Develop Spatial Decision Support System for Real-Time Crop, Rangeland, and Pe…

The Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) has received additional financing from International Development Agency (IDA) the Food systems resilience program for Eastern and Southern Africa Phase 1 to scale-up Digital Agro-Climate Advisory Services and intends to apply part of the proceeds of this Grant to payments under this contract: Consultancy to Develop a Spatial Decision Support System for Monitoring Crop Conditions, Pasture and Rangeland Dynamics, and Transboundary Pest Risks in the IGAD Region

1.The objective of the assignment:

The purpose of the consultancy is to develop a secure, scalable, interoperable, and user-friendly GIS-based digital platform that integrates and visualizes analytical products generated by crop, pasture, rangeland, and pest modellers. The platform will support the routine monitoring of agricultural and environmental conditions and improve access to actionable early warning information for regional and national decision-makers. More information is provided in the ToRS attached/ available upon request.

2.Expected Outputs and Deliverables

The following deliverables are expected from this consultancy:

• Inception Report and System Requirements Specification: Detailed methodology, work plan, stakeholder requirements, functional and non-functional specifications, proposed system architecture, user roles, wireframes, testing framework, and deployment approach.
• Geospatial Data Architecture and Interoperability Framework: Geospatial database design, metadata standards, data dictionaries, data-ingestion workflows, quality-control procedures, APIs, web services, security considerations, and integration plan for modelling outputs.
• Prototype GIS Platform and Thematic Dashboards: Functional prototype with interactive dashboards for crop conditions, pasture and rangelands, and transboundary pests, including initial satellite layers, field-data visualization, filters, maps, and trend-analysis tools.
• Beta Platform and Validation Report: Revised platform integrating agreed model outputs, forecast visualizations, alerts, advisories, spatial-analysis tools, user-acceptance testing results, performance assessment, security testing, and corrective actions.
• Operational Platform and Capacity-Building Package: Deployed platform with configured user roles, validated data flows, technical training, user-orientation sessions, manuals, source code, scripts, configuration files, standard operating procedures, and maintenance guidance.
• Final Platform and Complete Handover Package: Fully operational production platform, complete technical documentation, database and API documentation, deployment instructions, administrator and user guides, training materials, sustainability roadmap, final consultancy report, and confirmation of institutional handover. 3.The Consulting Services Contract is expected to be for a period of Twelves (12) calendar months from the date of commencement.

4.Minimum Consultant’s qualifications and experience requirements

(i) Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Geospatial science, computer science, software engineering, information systems, data science, or a related field. Master’s degree is an added advantage.
• At least 5 years of proven professional experience in full-stack web development, GIS-based digital-platform development and geospatial application development. (ii) Skills and Competencies

• Proven experience in designing, developing, and deploying GIS dashboards and geospatial decision-support platforms in GitHub repositories or hosted active links for climate, agriculture, environmental monitoring, disaster risk management, or related applications.
• Strong proficiency in developing interactive web maps, time-series visualizations, spatial-analysis tools, thematic dashboards, filters, hotspot maps, and downloadable analytical products.
• Proficiency in frontend and backend development using appropriate technologies such as Python, JavaScript or TypeScript, React, Vue, Angular, Leaflet, OpenLayers, Mapbox, Cesium, PostgreSQL/PostGIS, GeoServer, REST APIs, and relevant Open Geospatial Consortium standards.
• Demonstrated experience in developing responsive, accessible, and mobile-first web applications using modern frontend and backend frameworks, such as React, Next.js, FastAPI, Django, Node.js, or equivalent technologies.
• Strong proficiency in database design and management, including relational and non-relational databases such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, with spatial extensions e.g PostGIS.
• Experience architecting scalable data pipelines for large spatiotemporal datasets.
• Experience in API development, third-party system integrations, and the application of web security best practices and data privacy requirements.
• Practical experience with cloud-native deployment environments, including AWS, Azure, GCP, or equivalent platforms, as well as Linux server administration, containerization (Docker), orchestration and Git-based collaborative development workflows.
• Experience with open-source geospatial tools (GeoPandas, rasterio, shapely, GDAL/OGR) and formats (COG, STAC). Previous work on climate, environmental, geospatial, or early warning systems is an added advantage.
• An Individual Consultant will be selected in accordance with the Selection of Individual Consultants method set out in the World Bank’s Procurement Regulations for IPF Borrowers dated November 2020 (Regulations).
• Interested individuals may obtain further information at the address below from 0900 to 1700 hours East African Time (EAT) from Monday to Friday EAT).
• Expression of interest shall be sent by e-mail by July/10/2026 at 1700hours EAT to: [email protected] copy: [email protected], with subject line ‘‘FSRP-AF: Consultancy to Develop a Spatial Decision Support System for Monitoring Crop Conditions, Pasture and Rangeland Dynamics, and Transboundary Pest Risks in the IGAD Region Contract No.: DJ-IGAD-556167-CS-INDV.