REQUEST FOR EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST

AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT BANK

Immeuble CCIA, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire

African Natural Resources Center

E-mail : M.HARRATHI@AFDB.ORG  

Telephone :  +225 27 20 26 32 13

Department issuing the request : AFRICAN NATURAL RESOURCES CENTER

Position : Individual Consultant

Place of assignment : Home based work with travels

Duration of the assignment :  55 Man days delivered in five (5) Months

Tentative Date of commencement : November 2021

Deadline for applications : 25^th October, 2021

Applications to be submitted to : Maali Harrathi (M.HARRATHI@AFDB.ORG)

With a copy to : JERRY AHADJIE (J.AHADJIE@AFDB.ORG)

Any questions and requests for clarifications may be sent to : JERRY AHADJIE (J.AHADJIE@AFDB.ORG)

TERMS OF REFERENCE

CONSULTANCY SERVICES FOR DEVELOPMENT OF AN ECOWAS STRATEGIC MINERALS FEEDSTOCK AND INPUT DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY

1. Introduction : 

The African Natural Resources Centre (ANRC) is a non-lending entity of the African Development Bank (AfDB). The AfDB established the Centre to support Regional Member Countries (RMCs) to maximize development outcomes derived from their natural resources. The scope of the Centre combines renewable (water, forestry, land and fisheries) and non-renewable resources (oil, gas and minerals). The ANRC’s desired outcomes are better stewardship of African natural resources through good governance, containment of adverse social and environmental impacts, enhancement of linkages with domestic economies and equitable resources access. To achieve this, the Centre advises the Bank’s RMCs on selected aspects of natural resource management, to enable them maximise the social and economic value obtainable from the exploitation of natural resources.

2. Context : 

Africa accounts for 30%¹ of global mineral resources and aspires to derive greater economic value from these resources to contribute to socio-economic development. One of the most obvious means to achieve this is through downstream processing, particularly for key mineral feedstocks into the local/regional economy. By taking advantage of availability of raw materials, countries can leverage natural resources and potentially enhance their comparative economic advantage. However, resource endowment alone is inadequate to afford countries sufficient justification to process minerals without the risk of eroding economic value. The prevailing national economic conditions, economies of scale, international trade environment, state capacity, hard and soft infrastructure are equally important. In order to overcome some of these challenges, ECOWAS with the support of the African Natural Resources Centre, is developing a regional Mineral Feedstocks and Input Development Strategy. 

West Africa is endowed with significant mineral deposits. These include gold, diamonds, iron ore, bauxite, uranium, manganese, lithium, granite, limestone and phosphate. Over the last twenty years, West Africa’s geological craton has increasingly become a focus for exploration and mine development. Due to the enormous mineral potential in the ECOWAS region, the ECOWAS Commission has developed a number of policy and legal frameworks in line with the Revised ECOWAS Treaty and Africa Mining Vision towards sustainable exploitation of the mineral resources to contribute to import substitution and socio-economic development. A missing link, however, is the absence of a clear mineral feedstock strategy to underpin the aspect of mineral-based regional industrialization and integration. To achieve this objective, the ECOWAS Commission has requested for support from the African Development Bank (AfDB) to assist in conducting a study leading to the development of an ECOWAS Strategic Mineral Feedstocks and Inputs Development Strategy.

USGS, Mineral Commodity Summaries, 2020.

3. Study Rationale :

As part of the process of boosting mineral based industrialisation as well as deepening regional cooperation within the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in line with regional and continental frameworks², this study seeks to investigate how a regional approach to utilisation of strategic minerals feedstock will be optimised in generating economies of scale and contributing to industrialisation in the ECOWAS region. Steel and aluminium are some of the critical feedstocks into manufacturing, infrastructure (construction) and together with other ferrous and base metals, can underpin industrialisation through direct and indirect multipliers. A regional approach to the development of the bauxite (aluminium) value chain, integrated iron and steel industry, chlor-alkali industry, battery and technology minerals will help overcome national level challenges by enhancing economies of scale for further processing. This will allow for sharing of input factors and processing facilities, ensuring access to power supply, permitting access to skills, capital and other necessary inputs. For example, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria and Guinea possess significant volumes of bauxite, iron ore, natural gas (for power) and salt (for caustic soda). The integrated aluminium industry will be supported by frameworks that optimize regional benefits along the value chains including, for example, regional local content policies and revenue sharing mechanisms to promote equal development across the participating Member States. In the case of battery minerals, Ghana and Mali have significant lithium resources that can be further investigated for the feasibility of producing battery precursors in the ECOWAS region. A regional approach will also significantly increase the range and quality of deposits of key strategic mineral feedstocks for industrialisation, than would be available to any Member State on its own.

A key element of such a regional approach will be the establishment of a strategic mineral feedstock (for minerals/metals, scrap and intermediates/semis) strategy to realise the regional market economies of scale for local/regional consumption in manufacturing, construction, agriculture, power, etc. At the same time, the strategy will incorporate equitable regional integration through concrete instruments to “level the playing field” for the relatively weaker regional economies (“variable geometry”³) and ameliorate industrial polarisation (where the benefits of integration mainly accrue to the relatively strong economies).

4. Objectives :

The objective is to develop a regional strategic minerals feedstock and mining inputs development strategy. The feedstock strategy will be responding to the imperatives for regional cooperation on mineral-based industrialisation as laid out in the ECOWAS Mineral Development Policy and Africa Mining Vision, which seek to harness mineral resources and to promote the development of an efficient mineral sector⁴, in the context of global climate change and the imperative to transition to Renewable Energy (RE) sources. The feedstock strategy will also be informed by the Banks Hi5⁵ Agenda to support industrialisation and regional integration in Africa with the aim of creating larger, more attractive markets and support intra-African trade.

5. Scope :

The scope includes among others, assessing feedstocks relating to Manufacturing (Steel, polymers, aluminium, copper etc.); Infrastructure (steel, copper, cement from limestone); Energy (fossil fuels, RE minerals and energy storage minerals such as lithium, cobalt, vanadium and zinc); and Agriculture (nitrogen from natural gas, phosphate, potassium, limestone and dolomite) etc. Specifically :

• ECOWAS Treaty, the ECOWAS Minerals Development Policy (EMDP), the Africa Mining Vision (AMV), the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and other continental, regional and national aspirations ;
• Variable geometry: RMCs at different levels of economic development and capabilities/capacities to take advantage of regional integration ;
• See ECOWAS Supplementary Act /SP.16/02/12 relating to the ECOWAS Mineral Development Policy (EMDP) ;
• The Bank Hi5s are: Light Up & Power Africa, Feed Africa, Industrialize Africa, Integrate Africa and Improve the quality of life of the people of Africa ;
• Assess critical inputs for the mining industry and the cross-linkage opportunities for mining and processing capital goods (machinery, plant and equipment), consumables (grinding media, explosives, props, wear parts, caustic soda for gold and alumina production, hydrocarbons for polymers, activated carbon for gold processing, etc.) and services (drilling, analytical, financial, training, ICT, et al) ;
• Assess the bauxite resources in the ECOWAS region, focusing specifically on bauxite resources in Ghana, Guinea and other key producers in the region ;
• Elaborate on the nature of the current aluminium value chain in West Africa and evaluate the prospects of a regional approach to the completion of the value chain using the available capacities (for further processing, smelters and refinery capacities) and electricity (e.g., from natural gas) and energy infrastructure(including the West African Gas Pipeline Company) ;
• Outline the economic setting and the role of the bauxite sector in Ghana and Guinea and ECOWAS ;
• Assess the availability of other key inputs such as cryolite, carbon anodes and caustic soda (NaOH) from chlor-alkali plants, to support integrated regional aluminium value-chain industries, as well as other local uses for the chorine and NaOH from a potential chlor-alkali plant such as the chlorine-chemicals industries (e.g. PVC) ;
• Review the iron ore resources and reductants (coke, coal, gas and hydrogen) in the sub region with the view of using a regional approach to establish an integrated iron and steel industry ;
• Review the potential of RE and storage (battery) and technology minerals, especially lithium & rare earth elements (REEs) and provide pathways for optimal exploitation including production of battery precursors in West Africa ;
• Outline how domestic value chains in the region connect to regional, continental and global value chains, including how mineral and related feedstocks are traded and the current world supply and demand conditions and prospects for the future ;
• Assess the mining supply chain to identify other feedstock requirements and recommend strategies for their development ;
• Analyse technology and skills requirements for optimum development of the mineral backward (inputs) linkages and forward (beneficiation) linkages in the region and identify gaps and propose remedial action ;
• Develop feedstock strategy based on the analysis of the various feedstock identified in the region ;
• Develop an Action Plan to guide the implementation of the Strategy.

6. Specific Expected outcomes of the Assignment :

The key deliverable of the assignment will be a Strategic Mineral Feedstocks and Inputs Development Strategy for the ECOWAS Region to drive regional industrialisation. The strategy will enable ECOWAS to achieve one of the key objectives of the ECOWAS Mineral Development Policy, which aims to facilitate and or optimise the value-chain especially through processing and value addition of the extracted minerals, particularly for local/regional consumption by other sectors (including manufacturing, infrastructure, energy storage and agriculture) and the localisation of the mining and processing supply-chains

7. Approach and Research Methodology :

The development of the strategy will combine research and policy analysis, drawing on country case studies and regional strategies that inform policy options for developing the regional feedstock strategy (e.g., the SADC RMV). Firstly, a desk review of current literature in the area, and an assessment of relevant mineral policy and mineral-based industrilalisation initiatives. The project will generate primary data from interviews with policymakers, industry experts and investment analysts, as well as from global and regional databases (e.g. ITC trade data). For the desk review, the consultant will collect all relevant studies, materials, and statistics produced by relevant government agencies, multilateral organisations and other parties, NGOs and/or research institutes, and detail the outcomes of these studies, as a starting point to reveal the main constraints and opportunities for developing and implementing a mineral feedstocks and inputs strategy for the ECOWAS region. Primary data collection in the field may be undertaken to collect missing data, verification/ground truthing of critical value chain data, assess the specific situation and engage with ECOWAS and other potential stakeholders and key informants.

The study findings will be presented at a workshop organised by the ECOWAS Commission. Regional experts, representatives of Member States of ECOWAS, the private sector (Chambers of Mines, mining inputs suppliers, etc) and other stakeholders will participate in the workshop.

A pre-assignment meeting with the consultant is planned to agree on the methodology, format and content of the final draft.

8. Timelines :

The assignment will be conducted for 55-man days within five (5) months.

9. Deliverables : 

• Mineral Feedstocks and Inputs Development Strategy for ECOWAS ;
• A work plan to guide the implementation of the Strategy.

10. Consultant Requirement :

The consultant must meet the following criteria :

• Minimum of a Master’s degree in Mineral Economics, Geosciences, Mineral Related Engineering, International Development, or other disciplines related to Natural Resource Management. A PhD is an advantage ;
• At least 10 years’ Experience in mining/minerals policy, regulatory and promotion, mining fiscal frameworks, mineral value-chains, regional industrial development, spatial development, mining/beneficiation investment, industrial capacity development and planning issues, infrastructure development; and
• Demonstrable and extensive knowledge in minerals development, mineral beneficiation and value addition in the minerals sector ;
• In-depth knowledge and experience working on mineral resources development issues, preferably in the African region. Knowledge of Continental and ECOWAS regional & industrial development agenda, African Mining Vision, ECOWAS Mineral Development Policy is an advantage ;
• Excellent written and oral English or French. Knowledge of the other is an advantage.

11. Consultant Selection Criteria :

The Consultant will be selected in accordance with the African Development Bank’s Implementation Manual relating to the Procedures for Acquisition of Consulting Services funded by the Administrative or Capital Expenditure Budget of the Bank Group. The consultant shall be evaluated based on the following criteria :

Only candidates earning 70% and above will be shortlisted and requested to submit financial proposals.

Applicants are to submit a cover letter, resume, copies of academic certificates. Appendix 1 gives a template for submission of CVs.

11. Service Conditions :

The African Development Bank conditions for retaining short-term consultants will apply.

Appendix 1 :

Please attach an updated Curriculum Vitae on the basis of the template below :

MODEL CURRICULUM VITAE – AFDB BAD PDF