(English)RFI-72068525RFI00001-NEXT YALI ACTIVITY.pdf

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI)

USAID/Senegal Young African Leaders Initiative

72068525RFI00001

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USAID/Young African Leaders Initiative Request for Information (RFI)

USAID/72068525RFI00001

January 08, 2025 February 7, 2025 - 17:00 Local Time

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Senegal is seeking comments only on the draft concept for its anticipated USAID/Senegal Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) Activity. The objective of the YALI Activity is to establish a high-quality, context-specific leadership training that will be managed by a locally-led entity to empower francophone African youth to lead the economic, political, and social development of their countries and the African continent.

This USAID/Senegal RFI is issued to offer the opportunity for interested Higher Education Institutions in Senegal to provide information, opinions, and recommendations on approaches for the implementation of the YALI activity and to solicit capability statements.

Any Higher Education Institution registered in Senegal may provide comments and/or critiques.

Interested parties should consider the RFI closing date as well as the submission instructions provided below.

Thank you for your assistance and interest in USAID/Senegal programs.

Sincerely, Mr. Mark Poubelle Agreement Officer

USAID/Senegal Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) Activity - Request for Information

A. Background and Context

More than 70 percent of people living in sub-Saharan Africa are under the age of 35 years, presenting a demographic dividend of energetic young people eager to shape their futures. The challenges found on the continent, including political instability, corruption, and rising threats of violent extremism, can be exacerbated by an expanding youth population weighed down by high unemployment and limited educational options. Africa’s diverse youth population feel the effects of these challenges differently depending on their contexts, backgrounds, genders, and opportunities. At the same time, they also see the opportunities in Africa’s diversity, natural resources, trade and investment, and more.

B. Activity Concept

The United States’ premiere African youth leadership program, the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI), launched in 2010 with what is now called the Mandela Washington Fellows (MWF) program. It invests in generations of young leaders to enhance leadership skills; bolster entrepreneurship; and connect young African leaders with one another, the United States, and peers in the global private, civic, and public sectors– resulting in a more secure and prosperous continent. With a population of 1.3 billion people whose median age is 19 years old, one of Africa's most important resource is its youth. YALI intends to work with public, private sector, and civil society partners across the continent to develop initiatives and economic opportunities to harness the innovation and energy of Africa’s youth.

USAID is recognized as a leader in youth programming and the first bilateral donor to have a Youth in Development Policy that promotes an evidence-based positive youth development approach. In 2015, USAID launched four YALI Regional Leadership Centers (RLCs). The YALI RLCs, located at higher education institutions in Ghana, Kenya, Senegal, and South Africa, have trained more than 28,000 young leaders aged 18-35 across 49 sub-Saharan countries in three tracks: business and entrepreneurship, public management, and civic leadership. Participants come from every country in sub-Saharan Africa and represent a diversity of language, culture, and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Every young leader is carefully and competitively selected and, as a result of completing the unique and transformative curriculum, the training provides the graduates with better potential to play a part in addressing the challenges related to transparent and accountable governance, a robust and healthy economy and solutions for community issues. The reputation of and demand for YALI remains high. More than 2,000 applicants seek one of the 100 spots available for each cohort; the five percent acceptance rate is on par with elite universities in the United States.

As the current iteration of YALI comes to a close after a decade of implementation, USAID/Senegal is designing a new YALI activity (December 2025 – November 2030) for the YALI RLC in Dakar. The RLC in Dakar is designated as the main francophone hub for YALI, covering 22 francophone countries across the continent (Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Gabon, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Niger, Republic of Congo, Senegal, Seychelles, Togo). The new activity will seek to establish a high-quality, context-specific leadership training program that is a sustainable, locally led legacy entity that will empower francophone African youth to lead the economic, political, and social development of their countries and the African continent.

C. Activity Purpose

YALI’s purpose is to empower, connect, and advance youth led-initiative to spur inclusive sustainable development across sub-Saharan Africa.

YALI’s theory of change is the following: IF youth leadership is developed and scaled within YALI and across Sub-Saharan Africa (DO 1) and IF YALI Africa is effective and sustainable (DO 2) and IF YALI alumni effecting change across their respective regions is enhanced (DO 3), THEN Youth Led- initiatives will be empowered, connected and advanced to spur inclusive sustainable development across sub-saharan Africa (Goal).

The main result areas of the new YALI design are as follows:

Development Objective 1: Youth leadership developed and scaled

The next iteration of the YALI activity will learn from the successes and challenges of the previous 10 years of implementation to increase access and meaningful participation for underrepresented groups in YALI’s transformative leadership program, ensure the market relevance of leadership skills developed by YALI participants and alumni, and strengthen the organizational capacity of Higher Education Institutions (management, technical, and partnership building) to support YALI programs and purpose. The YALI RLC in Dakar, will continue to focus time and resources on promoting a more inclusive recruitment process with greater outreach to women, vulnerable populations, and youth from rural areas. Eliminating access barriers for the marginalized groups identified remains a priority in YALI’s recruitment and engagement activities. The RLC will continue to revise and expand YALI’s curriculum for both physical and virtual delivery of leadership and sector-specific training sessions. The latter are organized in partnership with the private or public sector. The curriculum revision and review includes the integration of a deeper inclusive and gender sensitive lens across relevant content.

Development Objective 2: Effective and sustainable YALI Africa

YALI has been successful at capturing the energy and enthusiasm of young people and training them to take greater action in their communities, at the national, and regional levels of African societies. Over the past decade, the RLCs—with USAID support— have mobilized over 60 private sector partners. In addition to the transformative leadership curriculum, YALI’s success has contributed to its alumni engaging in post-training academic and employment opportunities.

YALI alumni are fulfilling the vision of YALI by achieving positions of leadership in elected government and public management, establishing businesses and generating new jobs, and creating social enterprises and advocacy platforms driving positive change in their countries.

In order to expand upon its success, the RLCs conceived of “YALI Africa” as an umbrella organization to support and sustain the RLCs and consolidate the gains and lessons learned from the first ten years of implementation. YALI Africa was conceived to sustain the ongoing RLC youth leadership training programming across the continent for generations to come by increasing coordination and harmonizing their foundational activities, including offering an accessible curriculum, robust monitoring, evaluation and learning, communications, alumni and partner outreach platforms. YALI Africa will go beyond mentoring individuals to support the strengthening of local organizations and provide a digital community in which YALI Alumni can continually access new training and build new skills while networking with one another.

Under development objective 2, the collaboration between YALI Africa and the Dakar RLC will contribute to establishing structural pathways for YALI Africa to be an African-led, African-owned, African managed institution and an ecosystem capable of receiving a diverse stream of support with the capacity to lead an ongoing program of transformative leadership development. Both entities will work to harmonize YALI’s transformative curriculum and activities customized for regional contexts, consolidate operational systems (a more inclusive recruitment process and alumni data management system), deploy a continental digital and engagement platform for alumni, integrate monitoring, evaluation, and learning approaches, facilitate YALI alumni engagement in structuring key YALI Africa governing and operational systems, and to increase resource mobilization opportunities through partnership development and fundraising. The RLC will continue to contribute to cross-RLC learning and collaboration efforts through YALI Africa.

Development Objective 3: Alumni effecting change across the regions increased

The next iteration of the YALI activity will focus on overcoming key challenges alumni face in achieving greater impact in their communities, country, and within their regional sphere of influence. YALI will continue to focus on building a sustainable post-training strategy that supports alumni initiatives and strengthens their transformational leadership capacity, including their ability to demonstrate increased inclusive leadership within their communities. YALI will continue to facilitate greater interactions among RLC alumni networks, and with government and non-government organizations (NGOs, CBOs, INGOs, development agencies, regional organizations) to create opportunities for alumni to leverage local and international resources and partnerships.

The new YALI Result Framework (RF):

D. Submission Instructions

Responses should be submitted no later than February 7, 2025 at 5 PM Senegal, local time.

Responses to this RFI should be sent via Dakarusaidedusolicitations@usaid.gov. The subject line should be “Response to RFI No. 72068525RFI00001- Name of the Responding Entity''and submitted by the closing deadline. Electronic submission is preferred. You will receive an electronic confirmation acknowledging receipt of your response, but will not receive feedback.

USAID/Senegal reserves the right to provide responses to comments.

Respondents can answer any or all of the questions in Appendix 1 below. In your responses, please provide any sources for the information, including peer-review or gray literature, expert opinion, project evaluation reports, or any relevant documents.

Responses should be in Microsoft Word, in English or French, not to exceed eight (8) pages. The seven-page limitation is structured as follow:

● Three pages addressing the Technical Questions, and

● Five pages addressing the Higher Education Organizational Capability Statement.

E. Disclaimer

THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION ONLY. It is not a solicitation and is not to be construed as a commitment by the U.S. Government or USAID to issue any solicitation or ultimately award a contract or assistance agreement on the basis of this RFI.

mailto:Dakarusaidedusolicitations@usaid.gov

The RFI is an attempt to reach out to the market in an effort to obtain feedback and will be treated as information only.

Responses to this notice are not proposals/applications and cannot be accepted by the Government to form a binding agreement.

Responses to this RFI are strictly voluntary and USAID will not pay respondents for the information provided in response to this RFI. It should be noted that responding to this RFI will not give any advantage to any organization in case of any subsequent award decision by USAID.

USAID/Senegal may use the information provided to refine the Program Description; therefore, please do not include proprietary information in your submission.

Responses to this RFI will not be returned and respondents will not be notified of the result of the review.

If a Notice for Funding Opportunity is issued, it will be synopsized on Grants.gov (www.grants.gov) as well as in the local Senegalese newspapers: Soleil and Observateur. It is the respondent’s responsibility to monitor the above website for the release of any further information.

http://www.grants.gov

Appendix 1: Request for Information (RFI) Response Template USAID/Senegal

Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) Activity

72068525RFI00001

Higher Education Institution Name:

Address:

Email:

Name of Contact Person:

USAID/Senegal is interested in responses to the following specific questions. Respondents are encouraged to review the questions and include responses to the most relevant questions in their submissions. Respondents do not need to respond to all the questions listed below. The input requested consists of two parts: A.) Technical Questions and B.) Higher Education Organizational Capability Statement.

A. Technical Questions

Please carefully review the above program background and concept and respond to some or all of the following questions. Page limit: No more than three (3) pages.

1. Comments on the Results Framework (RF), not to exceed three (3) pages. USAID is interested in feedback on the following:

a. Does the Results Framework capture the challenges and opportunities in the sector?

b. Are the expected results likely to lead or not to the achievement of the overall objective?

c. Note if there are any results that you recommend adding or revising.

2. Comments on the activity concept and objectives:

a. What, if any, changes would you make or lessons would you like to share to strengthen or refine them?

B. Organizational Capability Statement

USAID is also seeking brief capacity statements from higher education institutions who believe they are capable of performing the activity described in the attached summary. USAID requests you to provide the following information. Page limit: No more than five (5) pages.

Institutional capacity

1. How many students, faculty members, administrative staff does your institution have currently?

2. How does the mission and vision of your institution align with the goals of the Young

African Leaders Initiative?

3. What experience does your institution have in supporting transformative youth leadership projects on civic leadership, public management, and business and entrepreneurship ?

a. Please share the number of youth trained from your institution in these fields.

b. Please provide examples of past or current programs that demonstrate your ability to implement transformative leadership or capacity-building projects

Partnerships/Collaboration

4. Describe how your institution establishes partnerships with actors in youth leadership

(NGOs, civil society, private sector, international agencies)? Please list the most relevant regional partnerships that could support alumni engagement in their home countries across francophone Africa.

5. Describe how your institution maintains an international presence and the extent to which you draw international students?

6. Describe any agreements with other regional and/or international higher education institutions and the extent to which you collaborate?

Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL)

7. What systems or tools (including the use of feedback and data) does your institution use to monitor and evaluate the impact, successes, and identify challenges of its programs?

Financial Capacity/Management

8. What experience does your institution have in managing grant-funded or donor-supported programs? Describe the projects implemented with these funds and the budget amount.

9. What infrastructure (e.g., conference facilities, classrooms, technology) does your institution have to support the training and development of young leaders?

10. What is your annual budget and how is this distributed amongst the various programs?

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

11. How does your institution promote gender equality and inclusion in its programs (organization’s administration, and curriculum and activities)?