The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), the Ministry of International Business and Industry (MIBI), the Barbados Investment & Development Corporation (BIDC) and the Clean Tech Cluster Barbados (BLOOM) are jointly implementing the Global Environment Facility (GEF) funded project “Strategic platform to promote sustainable energy technology innovation, industrial development and entrepreneurship in Barbados”. The project contributes to the implementation of the National Strategic Plan 2005-2025, which aims at making Barbados a “green circular economy” and the “most environmentally advanced green country in Latin America and the Caribbean”.
The development of a “clean-tech market” in Barbados requires an equilibrium between demand and local supply of green quality products and services. However, currently the capacities of the local private sector to deliver these products and services are limited. Barbadian clean-tech businesses and start-ups face manifold barriers related to policy and regulation, knowledge, capacity, as well as access to R&D, quality infrastructure and finance. Moreover, there exists only a very limited coordination and cooperation within the sector.
Therefore, the GEF Project aims to strengthen the local supplier-side and the creation of an enabling environment for clean-tech entrepreneurship and innovation. Specifically, the project:
- a. establishes a national public-private policy dialogue platform to promote coherent demand and supplier-oriented cross-sectoral policies, regulations and incentives;
- b. establishes the BLOOM – Clean Tech Cluster Barbados, which will act as one-stop shop and provide customer-oriented services to its members (e.g. information exchange, training, applied R&D, entrepreneurial support, shared facilities, matchmaking and networking, lobbying & advocacy, fund raising, joint tendering & sourcing, joint project, product and patent development, market intelligence and export promotion);
- c. promotes joint ventures between the cluster members and entrepreneurs, investors, venture capitalists, financiers in the Caribbean, other SIDS and internationally (incl. the diaspora);
- d. creates an entrepreneurship facility which will provide various financial/insurance products for the commercialisation innovative business ideas and industrial up-grading;
- e. contributes to the creation of qualification and certification frameworks for personal, products and services and provide targeted training to current and future members of the cluster;
- f. supports also the efforts of the Caribbean Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (CCREEE) to establish a regional program on sustainable energy and climate technology innovation and entrepreneurship for the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). The CCREEE is situated in Barbados.
The GEF project has achieved laudable progress. With support from UNIDO, the Barbados Cleantech Cluster (BLOOM) has become fully operational in 2020. It is hosted by BIDC and has already established a broad range of international partnerships. It has also launched its incubation program, which offers mentoring services to a number of clean-tech businesses and start-ups. The BLOOM website is available at: www.bloomcluster.com. Further information on the GEF-UNIDO project is available at: https://open.unido.org/projects/BB/projects/150123.
In this context, UNIDO seeks external consultancy support to undertake a mid-term project review (MTR) in line with GEF and UNIDO quality, monitoring and evaluation policies. The purpose of the review is to collect inputs for the final phase of implementation and the replication/upscaling of achieved results through new programmatic approaches in the upcoming years. The MTR will also provide valuable input for the final terminal evaluation to be conducted at the end of the project.
Applicants are requested to submit their proposals no later than 23:00 hrs (CEST) of 21 June 2021, by registering on the UNIDO eProcurement portal (https://procurement.unido.org/). In case of technical difficulties, please contact UNIDO Help Desk at procurement@unido.org. Further information is available here.
Procurement expired
