About INCiTiS-FOOD project
INCiTiS-FOOD focuses on sustainable agri-food practices and will address the pressing challenges of food and nutritional security, environmental pressures of food production and environmental justice in the African region, particularly in Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Cameroon, and Gabon. It aims at revolutionizing African city region food systems by enhancing food and nutrition security (FNS) across four vital dimensions – availability, access, utilization, and stability through solutions centered around soilless crop farming, recirculating aquaculture systems, and insect farming. These circular agri-food technologies have been considered suitable for the context of African cities because they do not require great access to land, water, or other resources allowing Africa to thrive.
Through co-creation of cutting-edge circular agri-food technologies, practices, and business models, INCiTiS-FOOD is creating an inclusive food system that is both sustainable and accessible. With 8 living labs across 6 countries and a user-centric approach, INCiTiS-FOOD is applying a Lean Start-up Methodology to launch innovative technologies, services, practices, and products – empowering stakeholders to shape the future of food in Africa.
INCiTiS-FOOD strives to positively impact food and nutritional security trough EU-AU partnerships in Africa by utilizing hydroponics, aquaponics and insect farming and fostering collaboration among all relevant stakeholders along the supply and value chain, including women and young adults, start-ups, and small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
Open Call
To reinforce multi-actor collaborations on main food system challenges, boost the overall impact of INCiTiS-FOOD for better urban and peri-urban food systems across Africa, 2 Open Calls as part of the Cascade Fund and the FSTP mechanism are planned to be launched.
About 800-1000+ innovators (startups, SMEs, schools, etc.), external to the consortium, are expected to benefit directly or indirectly from the Cascade Fund. Applicants with circular and profitable entrepreneurial concepts, not awarded a grant, will be supported through capacity building offered by Living Labs.
In the Open Call for Local Innovation Hubs (LIHs), INCiTiS-FOOD will provide total funding of 940,000€ to 8 Local Innovation Hubs (117,500€ per winning consortia, no member of the LIH winning consortium can receive more than 58,750€). Each Local Innovation Hub shall aim to unite a certain number (100-125+) of entrepreneurs and innovators through its networks, who are organised in entities with legal personality and come together to form a consortium.
A Local Innovation Hub is a consortium consisting of 2-3 legal entities of civil society organizations (CSOs), incl. non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and cooperatives, as well as secondary schools and tertiary institutions not limited to secondary/high schools above 16 years of age, vocational institutions (professional schools), polytechnical/technical universities and colleges in agriculture and fisheries and special needs schools/organizations.
These LIH consortia apply on their own behalf, but also take into consideration the needs of their ecosystem members and stakeholders of interest, i.e., start-ups and small and medium enterprises (SMEs), etc. It is important to note that the young adults (16 years and above) could be involved only through the above mentioned eligible entities, more specifically secondary schools and tertiary institutions not limited to secondary/high schools above 16 years of age.
Winners can be located also outside the INCiTiS-FOOD countries . Winners are expected to conduct their activities during the 12 months period, with an aim to replicate and/or advance INCiTiS-FOOD solutions to a higher scale or propose novel circular food system solutions.
Open Call Hub platform
We are looking for evaluators!
Evaluators profile
We are looking for independent evaluators, who are able to assess the quality of applications received within the INCiTiS-FOOD Open Call, shortly after they have been closed. Evaluators must be:
- European (EU nationals (Member States (MS) of the European Union (EU), including their outermost regions, as well as Overseas Countries and Territories (OCT) linked to an EU Member) as well as nationals of Horizon Europe associated countries, full list, as of December 20th 2024, HERE).
- Specialists – scientific (technical, social sciences, etc.) or business experts: university or industry researchers or engineers, staff of other relevant organizations e.g., clusters, accelerators, etc. motivated by innovation topics around the topics and applicablity areas of INCiTiS-FOOD Open Call: hydroponics, bioponics, recirculating aquaculture, aquaponics and insect farming
- Experienced experts in evaluating EC proposals or similar experience.
An evaluator should not work for an organisation that aims to participate in the INCiTiS-FOOD Open Call, neither in an organisation participating in the current INCiTiS-FOOD consortium.
The evaluators will be in charge of providing a neutral yet technical/scientific and/or business review of received applications, usually, but not limited to, on the following aspects:
- Excellence (Alignment with INCiTiS-FOOD scope, design, novelty, reliability and innovative aspects of the solution, value proposition of the proposal; Current TRL of the solution and pathways to achieving a higher TRL.),
- Impact (Solution output; business sustainability (including financial projections) and scalability strategy; exploitation plan; technical and commercial milestones; environmental and societal impact of the proposed solution),
- Implementation (Team capability and their key expertise (technical capacity, knowledge and business experience of consortium members); technical resource plan; the overall delivery plan; allocation of resources and timeline).
The full evaluation criteria will be specified in respective open call kit documents, alongside with relevant focus areas for the open call. In addition, it will be part of the Manual for the evaluators as well.
Financial Benefits
In case of INCiTiS-FOOD project, evaluators will receive a compensation for their work and evaluation, where the rate amounts to 75 EUR per proposal. Payment will be done in Euros by bank transfer on the personal account of the evaluators, up to 60 days after submission of the evaluations and reception of an invoice from the evaluator.
The minimum and maximum number of evaluations per evaluator will depend on the number of applications received, and other factors such availability of the evaluator throughout the process etc.
Evaluation procedure
All the activities will be performed individually on the Open Call Hub (OCH) platform; no physical meetings are planned. The evaluation process will start with a short briefing telco about the evaluation procedure with a special focus on the evaluation criteria. Then each proposal will be assigned to 2 evaluators and therefore for each proposal 2 individual evaluation reports will be written. Some specific cases might require the organization of remote (online) consensus meetings between the evaluators in order to align evaluation reports (i.e., in case of large discrepancies between the marks given by the evaluators, or similar).
In case consensus is not reached after the remote evaluation by external experts, an interview of the applicant by the Advisory Board will be conducted.
Evaluators selection process
Evaluators will be selected by the INCiTiS-FOOD Advisory Board based on their competences and needs for the open call and number of applications received.
Expression of interest
Apply here: LINK
Tentative timeline of activities for INCiTiS-FOOD Open Call
Open Call deadline: March 20th, 2025, 17.00 CET
Eligibility check of the received applications: end of March 2025
Contracting with selected evaluators: end of March 2025
Evaluation: April 2025
Evaluators’ liability
All evaluators will be required to sign a declaration of no conflict of interest and non-disclosure agreement with the INCiTiS-FOOD consortium prior to the evaluation start.
By applying to the INCiTiS-FOOD Call for evaluators and registration to the Open Call Hub platform, the expert:
- understands that applying (registration) does not guarantee his/her selection as an evaluator for INCiTiS-FOOD Open Call nor any other published on the Open Call Hub.
- understands that he/she will have to provide a signed Code of Conduct and Declaration of Honor (DoH) along with any other requested documents if he/she is selected to serve as an evaluator for a specific open call published on the OCH platform.
- confirms that the team in charge for each Open Call will ask him/her on an open call basis about time availability to accomplish the evaluation within the specified time frame for the given open call, to attend a briefing session (if required) and a debriefing session after the selection (if required). Timing will be provided for every open call.
- confirms the interest in being informed about the future opportunities to act as an evaluator on ongoing and upcoming open calls that will be conducted on OCH.
- assures that he/she will only evaluate the applications of applicants for whom she/he does not have a Conflict of Interest (CoI).
Admissibility
- The applicant must be a European (EU nationals (Member States (MS) of the European Union (EU), including their outermost regions, as well as Overseas Countries and Territories (OCT) linked to EU Member) as well as nationals of Horizon Europe associated countries, full list, as of December 20th 2024, HERE) (Note: if you are not a citizen of these countries, but a resident/taxpayer in one of these countries, you are still eligible to become an evaluator).
- Applications should be submitted before March 20th, 2025.
- Applications must be submitted electronically via Open Call Hub electronic submission system as indicated in this call, using the form provided inside OCH, and a CV, as .pdf, must be attached as part of the application. Paper or email submissions are NOT possible.
- Applications must be complete for all parts, and CV should be readable, accessible and printable.
- Evaluator must be fluent in English language (both writing and speaking), since English is the official language for INCiTiS-FOOD Open Call.
If the admissibility criteria are respected, then the evaluation of the expert will be performed by the Advisory Board or expert team of each project whose Open Call is conducted via OCH platform. To formalize the collaboration, if not specified differently, a service contract will be signed between Foodscale Hub and the evaluators.
All selected evaluators will be required to sign a declaration of no conflict of interest and non-disclosure agreement with the representative of each project (coordinator, treasurer, etc.) prior to the evaluation starts.
Conflict of interest
Evaluators must not have a conflict of interest at the time of their appointment and must sign a contract with a declaration that no such conflict exists. They also must inform the consortium should such a conflict arises in any of the applications they have been assigned. When a potential conflict of interest is reported by the evaluator or brought to the attention of the consortium by any means, the project consortium will analyze the circumstances and any objective elements of information available. If the consortium concludes that there is conflict of interest, the evaluator will be excluded from the evaluation of that application. All potential conflicts of interest will be assessed carefully. Please see more info HERE.
Confidentiality
Evaluators are bound by confidentiality, as all information relating to the assessment process is strictly confidential. They are not allowed to disclose any information about the applications submitted and results of the assessment and selection to anyone. They are also not allowed to use the ideas of the application for their own purposes.
Good luck and thank you for your interest.
We are looking forward to collaborating with you!
INCiTiS-FOOD Open Call team
Add a Comment