Africa Contingency Operations Training and Assistance Program peace support operations and contingency operations in Africa.

The U.S. Department of State, Africa Contingency Operations Training and Assistance (ACOTA) Program has a requirement to enhance the capacity of qualified African nations to participate in internationally mandated peace support operations (PSO) and contingency operations in Africa. This purpose is in accordance with U.S. policy objectives supporting the United Nations, the African Union, African Regional Economic Communities, the African Standby Force concept and individual troop contributing countries. The ACOTA Program will pursue its purpose of enhancing the PSO and contingency operations capacities of selected African nations in three ways. First, the ACOTA Program will directly train and equip African peacekeepers, peacekeeping and contingency operations contingents, and associated staffs at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels. Second, the ACOTA Program will train African PSO trainers so as to enable African partners to indigenously conduct PSO training over the long term with minimal outside assistance. Third, the ACOTA Program will sustain an effort over the long term to mentor and assist indigenous PSO training, provide updated instructor cadre refreshment training, provide limited equipping for training purposes, and upgrade training facilities. One important feature of the ACOTA Program is that the training and equipping programs for each African partner nation are uniquely tailored to meet that nations special training, equipment and infrastructure needs, peacekeeping deployment plans, mission specificity, and national, regional and African Standby Force (ASF) requirements. The uniquely tailored training and equipping programs are achieved through close collaboration with the partner nations planners, officials and leadership. The contractors program manager and one other permanent official assigned to the contractors ACOTA program shall have a current Secret security clearance. All other contractor personnel performing the specific work described in this statement of work are not required to possess a security clearance. The contractor shall maintain the capability to purchase, store, pack and transport from CONUS to the training location, all equipment necessary to support each training activity. The Department of State intends to award three or more IDIQ training contracts by conducting an unrestricted/partial set-aside, full and open competition, with one award set aside for Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business. We anticipate a one year contract with four option years. It is planned that the solicitation will be issued on FedBizOpps not sooner than 15 days after posting of this notice. Telephone requests for the solicitation will not be accepted.