Nigeria Youth Futures Fund Portfolio Monitoring and Evaluation Consultant (Historical Reference)

Historical status

This page records a closed Nigeria Youth Futures Fund (NYFF) consultancy call. The application deadline was 18 December 2025, and the published availability window for the assignment was December 2025 to April 2026. The official application form is closed. NYFF’s current website describes its continuing fund work and links to other programmes, but does not announce a new round of this particular portfolio monitoring and evaluation consultancy. Treat this page as an archive, not an open application opportunity.

The official NYFF recruitment post described an evaluation of donor-funded youth projects at portfolio level. The NYFF website identifies the organisation behind the call and currently presents other youth-focused programmes and reports. Its current Youth Leadership Development Fund activity is a separate grant programme; it does not reopen or replace this consultant procurement. The closed application form remains the original submission URL for provenance, but it is no longer a route to apply.

A later public announcement by System Strategy and Policy Lab says that LEAP Africa selected SSPL to lead the independent portfolio evaluation after a multi-stage competitive procurement. This is an awardee’s announcement, not a new NYFF vacancy notice. It confirms that the original procurement reached an award decision. It does not provide a replacement application window, say that the closed form reopened, or confirm that the evaluation itself has been completed. The public evidence therefore supports treating the consultancy call as finished while leaving the assignment’s final delivery status unconfirmed.

At a glance

The role was not a grant, scholarship, or salaried vacancy. It was a procurement-style consultancy opportunity. The notice did not publish a fee range, daily rate, ceiling, or other contract value. Applicants therefore would have needed to price the work in a separate financial proposal rather than rely on an advertised award amount.

What the consultancy was intended to examine

The call covered more than one project or a single endline exercise. The selected consultant or firm was expected to review over four years of NYFF implementation, covering the 2021–2025 portfolio and work in all six geopolitical zones of Nigeria. The official recruitment material identifies three broad NYFF pillars:

1. National Visioning Process, which supported youth participation in policy and national development conversations.
2. Youth Leadership Development and grant making, which supported youth-led organisations and initiatives.
3. Online and Media Engagement, which used digital and media activity to amplify youth perspectives and participation.

The evaluation brief called for a monitoring and evaluation approach suited to NYFF’s context and objectives. It also named the OECD-DAC criteria of relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact, and sustainability. That combination matters because a portfolio review has to connect activities and grants with wider changes in youth participation, leadership, advocacy, and public engagement without treating every observed change as something the fund caused alone.

The work was expected to use both existing programme records and new evidence. The published scope refers to administrative data, surveys, interviews, and documented evidence. The consultant would also have engaged grantees, implementing partners, and NYFF internal teams. A credible approach would have compared records across the pillars, sampled projects and stakeholders across regions, and made clear where evidence showed direct results, plausible contribution, or an unresolved question.

Who was eligible for the closed call

The recruitment notice set a professional rather than early-career profile. Applicants were expected to have a minimum of a master’s degree in economics, monitoring and evaluation, development studies, or a related field. They also needed at least five years of experience in the development sector, particularly work with NGOs or non-profit organisations.

The call further required demonstrated experience evaluating donor-funded youth projects or programmes and experience with portfolio-level monitoring and evaluation. This was more specific than asking for general research or data-collection experience. A suitable applicant would have needed to show that they could work across several interventions, reconcile different evidence sources, and produce findings that were useful to a funder and its partners.

Availability was part of the eligibility test. The original notice specified an assignment period running from December 2025 to April 2026. That period has elapsed, so it is preserved here only to describe the closed call; it is not a current availability requirement or an invitation to submit a late proposal.

The official recruitment post also encouraged young people and women to apply. That statement described an encouragement, not a separate quota, grant category, or published preference score. The call did not state a nationality restriction in the material reviewed, but the national scope and stakeholder work meant that knowledge of Nigeria, local relationships, and a practical plan for working across regions would have been important strengths.

What applicants were asked to submit

The contemporaneous call listing associated with the official form described a 5–7 page proposal, excluding attachments. The requested package consisted of the following components:

• A profile of the consultant or firm.
• A detailed evaluation methodology.
• Key activities and a work plan.
• CVs for the team lead and core evaluation team members.
• Verifiable experience on similar projects, supported by award letters or completion certificates.
• A password-protected financial proposal.

The financial proposal was expected to show a summary of costs, personnel costs by time allocation, and reimbursable expenses. Since the published notice did not state a fee, this budget would have been the applicant’s opportunity to explain the level of effort, specialist roles, field or remote data collection, analysis, reporting, and other direct costs. A password-protected document was a submission instruction, not evidence that NYFF had announced a standard financial package.

The application route was the NYFF Google Form linked from the call. Applicants would have used the form to submit the proposal and supporting files, including the financial document in the requested protected format. The form is now closed. There is no basis for advising a reader to upload materials, email a late application, or substitute a new form that has not been announced by NYFF.

How a strong proposal would have approached the work

The assignment needed a plan that was broad enough to represent the portfolio and disciplined enough to remain feasible. A useful inception stage would have confirmed the evaluation questions, available records, sampling frame, safeguarding arrangements, and responsibilities between the consultant, NYFF, grantees, and partners. It would also have defined how the team would treat missing records and different reporting practices across projects.

For relevance, the evaluation could have examined whether the three pillars responded to priorities identified by young Nigerians and whether programme choices made sense in different parts of the country. For effectiveness, it could have compared planned outputs with documented delivery and then checked whether activities reached the intended groups. For efficiency, the review could have considered how resources, staff time, partnerships, and grant processes supported results, while being careful not to reduce a complex portfolio to a simple cost-per-participant figure.

Impact questions would have required caution. Youth leadership, public discussion, advocacy, and policy engagement can produce changes through many actors and over long periods. The evaluator would have needed contribution analysis and triangulation rather than an unsupported claim that every governance change came from NYFF. Sustainability would have asked whether youth-led organisations, relationships, skills, and advocacy channels could continue after specific support ended, and what evidence existed for continued ownership or follow-on resources.

The national scope also made sampling central. The brief called for representative samples across pillars and regions. A reasonable proposal would have explained how it would balance geographic coverage, project size, thematic differences, and the practical limits of travel and interview time. It could have combined document review with remote interviews, targeted site visits, surveys, and focus groups, provided that the method protected participants and made limitations visible.

The final products would have needed to serve more than the evaluator. Findings should have been clear enough for NYFF, its funders, implementing partners, and youth organisations to use in decisions about future support. That means separating verified outputs from reported outcomes, identifying gaps in the evidence, describing differences between pillars, and turning conclusions into specific recommendations. A polished report without an explicit evidence trail would have been less useful than a transparent report that showed where conclusions were strong and where they remained provisional.

Why this page is archived

The deadline of 18 December 2025 has passed, the stated assignment period has elapsed, and the official form is closed. NYFF’s current website continues to identify the organisation and show separate youth-focused programmes, but the sources reviewed do not announce a new round of this consultant procurement. The page therefore retains the closed call’s real deadline and carries historicalReference = true in its metadata. No replacement deadline, updated fee, or new application instructions have been announced for this assignment. The procurement has reached a selection decision: SSPL publicly says LEAP Africa selected it after a competitive process. That award announcement is not evidence that the evaluation has been completed, and its completion status remains unconfirmed in the public material reviewed. There is no evidence that late applications are accepted or that the old call is rolling.

Readers looking for a current NYFF opportunity should start at the official NYFF website and verify any new notice there before preparing documents. They should not infer that a later grant call, public statement, or programme resource is a reopening of this evaluation consultancy. The archived application link is provided for provenance only.

The role remains useful as a reference for understanding the scope of NYFF’s portfolio review: a multi-year assessment of youth-focused work, with national coverage, stakeholder engagement, mixed evidence sources, and an explicit OECD-DAC evaluation frame. It is not a current vacancy and does not advertise a confirmed fee or a future deadline.