Sciences Politiques à France

Expertise France is the public agency for designing and implementing international technical cooperation projects. The agency operates around four key priorities:

• democratic, economic, and financial governance ;
• peace, stability, and security ;
• climate, agriculture, and sustainable development ;
• health and human development ;

In these areas, Expertise France conducts capacity‑building initiatives and manages project implementation, leveraging technical expertise and acting as a project coordinator. This involves combining public sector expertise with private sector skills to drive impactful results.

The Seaport Cooperation Project – phase V (SEACOP V) is a project financed by the European Union (EU) under the Instrument contributing to Peace and Stability and is implemented by Expertise France (EF) in partnership with Fundación Internacional y para Iberoamérica de Administración y Políticas Públicas (FIIAPP).

The project is multi‑country (West Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America), taking place over the course of 30 months (12 / 05 / 2021 – 12 / 10 / 2023) with a budget of 5,000,000 EUR. The target groups are 29 National and local administration, Joint Maritime Control Units (JMCU), and Maritime Intelligence Units (MIUs). Implementing partners are UKBF, CIVIPOL, DGDDI, DCSD, Policia Judiciaria do Portugal, MAOC‑(N), NCA, and FRONTEX.

The overall objective of SEACOP V is to support the fight against illicit maritime trafficking and associated criminal networks consistent with human rights in the targeted countries and regions to alleviate its negative impact on security, public health, and socio‑economic development.

Given the challenge and complexity of the project (substantial budget, multi‑country and multi‑actor intervention, with a holistic multi‑sector approach) and in accordance with recommendations in the project’s M&E plan, the project team wishes to carry out an external final evaluation.

This final evaluation is planned to enable the project to determine the relevance and level of achievement of project objectives, development effectiveness, efficiency, impact, and sustainability. This evaluation also serves the purpose of feeding lessons learned into the decision‑making process of the project stakeholders, including donors and implementing partners.

This evaluation is a milestone for the project to ensure its accountability to the donor, the European Union, the implementing agency (Expertise France), the project partner (FIIAPP), and the project beneficiaries, i.e. national and local administration, Joint Maritime Control Units (JMCU), and Maritime Intelligence Units (MIUs) in states where project interventions take place.

The main objective of this evaluation is to provide, FIIAPP, the agency Expertise France (field and head office teams), and the European Union:

• A comprehensive, independent assessment of the performance of the SEACOP V project, paying particular attention to the results, against the agreed objectives,
• Lessons and recommendations, to improve, where relevant, current and future work.

In particular, the final evaluation seeks out the following expectations :

• An overall analysis of project performance: By answering the evaluation questions, verifying whether the needs remain the same, analyzing the effectiveness of project management, sustainability, potential for impact, and the factors generating or hindering performance (recurring obstacles, etc.).
• Implementation strategy: Confirm and inform the operational strategic choices and explore any necessary changes through developing recommendations.
• Learning: Build upon the work started by the in‑house project team and identify good practices and lessons learned to make recommendations to redirect and improve intervention. The evaluator shall be responsible in availing the findings.

The evaluation will focus on how it will be used [1]. This approach is based on the principle that an evaluation must be judged according to its usefulness. It will therefore be planned and implemented in such a way as to increase the likelihood that its results will be used, ensuring stakeholder participation and ownership. The evaluator must ensure that they apply the principles of this approach throughout the evaluation process. In particular, recommendations from the evaluation must be tangible and operational. The results should be presented clearly and concisely to have an impact on decision‑making. The evaluation will be used primarily to adapt the project to the changing context, identify successes and potential to replicate results, identify reasons for delays, develop recommendations for adaptive management, etc.

As the evaluation embraces a participatory approach, it is geared to cater for two sets of audiences, a primary and a secondary audience. The primary audience consists of the donor and largely the stakeholders / partners considering their direct involvement in the implementation of the project. They include, the national partners (government institutions and civil society), Expertise France (field teams and head office), project partner (FIIAPP), and the donor European Union Trust Fund. The secondary audience is all actors involved or interested in the issue of illicit maritime trafficking and criminal networks in West Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America. Findings from the evaluation are expected to initiate a butterfly effect, for instance stir up conversations that could lead to changes in policy in maritime trafficking.

The evaluator should provide evidence to explain the analyses, cause, and effect linkages, and attempt to identify any factors that are enhancing or hindering progress. Their work must foster accountability, decision‑making, and learning.

The scope of the evaluation will include the following :

Period: From the start of the project (12 / 05 / 2021 – 31 / 10 / 2023)

Components: All components

Country: Multi‑country (West Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America)

Beneficiaries: National and local administration through the focal points, Joint Maritime Control Units (JMCU), and Maritime Intelligence Units (MIUs)

[1] Utilisation‑focused‑evaluation.pdf (intrac.org)

The trafficking of illicit goods (not only drugs, but also environmental criminality) is an international phenomenon that has a devastating impact on social and economic development as well as on public health. Its development can rely, among others, on the increasing use of maritime routes and containerisation of international trade in the context of globalisation and, therefore, the difficulty faced by the relevant authorities in ports to control a growing volume of goods. Trafficking of illicit goods is orchestrated by transnational criminal groups operating across different continents which are often also involved in other criminal activities (e.g. : kidnapping, money laundering, etc.). Terrorist groups could be drawing large parts of their funding from organised crime activity, including illicit trade. Therefore, the illicit maritime trade is not an isolated phenomenon, it must be understood and addressed taking into account the complex criminal environments and the criminal convergence points in the three targeted regions.

Trafficking across the Atlantic is one the most important illicit flow routes, in particular for drug trafficking, coming from Latin America via the Caribbean and West Africa with Europe as the main final destination. As criminal networks constantly adapt their methods and resources, it is important to target all affected regions at the same time and to anticipate the displacement effects of an efficiently targeted transit area. This is the reason why SEACOP works with authorities in all three regions of Latin America, the Caribbean, and West Africa, in close cooperation with EU agencies fighting transnational crime and ensuring border security. The previous SEACOP phases focused on drug trafficking, more specifically cocaine, while this fifth phase aims to address transnational organised crime and related illicit trade more comprehensively, prioritizing, in line with the EU’s Strategy on Drugs 2021‑2025, international cooperation among authorities responsible for border security and combatting organized crime focused on profiling and intelligence‑sharing.

• Excellent understanding of the EU’s M&E approach
• Post‑graduate in a field relevant to the assignment: in social sciences / international cooperation / security / political sciences or equivalent experience.
• Professional experience in the fields of expertise in conducting development project evaluations for at least 8 years
• Multi‑stakeholder coordination experience
• Demonstrated experience in conducting remote evaluations
• Good knowledge of specific contexts of project intervention countries

• Good knowledge of M&E systems for development programs and projects
• Experience and knowledge of field‑based M&E
• Development of evaluation systems
• Knowledge sharing and design of learning materials

• Excellent command of Microsoft Office tools (MS Office: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and LibreOffice equivalents) and the Internet
• Experience using video conferencing platforms such as Zoom or Google meet
• Excellent communication and organizational skills

• Excellent command of written and spoken English (good writing, synthesis, and analysis skills, etc.).
• Requirement of excellent spoken and written command of either Spanish or French

The task is to be conducted by one individual consultant or a team of consultants.

• Technical outline: Demonstrate an understanding of and comment on the terms of reference, methodology, CV, and similar experience, and include the components mentioned in the terms of reference (detailed workplan)
• Financial outline: overall budget for the evaluation, including the following: daily rate; and proposed terms of payment.

Expertise France will select the bid with the best score based on the following table :

Criteria

Maximum score

1. Technical outline score, including :

80

1.1. Methodology score

80

» Demonstrated understanding of the ToR and the objectives of the services to be provided

20

» Overall methodological approach, quality control approach, the relevance of the proposed tools, and analysis of the difficulties and challenges encountered

30

» Structure of tasks and schedule

10

» CV of the evaluator(s)

20

2. Financial outline score

20

Total score

100

Work to be conducted remotly.