REQUEST FOR EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST
AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT BANK
Southern Africa Regional Development and Business Delivery Office (RDGS)
African Development Bank, 339 Witch-Hazel Avenue, Highveld Extension 78, Centurion
Agriculture and Agro-Industry Department- South (AHAI-S)
E-mail : m.legodi@afdb.org Telephone : +27 120036900 Ext 8626
Expressions of interest are being requested for a consulting firm to provide IT development services for a Digital Platform.
Brief description of the assignment : (i) Provide support in beta testing the first visual and operational prototype of the portal/digital platform (ii) Develop the full version of the portal (iii) Develop the mobile application integrated to the portal/digital platform
Department issuing the request : Southern African Regional Development and Business Delivery Office
Place of assignment : Pretoria, South Africa
Duration of the assignment : One year
Tentative Date of commencement : 1 October 2021 or earlier
Detailed Terms of reference for the assignment : [detailed TORs attached]
Deadline for applications : 25 August 2021
Applications to be submitted to : m.legodi@afdb.org and t.monyatso@afdb.org with a copy to p.majikija@afdb.org. Any questions and requests for clarifications may be sent to : p.majikija@afdb.org
Provision of Digital Platform Development Services for Thuma Mina (Southern Africa Youth Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Development Project)
Terms of Reference :
- The Bank :
Established in 1964, the African Development Bank is the premier pan-African development institution, promoting economic growth and social progress across the continent. There are 81 member states, including 54 in Africa (Regional Member Countries). The Bank’s development agenda is delivering the financial and technical support for transformative projects that aims to reduce poverty through inclusive and sustainable economic growth. In order to sharply focus the objectives of the Ten-Year Strategy (2013 – 2022) and ensure greater developmental impact, five major areas, all of which will accelerate our delivery for Africa, have been identified for scaling up, namely; energy, agro-business, industrialization, integration and improving the quality of life for the people of Africa. Agriculture falls within the Feed Africa Strategic Priority.
- The Complex/Department/Division :
The Vice Presidency for ‘Agriculture, Human, and Social Development’ (AHVP) is a Sector Complex charged with the implementation of two of the Bank’s High 5 priorities of “Feed Africa” and “Improve Quality of Life for the People of Africa”. The complex objectives are fourfold: to develop, policy and strategy; to provide deep sector expertise to the Regions by gathering pools of experienced individuals who can be consulted to provide sector expertise on complex transactions and to develop new financing instruments. The Vice President acts as the spokesperson to represent the Bank with external stakeholders on aspects of “Feed Africa” and “Improve Quality of Life for the People of Africa”.
The Department of Agriculture & Agro-Industry (AHAI) and the Division for Agricultural Finance and Rural Development (AHFR) are jointly responsible for the implementation of the Feed Africa Strategy. The RDGS.2/AHAI-S is responsible for the implementation of the Feed Africa Strategy in all Southern Africa countries, namely Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Sao Tome & Principe, Zambia, Zimbabwe.
- Thuma Mina :
Thuma Mina is the Southern Africa Youth Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Development Project to stem the tide of youth unemployment. Inspired by Souk At-Tanmia in North Africa, it steers the ecosystem towards a robust, sustainable pipeline of scalable youth-led projects, especially those operating on the periphery, while addressing the fragmentation and inefficiencies in the ecosystem.
The ecosystem of support around MSMEs is very active in Southern Africa, but often fragmented, with duplication of programs often limiting the potential impact of work being done. The Thuma Mina web-based portal and its mobile application/interface is a unique gateway for young entrepreneurs, a one shop stop that connects them to tailor made support along their journey. It evolves around three intertwined pillars :
- The platform aggregates efforts within the community of key players in the MSMEs sector, offers business ideas screening and support facilitation, knowledge generation, monitoring and evaluation, as well as resources/services (including incubators) mapping and connection ;
- Technical Assistance to selected business ideas, through tailor made, client oriented non-financial support packages throughout the journey, from Ideation to Pre-Operational up to Post-Creation phase, including policy dialogue on enabling environment. BDS (Business Development Services) partners and mentors/coaches can be based anywhere and connect through the platform ;
- Access to blended (loans-grants) finances for business ideas graduating out of the technical assistance. On the first phase of the programme, access to finance will be done through a partner financial institution and linkages (referral) to SFMs 1 , impact investors/funds and existing public and private sector relevant programmes. For the next phase, as the pipeline would have significantly grown with more countries joining the regional platform, it is envisaged to facilitate access to finance through a market-based venture capital fund with the Bank as anchor investor, return on equity investment, and participations from other DFIs. In addition, capital markets OTC products will be developed in partnership with JSE, to create sustainable access to finance for these enterprises.
- Objective :
The 1st phase of the portal development focused on analysing the technical options including the possibility of re-utilize existing modules in existent Bank´s owned online platforms and building a web-based prototype to test, evaluate and define the foundations of the future final portal. The prototype and a roadmap for the development of a full-scale platform are complete and ready for testing.
The AfDB through its Southern Africa Regional Development and Business Delivery Directorate seeks to recruit a specialized IT Solutions Consulting firm to support the testing of the prototype (developed during 1st phase) and to develop the full version of the portal in line with a roadmap – which ensures that the software development work is done efficiently considering all the necessary requirements.
- Scope :
The digital platform shall be user-friendly, designed to accompany the young entrepreneurs throughout his journey, while supporting the coordination of Partners’ activities, streamlining the access to BDS and financial support services providers. Through a mobile application, a young entrepreneur in a remote area of Zimbabwe for instance, with limited internet coverage network, shall be able to log onto this digital platform and navigate the regional entrepreneurship ecosystem. The entrepreneur will be able to connect to the most appropriate BDS and receive mentorship/coaching. Through the lifecycle of his business, he will be linked to financial service providers and have access to markets. Performance data will be tracked through the entrepreneur’s journey, thus building industry – leading datasets and analysing growth trends.
SFMs refer to private fund managers (including venture capital funds, private equity funds, debt funds, blended finance funds, incubators and accelerators) that deploy capital in SDG focused sectors
The dedicated space/intranet/modules integrated to the digital platform, shall support Partners in coordinating, aggregating and scaling up their efforts, young entrepreneurs connections to vetted services providers on a B2B basis and through automated referral pathways, automated program management processes and tools, the monitoring and evaluation system through a geo-localization application, a resource repository and e-learning space, the communication and outreach strategy, and later on, an e-commerce space.
This contract covers points below :
- Provide support in beta testing the first visual and operational prototype :
The prototype developed at this stage has enough capabilities to function as external and internal tool. The website is an interactive platform with several user roles that unlocks or hide pages or sections of the website according to the logged in user permissions.
There are 4 types of user roles (MSME, BDSP, Financier and Administrator) plus the Guest role :
- Guest role: This is the basic user role which is automatically assigned to every anonymous user that is navigating through the Thuma Mina platform. This user can navigate through the website pages that are not locked under a login system ;
- MSME role: This role is assigned through registration to MSMEs. This user role can access to the Analytics & Performance pages created for MSMEs and they have access to their business profile and backend utilities to manage their data ;
- BDSP role: This role is assigned through registration to BDSPs. This user role can access to the Analytics & Performance pages created for BDSPs and they have access to their business profile and backend utilities to manage their data and their MSMEs ;
- Financier role: This role is assigned through registration to Financiers. This user role can access to the Analytics & Performance pages created for Financiers and they have access to their business profile and backend utilities to manage their data and their MSMEs ;
- Administrator role: This kind of user have access to all the previous user role sections plus the administration backend. The administration backend is a restricted section where the administrators can manage all the platform data.
The beta testing of the platform will be carried out on a number of AfDB projects and the appointed consultant will support the administration of the website and gather feedback from users to extract valuable inputs for the definition of the full-scale platform: the lesson is that people provide much better feedback over a live website, and it makes the design process more participatory and inclusive, facilitating further engagement of potential users with the platform.
Develop the full version of the portal :
The full version of the portal will be implemented after the prototype is created and tested with live data by users. The Bank will organize formal closed focus groups with different types of users from across sectors and countries as part of the contract to create the full-scale version of the platform.
The newly designed website will serve as a one-stop-shop for information on Thuma Mina’s partnership, its mission and objectives, partners, different services offered and the expected results towards streamlining the ecosystem support to youth led MSMEs. It aims to improve the visibility and outreach of the initiative, to better document the impact it has on Southern Africa’s entrepreneurship ecosystem and to describe its innovative and comprehensive
approach in supporting entrepreneurship across the region. The website will also serve as Thuma Mina’s interface with potential candidates and beneficiary projects. Target users for the website include potential candidates (entrepreneurs), Thuma Mina’s partners, donors and actors from the local and global entrepreneurship ecosystem, media, entrepreneurship experts and beneficiary projects. The Consultant should make sure that full version of the portal :
- aligns with the roadmap developed in phase 1 ;
- includes e-Fair and e-Commerce or trade ;
- final design has a section for ‘Deal Strike’ (Investment Deals Brokering Room) as part of the “Access to Finance” business process lifecycle ;
- has a language tab and enables content to automatically load in English, French or
- Portuguese depending on the user’s browsing location; and
- the design and development of the website allows a monitoring of its performance in terms of number of visits, etc.
Develop the mobile application integrated to the digital platform :
Once a first prototype has been tested, and as part of the effort to build the full-scale platform, the Consultant firm will create a mobile app for both, iOS and Android, that can serve as a simplified gateway for all types of platform users, including the programme management team. The mobile app will have the most relevant features of the full-scale platform but with its own adapted design to ensure proper utilization in comparison to the desktop version of the platform.
- Deliverables :
- Inception Report (week 2) ;
- Report on Beta Testing (end of month 2) ;
- Delivery of the full version website (end of month 6) ;
- Delivery of mobile application (end of month 10).
- Methodology :
Work with the Bank following its Software Development Lifecycle Process (SDLC) for Vendors. An AGILE approach using an iterative delivery process will be used to ensure a fit for purpose application.
The following is required :
- Implementation of the solution based on the requirements stated above ;
- Include a documentation and release note of the delivered version ;
- Add the delivered version into the GIT source code repository of the Banks ;
- Tag the versions according to the Bank’s release naming standard ;
- Each version shall be deployed on a QA environment to allow access and extensive tests by the Test Users ;
- Ensure quality assurance sign-off for the different releases ;
- A version is considered as delivered when the user acceptance tests were all successful and there is a Bank’s sign-off of the delivered version ;
- Enable access to the focus group of the Website to test the release ;
- Provide automatic easy to configure deployment scripts to enable an easy deployment on the Bank’s Production Environment when required ;
- Use of an issue tracking tool to communicate bugs, change requests or new features to the Vendor ;
- Meet regularly with the Bank’s project team to discuss the development plan, provide the status update and implementation progress, and facilitate the progress of the project ;
- The releases will be in line with the deliverables and additionally there will be every 3 weeks a QA release to allow the client to check the Platform Progress. The release will include a release note describing the implemented features and bug fixes ;
- A patch release is required after deliverable releases and if requested from the team after a regular (QA release) ;
- Patches for main releases shall be categorized into: Critical, Major, Minor bugs. Critical bugs shall be fixed urgently, other bug fixes shall be discussed and planned.
| 8. Expertise and qualification requirements | ||
| Required Profiles | Minimum number | Minimum years |
| of Key | of professional | |
| professionals | Experience | |
| Designer: Expert in intuitive user experience. | 1 | 5 |
| User Interface Developer: Expert in any PHP based | 1 | 5 |
| framework | ||
| Backend Developer with experience in CMS: | 1 | 5 |
| Experience in any PHP based framework and expert in | ||
| open source CMS solution compatible with PHP based | ||
| frameworks | ||
| Technical Lead: Experience in developing complex IT | 1 | 5 |
| solutions for multilateral development banks, team | ||
| management, Software Development Lifecycle, AGILE | ||
| methodology, release management, deployment | ||
| 9. The role of the consulting firm |
Under the guidance of the Regional Sector Manager – Agriculture, Industry & Human Development, and the direct supervision of the project’s task managers, the consultancy firm will execute several cohorts of activities aimed at testing the prototype and developing the final digital platform to streamline youth entrepreneurship ecosystem in Southern Africa, as follows :
- Gain a good understanding of the prototype, the testing environments, the roadmap to the development of the final portal and prepare a detailed methodology and work plan that will be agreed with the client ;
- Provide technical and administration assistance during the beta testing of the prototype ;
- Collect feedback from stakeholders and make inputs and recommendations from the IT side for the overall design of the platform ;
- Once received the draft design, analyze what was proposed and define the IT solutions to better implement that design ;
- Move from the design to implementation of a the final portal (mobile app included) ;
- Design and implement the final portal and mobile app, provide training and user manuals.
- Duration of the Assignment :
The contract will be for a period of 12 months.
- Remuneration :
The remuneration is expected to be based on the deliverables detailed in section 4 of the ToRs subject to their validation by the Bank. Kindly note that all the expenses required for carrying out the assignment will be borne by the consulting firm and should be included in the financial offer as a lump sum comprising of : (i) Honorarium; (ii) other expenses; as described in Appendix 2 (Formats for Financial Proposals) of the request for proposal.
- Duty station :
Pretoria, South Africa, with expected travels across the region