Curriculum Design for Regional Women's Leadership Institute and STEM Skills Accelerator — COMESA

Consultancy services on curriculum design of the regional women's leadership and regional STEM skills accelerator

Ref: ZM-COMESA-555290-CS-INDV Date: 18 June 2026

Letter of Invitation (LoI)

• COMESA is inviting qualified individual consultants to submit their technical and financial proposal for the following services: Consultancy Services on curriculum design of the regional women’s leadership and regional STEM skills accelerator to be procured under the Contract reference number ZM-COMESA-555290-CS-INDV.

• The Terms of Reference defining the minimum technical requirements for these services are attached as Annex 1 to this RFP.

• Your proposal must be presented in English language and be accompanied by copies of all the indicated supporting documents (CV and Copies of Academic Certificates). If the supporting documents are not in English, these shall be accompanied by a certified translation into English.

• Submission of the technical and financial proposals must be in a written form to the email addresses below clearly quoting the reference number as stated.

• You are required to submit both your technical and financial proposals at the same time but in different folders/attachments. The Financial proposal should be in pdf format.

• Your proposal should be addressed and submitted to: [email protected] and copied to [email protected]

• The deadline for submission of your proposal, to the addressed indicated in Paragraph 4 is: 8 July 2026.

• Proposal submitted by Fax or hardcopies are not acceptable.

• It is not permissible to transfer this invitation to any person.

• The Technical Proposal will be evaluated against the following criteria.

Total

100

Note: The minimum technical score (St) required to pass is: 75%

• Your proposal should be submitted as per the following instructions, and in accordance with the Terms and Conditions of the Standard Contract attached as Annex 3 to this RFP:

(i) PRICES: The financial proposal shall be inclusive of all expenses deemed necessary by the Consultant for the performance of the Contract and must not include any of the following taxes in Procuring Entity Zambia: value added tax and social charges or/and income taxes on non-resident personnel’s fees and benefits.

(ii) EVALUATION AND AWARD OF CONTRACT: Proposals determined to be administrative and technical compliant to the requirement will be evaluated by comparison of their prices. A proposal is considered compliant to the requirements if: fulfils the formal requirements (see Paragraphs 2,3,4,5 and 6 above), has received minimum 75 points for the technical proposal. The award will be made to the candidate with the highest combined technical and financial score among the administrative and technical compliant proposals.

(iii) VALIDITY OF THE PROPOSAL: Your proposal should be valid for a period of 120 days from the date for deadline for submission indicated in Paragraph 4 above.

• The assignment is expected to commence five (5) days after contract signing but not later than two weeks from the date of signature of the Contract.

• Additional request for information and clarifications can be requested, no later than 7 calendar days prior to the deadline indicated in the paragraph 5 above, from:

Procurement Unit

Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa

Ground Floor, COMESA Centre, Ben Bella Road,

P.O. Box 30051, Lusaka – Zambia,

Telephone: +260 211 2297226/29.

Web: http://www.comesa.int

Email: [email protected]

Contact person: Niva Chokwe

E-mail: [email protected]

ANNEXES:

ANNEX 1: Terms of Reference

ANNEX 2: Standard Contract/Terms and Conditions

Sincerely,

Signature______________________

Name: Silver Mwesigwa

Title: Head of Procurement and General services Unit

ANNX 1: Terms of Reference

ASCENT MPA

CONSULTANCY ON CURRICULUM DESIGN OF THE REGIONAL WOMEN’’S LEADERSHIP INSTITUTE AND REGIONAL STEM SKILLS ACCELERATOR INSTITUTE

TERMS OF REFERENCE

Overview of ASCENT

The Accelerating Sustainable & Clean Energy Access Transformation Program (ASCENT) objective is to increase access to sustainable energy services in East and Southern Africa. Today, 365 million people are without electricity access in the region and 558 million people without clean cooking access. Eastern and Southern Africa accounts for more than half of the world’s unelectrified population (675 million) and nearly a quarter of the global population without access to clean cooking (2.4 billion). Accelerating energy access progress in the region is essential not only to help unlock its potential and deliver on its development goals, but also to help the world achieve SDG7 (and other SDG goals) and address global challenges including climate change, resilience, and fragility.

ASCENT is expected to provide life-transforming opportunities for 100 million people across 20 countries in Eastern and Southern Africa, placing the region on the path to universal energy access. It will align the comparative advantage of all parts of the World Bank (IDA, IFC, MIGA) and build on the proposed IDA funding envelope of $5 billion to leverage an additional $10 billion from public and private financing through strategic partnerships. ASCENT’s programmatic approach will allow the World Bank to dedicate significant resources over a longer time horizon (seven years) and to provide a platform across both national and regional levels that will offer opportunities for collaboration with development partners and a focus on unlocking private capital.

ASCENT has become the leading vehicle for delivering the targets under Mission 300 (M300). In order to provide access to sustainable and clean energy to 300 million in Africa, the Accelerating Sustainable and Clean Energy Access Transformation, (ASCENT) (P180547): MPA (ASCENT MPA) project will continue to integrate gender-transformative approaches that will not only close gender gaps related to energy access but will also employ interventions to empower women to make meaningful contributions to the AFE energy sector in alignment with the WBG Gender Strategy 2024-2030.

BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT

A sustainable future for all people, including the 1.2 billion people in Africa, depends on the collective ability to tackle climate change, promote a rapid economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, including Sustainable Development Goal 7 – affordable and clean energy, and Sustainable Development Goal 5, gender equality. The rapid economic growth underway in Africa since 2000 has lifted millions out of poverty, and has supported expansion of the continent’s middle class, but better living, working, and social conditions have fuelled a surge in demand for energy. Nearly half of Africa’s 1.2 billion people still lack access to power (AfDB 2018, IRENA 2019) and the continent is home to the world’s fastest growing population. Thus, the demand for energy is expected to double by 2040 (OECD/IEA 2017, IRENA 2019). Africa’s Renewable Energy (RE) sector is just taking off as a major job creation vehicle. In 2020, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) estimated that the RE sector employed 219,000 people in Sub Saharan Africa (SSA), and about half of these jobs (110,000) were in the off-grid solar photovoltaic (PV) sector (IRENA 2020a). Also, according to a 2019 job census conducted in Kenya and Nigeria, decentralised RE solutions already employed as many people as the traditional utility power sector (Power for All 2019). By 2023, the number of jobs in the RE sector is expected to double in Kenya, and multiply more than tenfold in Nigeria. The good news is that although the SSA renewable energy companies are male-dominated, about 30 percent of RE company board members and CEOs are women, which outpaces G-20, as well as African averages. However, despite this positive trend, the RE workforce has substantial gender gaps, with strong occupational segregation that recruits women predominantly for corporate support functions, rather than in core business functions, which will impact future cohorts of RE leaders.

The International Labour Organization (ILO) considers that a workforce is gender balanced when the composition is between 40 and 60 percent of either gender (ILO 2019). In RE companies in SSA, women comprised 27 percent of the members of boards of directors, 30 percent of Chief Executive Officers (CEOs), 16 percent of vice pr