Request for Proposals | Market assessment of Fermented Foods in Nigeria and Ethiopia

Sight and Life is looking for a market research agency for its Fermentation project. The broad objective is to create a roadmap for scaling fermented foods in Nigeria and Ethiopia. Fermentation is a widely used, low-cost food processing method rooted in local dietary practices across many LMICs. In countries such as Nigeria and Ethiopia, fermented foods are a staple part of diets, with around 80% or more of people regularly consuming fermented foods.

 

The agency will conduct a comprehensive market assessment of fermented foods in Nigeria and Ethiopia, towards understanding the current and future potential of fermentation within the food systems. It will include a thorough secondary through literature review, industry report/databases, government statistics, and company websites and primary research through in-depth interviews with experts and focus-group discussions or interviews with consumers.

The market research aims to address the following:

• Analysis of the potential market for fermentation
  • Map the fermented foods such as staples (ogi, iru, injera), dairy (ergo, ayib), tubers (garri, fufu, ogiri), and others.
  • Estimate current market size, estimate growth potential until year 2040
    • Articulate assumptions behind the estimates for each food format.
    • Sensitivity analysis to capture low/high ranges of the market size estimates.
    • Call out wet vs. dry format, packaged vs. unpackaged, organized vs. unorganized market size based on current trends.
  • Highlight fermented foods that holds the potential to be a large-scale intervention in future.
• Analysis of consumer trends
  • Gather consumer trends from literature review, industry reports, and databases to evaluate consumption pattern of fermented foods.
  • Conduct interviews or focus group discussions with consumers as necessary to fill gaps in the desk research.
  • Identify the drivers of fermented food consumption across categories – wet vs. dry format, packaged vs. unpackaged, organized vs. unorganized.
• Identification of current and future food products and formats
  • For each fermented food, document process conditions – temperature, pH, and unit operation. The process conditions for each food will help understand benefit of its microbial strain and potential for production process standardization.
  • Plan and conduct interviews with key stakeholders i.e., food experts as necessary to fill gaps in the literature review and database.
  • Shortlist foods based on criteria such as market size, technical feasibility, etc.
  • Document nutrient and antinutrient composition of the shortlisted foods.
• Profiling of potential SMEs and other key actors
  • Analyse competitor landscape of selected fermented foods.
  • Identify and profile key actors across the value chain.

 

Target location

• Nigeria
• Ethiopia

 

The cities/regions in countries will be selected based on criteria such as market relevance, population characteristics, fermented food production/consumption patterns, etc.

Components of the market assessment work will include the following:

• Regular meetings or calls with SAL team members (staff & key stakeholders) to discuss desired outcomes, methodology, timeline and milestones.
• Research tools development
• Recruitment, field research and data collection
• All transcripts in English + original audio recordings
• Final report to be delivered in both a written and presentation-based format. The selected agency will work closely with SAL to produce a report that can be communicated to the stakeholder group.

 

NOTE: All data, information, recommendations, and reports will become the property and ownership of the Sight and Life without exception.

Following the preliminary examination of proposals, a two-stage procedure will be implemented, with the evaluation of the technical proposal being completed prior to the evaluation of the financial proposal. The evaluation panel will evaluate the technical merits of all the proposals which have passed the preliminary examination of proposals based on the following weighting:

 

Technical Weightage: 70 % of total evaluation

Financial Weightage: 30 % of total evaluation

The technical evaluation of the proposals will be conducted using the following criteria:

• The extent to which our requirements and expectations have been satisfactorily addressed.
• The quality of the overall proposal and the research methodology.
• The experience of the firm in carrying out related projects.
• The experience and competence of the personnel proposed.

 

Sight and Life may, during the evaluation period, at its discretion, invite selected bidders to supply additional information on the contents of their proposal (at such bidders’ own cost).

 

Timeline

 

	Activity	Deadline date
1	Proposal submission deadline	15th September 2026
2	Evaluation period	15th to 18th September 2026
3	All Bidders notified of evaluation outcome	18th September, 2026
4	Short-listed Bidders present to Sight and Life	Between 21st and 25th September 2026
5	Notification of Contract Award to all Bidders	25th September 2026
6	Contract process initiation	25th September 2026

 

Other Project Details

 

• Submission Deadline: 23:59:59 IST, 15th September 2026
• All proposals should be in PDF or PowerPoint format
• Please direct all questions and submissions to priyanka.kumari@sightandlife.org