobilize investment, and strengthen resilience.
The situation is not unique to Kenya and Nigeria (APMD lighthouse counties) but Similar fragmentation is common across the Horn and Sahel countries, where governments, development partners, and private actors operate parallel systems for livestock production, rangeland monitoring, market prices, animal health, and mobility data. Without shared standards for collection and sharing, these systems struggle to interconnect, resulting in gaps in regional market intelligence and limiting opportunities for cross-border trade facilitation. At the same time, demand is growing for coordinated, interoperable data systems that can inform investment, enable timely response to climate shocks, and support evidence-based planning and decision making for the pastoral sector, and beyond.
In response, the APMD Platform has initiated multi-regions consultations with governments, private sector actors, and regional organizations. These consultations have surfaced strong consensus on the need for a common framework for pastoral data collection and sharing—one that sets a minimum level of harmonization across countries while remaining flexible enough to be adapted to each national context. The selected consultant will be provided with final reports of those stakeholders consultative convenings to inform this study.
The outcome of this consultancy will be a generalized package of Pastoral Data Collection and Sharing Standards & Guidelines, including protocols, metadata templates, governance arrangements, and sharing mechanisms. Countries will be able to adopt and amend these standards according to their specific contexts, while maintaining comparability and interoperability at regional and continental levels.
By developing this standards package, the consultancy will help lay the foundations for an integrated pastoral data ecosystem across Africa—one that strengthens evidence for policy, improves private-sector decision-making, and enables timely, coordinated responses to challenges in pastoral markets from Kenya and Nigeria to the Sahel and beyond.

Purpose & Objectives of the Consultancy

The purpose of this consultancy is to develop a continent-wide package of Pastoral Data Collection and Sharing Standards & Guidelines that enhances consistency, usability, interoperability, and accessibility of pastoral data across APMD geographies. These standards will provide a unified framework that facilitates reliable data exchange and comparative analysis across countries.
While Kenya and Nigeria will serve as the initial pilot cases and primary sources of evidence, the Standards & Guidelines will be designed for Pan-African relevance and formulated in a way that allows individual countries to adapt them to their national contexts without losing comparability or cross-border utility.

Specific Objectives

• Review, consolidate, and validate existing consultation instruments, datasets, and evidence from Kenya, Nigeria, and relevant regional initiatives to build a robust evidence base.
• Produce foundational tools for standardization, including: A Core Data-Element List (to define priority information fields); A Common Lexicon (to ensure consistent terminology across geographies); and A Minimal Metadata Template (to support data documentation, traceability, and quality assurance).
• Draft the Pastoral Data Collection and Sharing Standards & Guidelines covering: Data collection protocols and instruments; Metadata standards and quality controls; Interoperability requirements for digital platforms and systems; Governance structures for data access and use; and Protocols for dissemination, cross-border related data exchange, and sharing practices.
• Develop an adaptation and adoption frameworks to support country-level contextualization and adoption, including: Guidance notes for national adaptation while preserving continental comparability; Refined Terms of Reference for Task Forces overseeing implementation; Review and alignment of 12-month work plans for Kenya and Nigeria as demonstration cases for broader continental roll-out..

Scope of Work

The consultant will provide technical leadership to consolidate existing evidence and consultation inputs and develop a continentally generalized package of Pastoral Data Collection and Sharing Standards & Guidelines that can be adopted and adapted across APMD geographies (as indicated in the Specific Objectives, above). The scope will cover the following core areas:

• Consolidate and quality-assure consultation artefacts, datasets, and related evidence from Kenya, Nigeria, and relevant regional initiatives; identify overlaps, gaps, and priority areas that require harmonization; and produce a synthesis that will form the technical evidence base for the Standards & Guidelines.
• Develop the foundational harmonization tools (Design a Core Data-Element List identifying priority information fields relevant to pastoral livestock sector; Develop Common Lexicon to standardize terminology across geographies and disciplines; Create Minimal Metadata Template to insure data quality, traceability, sand comparability) to serve as building blocks for standardization.
• Draft the Pastoral Data Collection and Sharing Standards & Guidelines, addressing standardized protocols and instruments for pastoral data collection; Metadata and quality assurance requirements; Digital and system interoperability provisions; Governance frameworks for data management and access; and Dissemination, and cross-border data-sharing practices.
• Develop practical guidance notes to support country-level contextualization while maintaining continental comparability; Refine and strengthen Terms Of References (TOR) for Task Force that will oversee national adaptation and operationalization; and Review and align the 12-month work plans of Task Forces in Kenya and Nigeria, as demonstration cases for wider continental roll-out.

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