Education Sector Scoping in Algeria – the North Africa Technical Assistance Facility (NATAF)

Description of Project:

This Technical Assistance Facility contributed to achieving HMG’s National Security Council objectives for North Africa of ‘Stability, security, and prosperity’. The Technical Assistance Facility was one of three strands of the North Africa Good Governance Fund, along with

(i) country programmes managed in each of the five countries and (ii) a Regional Fund managed by the North Africa Joint Unit in Whitehall. The North Africa Good Governance Fund was overseen by a cross-HMG North Africa Strategic Steering Board. The Technical Assistance Facility  both complemented and learnt from the experience of previous HMG programmes in the region and elsewhere as well as ongoing country programming and the Regional Fund. The Facility contributed lessons learned and evidence for future programming.

The Technical Assistance Facility provided specialized, timely, demand-driven support, responding to the assessed needs of governments and other national and regional institutions, as appropriate, for technical assistance, in line with HMG priorities for these countries. The TAF was designed, delivered and monitored in a way ensuring that it was conflict sensitive and could respond flexibly and adapt to changing contexts and opportunities. An adaptive TAF allowed the UK to respond to North African countries’ and societies needs and priorities as they emerged and as appropriate within a clear strategic framework, learnt from what was working and what was not working and made adjustments as necessary.

Description of actual services provided:

The supplier might be required to provide some or all of the following services:

• scoping, design and review of projects;
• training, coaching and mentoring of partners;
• supporting partners in the design and implementation of reforms;
• assessments, political economy analyses, evidence reviews etc.;
• knowledge exchange through experience-gaining visits, twinning arrangements and/or attachments into UK partner organizations;
• operational management (including contracting and deployment of experts; management of small grants; coordination and workshop hosting);
• monitoring and evaluation expertise and support (including capacity building; quality assuring results frameworks and/or Theories of Change; designing, managing and/or delivering independent evaluations).

The Supplier might be required to provide other forms of support as deemed appropriate.

The Education and Employ-ability sectors have been selected as key sectors, particularly in Morocco and Algeria. A first sector fact-finding and mapping mission was launched in Morocco and Algeria to carry out an analysis of the education in relation with employ-ability sector and submit recommendations for future activities to an improvement of this relation.