Implementation and Operation of Smart Africa Trust Alliance Data Interoperability... Tender

Procurement Summary

Country : Rwanda

Summary : Implementation and Operation of Smart Africa Trust Alliance Data Interoperability Platform (SATA-DIP)

Deadline : 07 Apr 2023

Other Information

Notice Type : Tender

TOT Ref.No.: 80385677

Document Ref. No. :

Competition : ICB

Financier : African Development Bank (AfDB)

Purchaser Ownership : Public

Tender Value : Refer Document

Purchaser's Detail

Purchaser : SMART AFRICA SECRETARIAT
P. O. Box: 4913, 10th floor in Career Center Building, KG 541 ST, Kigali, Tel: +250-788300581/784013646
Rwanda
Email :tenderenquiries@smartafrica.org; procurement@smartafrica.org
URL :https://www.smartafrica.org

Tender Details

Expression of Interest are invited for Implementation and Operation of Smart Africa Trust Alliance Data Interoperability Platform (Sata-Dip).

Client Address

Smart Africa Secretariat

10th Floor, Career Centre Building

KG 541 ST, Kigali, Rwanda,

PO Box: 4913

Tel: +250784013646| +250 788-300-581

Email: tenderenquiries@smartafrica.org

www.smartafrica.org

EOI#:

090/SA/EOI/03/2023

Release date:

07th March, 2023

Closing date:

07th April, 2023; 5pm (Local time, Kigali)



Contact

For any questions or enquiries, please write to:

tenderenquiries@smartafrica.org

For Proposal Submissions: procurement@smartafrica.org

ORGANISATION BACKGROUND
Smart Africa is a bold and innovative commitment from African Heads of State and Government to accelerate sustainable socio-economic development on the continent, ushering Africa into a knowledge economy through affordable access to Broadband and usage of Information and Communications Technologies.

In 2013 in Kigali Rwanda, 7 African Heads of State (Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, South Sudan, Mali, Gabon, Burkina Faso) adopted the Smart Africa Manifesto in recognition of the need to adopt a harmonized digital transformation process in Africa. In 2014, all Heads of State and the Government of the African Union endorsed the Smart Africa Manifesto at the 22nd Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the African Union in Addis Ababa.

The Smart Africa Alliance has since grown to include 36 African Heads of State and countries that represent close to 1.1 billion people: Algeria, Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Chad, Congo, DR Congo, Côte d-Ivoire, Djibouti, Egypt, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sao Tome & Principe, Sierra Leone, Senegal, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The Alliance is also a partnership bringing together all African countries adhering to the Manifesto, the African Union (AU), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the World Bank, the African Development Bank (AfDB), the GSMA, ICANN, academia, and the Private Sector. Besides its initial membership, other organizations and countries sharing the same vision, interests, and goals will be admitted to the Alliance.

Smart Africa-s vision is to transform Africa into a single digital market by 2030. This vision will be reached by delivery towards 3 strategic objectives:

build resilient and sustainable digital Infrastructure for Africa,
drive agile policy and regulatory harmonization to attract investment to the African digital landscape, and
leverage technology to accelerate the inclusive uptake of digital public goods and services across Africa.
Smart Africa strategy for years 2023-2025 features concrete action plan to realize the objectives. Among the strategic initiatives and priorities, the development of digital identity interoperability and data interoperability through the Smart Africa Trust Alliance (SATA) are central. These will be the backbones of Africa-s transformation into a single digital market, as identity and data exchange are the basic enablers for cross-border digital trade and services.

SATA DATA INTEROPERABILITY PLATFORM (SATA-DIP) BACKGROUND
Africa has a market size of 50+ countries with a population of 1.4 billion, the world-s youngest population profile, and the highest growth rates. However, digital markets are developing mostly in a national level and do not (yet) benefit from the scale of the continent. Currently, intra-Africa trade represents approximately 16.6% of Africa-s GDP only, while intra-European trade represents 69% of the European Union-s GDP, for instance. One reason for this is the coexistence of 50+ separate and distinct national regulatory frameworks in Africa, and the lack of a system to establish mutual trust and recognition across national digital ID schemes and private sector solutions.

According to the World Bank, an estimated 1 billion people worldwide cannot officially prove their identity, making it difficult or impossible to vote, bank, travel, or buy property. Of the 1 billion people without proof of identity, nearly half those people, approximately 500 million, are estimated to live in sub-Saharan Africa.

Without proof of identity, millions of African people are missing out on basic legal, social, and economic rights and opportunities. Faced with these challenges to sustainable development, African countries are considering the most effective solutions to identify their citizens and residents and adapted to the realities of the continent. One promising solution is already being deployed in some countries: Digital or Electronic Identification. Identity is a crucial element for each individual as it defines a set of traits to uniquely identify a person. Similarly, digital identity is equally important as it helps establish confidence in user identities presented digitally to a system.

Smart Africa-s audacious vision is to build a single digital market by 2030, with digital products and services accessible easily throughout the continent and operate seamlessly with the rest of the world. Digital identity represents the backbone of Africa-s transformation into a single digital market, as it is a basic building block for access to both public and private services.

On February 11, 2019, at the 7th meeting of Smart Africa's Board in Addis, Ethiopia, the board requested the Smart Africa Council of ICT Ministers to spearhead and coordinate the collaboration of key public and private sector stakeholders to develop a blueprint for a continental framework that could assist Member States in designing and implementing interoperable individual digital ID schemes in a manner that would facilitate and enable trusted cross-border transactions across Africa by leveraging the public sector where appropriate.

This would be a key practical contributor to the future success of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) as digital ID schemes designed to facilitate cross-border recognition will undoubtedly promote national financial and economic inclusion, enhance public services, and create wide-ranging new economic opportunities in their home markets and across Africa.

In line with the instructions of the Board, the Smart Africa Secretariat (SAS) launched a Working Group to provide a platform for collaboration with and among a range of stakeholders. The Working Group developed the digital ID blueprint as well as a continental concept - named the Smart Africa Trust Alliance (SATA) - to establish institutional ownership and accountability combined with a trust framework based on standards and trust assurance mechanisms to facilitate cross-border interactions.

In order to bring cross-border digital ID to life, the first stage of SATA will be to interconnect the national digital registers and other information systems following a set of mutually agreed data-sharing rules and technical standards by Smart Africa Member States and supported by a certification and evaluation system, plus a shared data exchange platform. This will be in line with SATA-s objectives to contribute to the transformation of Africa into a single digital market.

In addition to the digital ID cross-border use, SATA data exchange framework will support single digital market more widely by allowing dataflows across the borders between governments, government-to-business and vice versa, also business-to-business and business-to-customer in a trusted and efficient ways.

In 2022-23, SAS has developed a more detailed concept, strategy as well as implementation roadmap of SATA and the data exchange framework. Among the first steps will be the implementation of a Data Interoperability Platform (SATA-DIP), as the building block for cross-border digital ID and wider data exchange in the next years. The first use case identified for initial implementation of SATA-DIP is cross-border Mobile SIM card registration, and currently 4 Smart Africa Member States have expressed willingness to be the piloting partners: Benin, Ghana, Senegal and Togo. More countries may join the process.

EXPRESSION OF INTEREST (EOI) OBJECTIVE AND SCOPE
Smart Africa Secretariat (SAS) seeks for a Data Interoperability Platform Technology Solution (Technology) and a potential partner (Provider) to implement, operate and support the Smart Africa Trust Alliance Data Interoperability Platform (SATA-DIP) as the first SATA solution.

This process will serve as a pre-qualification process with-which selected applicants will be invited to a final process that shall lead to contract negotiation and signing.

The selected Provider will be remunerated or reimbursed based on the Commercial Model proposed by Provider and agreed upon with the Smart Africa Secretariat and key SATA members. SAS intent is to find a Provider who would be willing to take up maximum possible initial and ongoing financial investment into launching and operations of SATA-DIP, in return the provider should secure the return on investment (ROI) based on cost reimbursement and/or revenue sharing model in later stages of operations. In essence, SAS seeks a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) engagement with the Provider.

SATA - DIP must be designed and deployed as a highly scalable technical solution as a service that will be hosted in Africa from the pilot stage to the full scale and operation stage. The environment for the Technology should be a self-contained cloud installation.

Technology should support the achievement of the first use-case goals and targets, but be easily scalable to any use-cases. The first use-case of the SATA-DIP will be the Cross-border SIM registration through SATA. The next use cases and the relevant data exchange volumes will be agreed and are to be implemented in course of SATA implementation and scaling. SAS expects that

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