TERMS OF REFERENCE 

Request for Proposal for the Recruitment of Consultancy firm to develop the SADA Digital Skills Marketplace 

1. ORGANIZATIONAL BACKGROUND

Africa is reshaping its narrative from one of poverty to progress, showcasing impressive economic growth, technological innovation, and a young population. Nevertheless, digital transformation faces obstacles such as limited access, insufficient investments, and a digital divide, which also offer opportunities for growth through better accessibility, efficiency, and job creation 

The Smart Africa Alliance, established through the Smart Africa Manifesto, is a collaborative effort among African nations, the African Union, the Economic Commission for Africa, the African Development Bank, the World Bank, the International Telecommunications Union, the private sector, and academic and research institutions. This initiative, driven by African Heads of State and Government, aims to propel sustainable socio-economic development across the continent by leveraging Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) to transition Africa into a knowledge-based economy. Originally endorsed by African leaders in 2014, the Smart Africa Manifesto has since garnered the support of 39 African countries, representing over one billion population, with the goal of placing ICT at the core of both national and continental socio-economic development efforts. This involves increasing ICT access, enhancing transparency, efficiency, and openness through ICT adoption, fostering advanced telecommunication technologies, empowering the private sector, and utilizing ICT for sustainable development.

2. SADA BACKGROUND 

The Alliance promotes digital transformation by building digital infrastructure, supporting entrepreneurship, fostering innovation, developing human capital, driving digitization, and advocating the development of policies and regulations that support the growth of the digital economy and digital technologies. Recognizing the need for strong capacity building efforts to achieve AU’s goals for digital transformation, the Alliance established the Smart Africa Digital Academy (SADA), adopted during the

Smart Africa Alliance ninth Board Meeting Resolution 5, as a vehicle to implement its capacity building and skills development activities across member states, through the establishment of national digital academies. 

SADA ensures that policymakers, business leaders, and the wider African population develop the digital skills and knowledge necessary to participate in the digital economy and take advantage of new opportunities. SADA recognized the importance of strong policies and regulations and the need to equip policymakers and regulators to design and implement effective digital policies and regulations. Through collaborative efforts with BMZ/GIZ, SADA has, in its phase 1, trained over 8000 beneficiaries, out of which over 5000 are Africa’s Policy and Decision makers.  SADA has also implemented National Digital Academies across 12 African countries.

Visit https://sada.smartafrica.org/ for more information about the Smart Africa Digital Academy

3. OBJECTIVE OF THE ASSIGNMENT 

The overall objective of the consulting firm's mission is to develop a web-based Digital Skills Marketplace platform, an enabling environment for digital skills nurturing driven by industry demand while equipping individuals with the right framework to make informed decisions about career choices. The platform defines skill-match between talents, jobs and the learning requirements supporting people to make specific career choices and employers to high resources for their digital skills needs.

4. SCOPE OF WORK

4.1 Detailed Scope of work for the development of a digital skills marketplace.

The platform provides an enabling environment for digital skills nurturing driven by industry demand while equipping individuals with the right framework to make informed decisions about career choices. Key areas of work are:

• Provide a detailed technical scope of the skills and job match portal to include the following specifications but not limited to:
  • Ability for users to link their other social media profiles, Job experiences and accreditations
  • Artificial Intelligence-based match making mechanism
  • Excellent user experience design and advanced user typology
  • Integration with existing career matching portals through, where required, relevant APIs
  • Job match features such as:
  • Profile builder.
  • Badges integration from LMSs such as Moodle
  • Sign up for corporate users to view profiles
  • Filter on skill
  • Filter on location
  • A multilingual-ready feature (English, French)
  • Compliance with existing Data Protection regulations and IP rights in Africa and globally.

5. INDICATIVE TIMELINES AND EXPECTED RESULTS

The selected firm must carry out the project within a maximum of four (04) weeks from the date of signing the contract.

6. FIRM PROFILE AND EXPERIENCE

• Demonstrate:
  • Strong experience in Web development, web design and content design
  • Excellent graphic design capability and data visualization
  • Ability to provide Continuous Integration / continuous delivery automation.
  • Ability to design user-friendly, intuitive deliverables and evolutive digital skills platforms.
  • Technical ability in the field of digital skills, analysis of skills needs and learning
• Have proven references for at least two contracts or relevant services in the past five years;

The work shall be carried out by a team of at least (3) three highly qualified consultants/experts namely:

1. Lead Consultant/Team Leader (1) with the minimum requirements below to be considered for the evaluation:

• Bachelor's degree in software engineering, Software Development, and other relevant fields.
• At least 10 years' professional experience in web design and development.
• Experienced in leading a digital platform development team,
• Project Management ability
• Experience including working in Africa.
• Having participated in at least two (2) projects in web based digital skills platform development or of  higher level of complexity in the last 5 years.

2. Design Expert:

• Bachelor's degree in software engineering, Software Development, and other relevant fields.
• At least 3 years' professional experience in Designing Intuitive portal for skill development.
• Seasoned full Stack web developer. 

3. Software Testing:

• Bachelor's degree in software engineering, Software Development, and other relevant fields.
• At least 3 years' professional experience in conducting trials of newly developed software.

The Consultancy firm may propose additional staff as part of the consulting team as necessary with adequate justification towards the realization of the project’s objectives.

7. EVALUATION CRITERIA

The financial proposal of only those firms which secure a minimum score of 80/100 in the technical evaluation will be opened. 

St= Score for the Technical Evaluation 

1. Financial Criteria 

Once the technical criteria have been evaluated, the costs of all bids will be listed from low to high. Computing the cost criteria score will be accomplished by use of the following formula:

= Sf 

The Applicant getting maximum marks on 70-30 weightage (70% for technical and 30% for financial) will be considered for the assignment. The weights given to the Technical (T) and Financial Proposals (F) are: T = 0.70 and F = 0.30

The Final Score (S) is calculated as follows: S = St*T + Sf*F

8. SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS FOR PROPOSALS

A specific outline must be followed to facilitate the Smart Africa Secretariat’s review and evaluation of the responses received.

A response to this RFP must include the following sections in the order listed:

1. A cover letter confirming the firm’s interest to provide the services required.
2. Administrative documents (Company registration certificates, Tax clearance certificates). Failure to submit will lead to automatic disqualification of the offer.
3. A technical proposal containing the following content:

• Executive summary
• Business experience/Profiles/Portfolio
• Mock-up, Architecture, and Workplan
• Brief profile of Mission team indicating their experience
• Updated Curriculum Vitae for the team and relevant certificates requested.
• Recommendation letters signed and stamped.

4. Financial Proposal containing the following tables.

• Summarized Total Cost Value Added Tax Inclusive/Withholding Taxes (Value of tax indicated on final cost)
• Breakdown of a remuneration package
• Breakdown of reimbursable expenses

NOTES:

1. All financial proposals/offers should be password protected and Smart Africa will request for it for bidders who have been qualified in the technical evaluation phase.
2. All companies should quote in United States Dollars (USD) as currency.
3. All bidding firms/ companies should Indicate their preferred payment terms.

9. SUBMISSION PROCESS

Technical and financial proposals must be submitted via email in pdf format showing each the nature of the offer concerned (technical or financial offer); The proposals must be sent to the email: procurement@smartafrica.org not later than 23^rd February 2024 at, 05:00 pm local time (Kigali).

Late proposals will be rejected.

10. RIGHTS RESERVED 

• This RFP does not obligate the Smart Africa Secretariat (SAS) to complete the RFP process.
• SAS reserves the right to amend any segment of the RFP prior to the announcement of a selected firm.
• SAS also reserves the right to remove one or more of the services from consideration for this contract should the evaluation show that it is in SAS’s best interest to do so.
• SAS also may, at its discretion, issue a separate contract for any service or groups of services included in this RFP. SAS may negotiate a compensation package and additional provisions to the contract awarded under this RFP.
• The Smart Africa reserves the right to debrief the applicants after the completion of the process due to expected high volume of applications and avoiding the compromise of the process.

11. ENQUIRIES 

Any enquiries will only be received and addressed five (5) days or more prior to the bid submission deadline. Prospective respondents who may have questions regarding this RFP may submit their enquiries to tenderenquiries@smartafrica.org 

12. ANTI-CORRUPTION

Smart Africa is committed to preventing and not tolerating any act of corruption and other malpractices and expects that all bidders will adhere to the same ethical principles.