EQUITABLE ACCESS TO EDUCATION IN SOUTHERN SENEGAL | RFI 685 17 000002

Opportunity Information: Apply for RFI 685 17 000002

USAID/Senegal issued this opportunity as a Request for Information (RFI) connected to a draft program description for a planned activity called "Equitable Access to Education in Southern Senegal." In practical terms, this is not yet a grant competition or a call for proposals. It is an information-gathering step meant to collect feedback from organizations and experts so USAID can tighten the design, clarify assumptions, and improve the likely impact of a future program. USAID notes that it may revise the activity substantially based on what it hears, and it emphasizes that responding to the RFI does not create any competitive advantage in any later solicitation.

The envisioned activity is described as a five-year effort with an estimated total funding ceiling in the range of $20 million to $25 million, depending on funds being available. The focus is on increasing equitable access to education for girls and boys roughly ages 9 to 16 in Senegal's crisis-affected southern and southeastern areas, specifically the Casamance regions (Ziguinchor, Sedhiou, and Kolda) as well as Kedougou. The target population and geography signal that the program is meant to address persistent barriers faced by children who are out of school or at high risk of dropping out in contexts shaped by fragility, insecurity, displacement, poverty, and uneven service delivery.

USAID lays out several core directions for what the activity is expected to do. One major element is offering complementary education services that provide basic education in ways that better match community needs, particularly for children who are not being reached effectively by the standard system. Alongside that, the activity intends to help make formal basic education itself more responsive to what communities need, rather than treating complementary services as a separate track that never connects back to public schooling. Another stated objective is to increase successful transition from primary school to middle school, a point where many students drop out because of cost, distance, safety concerns, academic readiness, or social expectations (including pressure to work, early marriage, or household responsibilities). Finally, the activity aims to support efforts that help families and caregivers enroll out-of-school children in education services that are relevant and responsive, recognizing that household decision-making and constraints often determine whether children attend and persist.

Because this is an RFI, USAID is explicitly asking stakeholders to review the draft program description and provide targeted, actionable comments that reference specific pages and sections. The Agency highlights several questions it wants respondents to address: whether the theory of change is clear and captures the key challenges to education access in the target regions, whether the expected outcomes are realistic and well-defined, and how complementary basic education can best support the formal system to reach out-of-school youth. USAID also invites views on how life skills could make education more relevant and valued by communities, which often matters for attendance, retention, and perceived payoff of schooling, especially for adolescents. Another area of interest is monitoring, evaluation, and learning: USAID wants to know whether the draft proposes the right M&E approaches to credibly measure results and whether additional methods could strengthen collaboration, learning, and adaptation over the life of the program.

Administratively, the opportunity is listed under USAID (Senegal USAID-Dakar) with an "unrestricted" eligible applicant category, meaning a wide range of organizations could potentially participate if a formal solicitation is later released. The funding instrument type associated with the anticipated award is a cooperative agreement, which typically implies substantial involvement by USAID during implementation compared to a standard grant. USAID also notes that if it does move forward with a formal Request for Applications (RFA), it will be posted on Grants.gov and other Agency channels, and interested parties are responsible for monitoring those sites. For the RFI itself, USAID directs comments and questions to Khady Sadio, with submissions requested by March 20, 2017, copied to a second USAID email contact; it also states it will not provide direct answers to questions submitted in response to the RFI.

Overall, the headline takeaway is that USAID is shaping a sizable, multi-year education access initiative for southern Senegal that blends complementary education options with improvements to the formal system, with particular attention to adolescents, out-of-school children, and the critical primary-to-middle-school transition. At this stage, USAID is not asking for project bids; it is asking the field to help pressure-test the logic, refine outcomes, strengthen the approach to complementary education and life skills, and propose practical ways to measure and learn from results before a future competitive funding announcement is finalized.

• The Senegal USAID-Dakar in the education sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "EQUITABLE ACCESS TO EDUCATION IN SOUTHERN SENEGAL" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 98.001.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2017-03-06.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2017-04-28. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $20,000,000.00 in funding.
• Eligible applicants include: Unrestricted.

Apply for RFI 685 17 000002

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