Impact Assessment and Strategic Roadmap for FCA's Digital and Creative Economy (DICE) Programme

**Finn Church Aid (FCA)**

Terms of Reference
**Impact Assessment and Strategic Roadmap for FCA's Digital and Creative Economy (DICE) Programme**
Uganda, Ethiopia and Kenya | 2022–2025

**Please download the complete ToR from the link below:**
[https://tarjouspalvelu.fi/kirkonulkomaanapu/?id=621600](https://tarjouspalvelu.fi/kirkonulkomaanapu/?id=621600)

Finn Church Aid is seeking to engage an external consultant or consultancy to carry out an impact assessment of its Digital and Creative Economy (DICE) programme and to develop a forward-looking strategic roadmap for the programme. The assignment is expected to run from August to November 2026, subject to final procurement and contracting timelines. The assignment involves physical data collection in Uganda and Ethiopia, and a light remote review of the DICE programme in Kenya. This purposive scope is intended to balance depth of analysis, regional learning value and available resources. Uganda is included because it provides the longest implementation experience and important learning from both urban and refugee/host community programming contexts. Ethiopia is included because it represents one of the most developed current DICE models, including the FCA Creators Hub and dual employment–entrepreneurship pathways, and because the country’s development direction increasingly emphasises digital transformation and the emerging creative economy. This makes Ethiopia strategically relevant for assessing how DICE can align with national digital economy priorities and position young people for future-oriented work. Kenya will be covered through desk review and selected remote key informant interviews to ensure that learning from the wider East Africa DICE portfolio informs the strategic roadmap, while keeping the assignment feasible within the available budget and logistics.

**1. About FCA**
Finn Church Aid (FCA) is the largest Finnish development cooperation organisation and an important provider of humanitarian assistance. FCA is a rights-based and faith-based organisation founded by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, and a member of the ACT Alliance. FCA works with the most vulnerable people regardless of their religious beliefs, ethnic background, or political convictions, and operates in fragile and conflict-affected contexts across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. FCA is certified against the Core Humanitarian Standard (CHS).
FCA's vision is a world consisting of resilient and just societies where everyone's right to peace, quality education, and sustainable livelihood has been fulfilled. FCA specialises in three thematic priority areas: Right to Livelihood (R2L), Right to Quality Education (R2QE), and Right to Peace (R2P), with gender equality and social inclusion, and climate action and environmental sustainability as cross-cutting priorities.
FCA Global Strategy (2022 onwards) is the highest-level strategy document for FCA. FCA's Global Programme 2026–2029 translates this vision into practice through phenomena-based programming, a new approach that addresses complex, multi-dimensional challenges holistically rather than as isolated issues. The programme is organised around four key phenomena shaping the world: Planetary Boundaries Re-Shaping the World, Youth in Waithood, People on the Move, and People's Voices in a Fragmented World.

**2. About the DICE Programme**
FCA has worked in the livelihoods sector for decades, providing sporadic support to digitalisation and youth engagement in creative sectors over the years. A fully focused programme in this space, the Digital and Creative Economy (DICE) programme, began in 2021. Formerly known as the Culture and Creative Industries (CCI) initiative, DICE launched in Uganda and later expanded to Kenya and, from 2023, to Ethiopia.
The creative and digital economies of Uganda, Ethiopia and Kenya are emerging as powerful drivers of employment, innovation, and inclusive growth, with all three governments increasingly recognising their strategic importance. Digital technology has accelerated this momentum, enabling new forms of creativity, entrepreneurship, and job creation. Through DICE's integrated approach, which blends creativity with entrepreneurship, young people gain practical training in advanced digital skills, including graphic design, digital illustration, 3D animation, motion design, web development, and digital marketing, alongside business competencies such as opportunity identification, business planning, financial management, and marketing strategy.
In Uganda, FCA has built a strategic focus on structured incubation, legal support, and sector-development of sector-specific hubs. The Kampala Creators Hub offers industry-aligned training, incubation support, access to tools, and pathways into dignified livelihoods. Uganda also offers learning from both urban and refugee/host community contexts, showing the relevance of digital and creative skills for youth with limited access to formal employment and market opportunities.
In Ethiopia, DICE has established one of its most developed models through the FCA Creators Hub in Addis Ababa, that cones digital and creative skills training, co-working and creative spaces, dual employment and entrepreneurship tracks, and links to local and international job and freelance platforms. Ethiopia is also strategically relevant given the country's growing emphasis on digital transformation, innovation, and the creative economy.
In Kenya, DICE provides a useful regional contrast, particularly in relation to digital livelihoods, refugee and host community programming, private sector engagement and ecosystem-based approaches. Kenya’s relatively developed digital economy, innovation ecosystem and experience with digital work platforms create important learning for how DICE can strengthen employment pathways, enterprise incubation, private sector partnerships, and scalable digital livelihood models.
DICE equips marginalised refugee and host community youth with market-relevant digital and creative skills and connects them to employment and entrepreneurship opportunities, built around FCA's Linking Learning to Earning (LL2E) methodology. This integrates market-driven technical training, employability and entrepreneurship skills, career guidance, work-based learning, and private sector engagement. A significant proportion of participants are women, youth with disabilities, and refugee or otherwise displaced young people.
DICE is one of FCA's most forward-looking programmatic approaches, with significant potential for expansion. While traditional sectors remain needed, studies suggest the creative and digital economies have huge potential to employ young people. FCA now wants to strategically package the programme more effectively and sharpen its impact focus, exploring more meaningful partnerships and gradually shifting from traditional donor-recipient models toward long-term public-private partnerships.
While there have been project-level evaluations and assessments of individual DICE interventions, there has been no stock-taking or analysis of the programme at the organisational level. This makes the present moment the right time to take stock and chart a forward course.

**3. Rationale, Purpose and Objectives**
FCA is operating in an increasingly constrained funding environment, where every investment must demonstrate clear value and strategic direction. Against this backdrop, the assessment serves a dual purpose: to generate credible, organisation-level evidence of what DICE has achieved, and to translate that evidence into a practical, forward-looking strategy for strengthening and scaling the programme alongside heading towards longer-term partnerships with shared impact between partners.
The assessment is therefore not positioned as an accountability exercise alone, but as a strategic platform for programme development, diversification of FCA's funding portfolio