Scaling digital agriculture innovations through start-ups (SAIS)

The Scaling Digital Agriculture Innovations through Start-ups (SAIS) programme is a global accelerator and company development initiative implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH. Commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), SAIS also receives co-funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the European Union. Launched in 2019, SAIS aims to scale tech and tech-enabled private sector solutions in agriculture, livestock, food, climate, and the circular economy. Through its investment readiness programmes, SAIS provides tailored support to start-ups and companies to enhance their investment readiness, enabling them to attract funding, scale operations, and increase their impact. SAIS currently operates the following programmes: - SAIS Africa: A 12-month investment readiness programme for up to 25 tech and tech-enabled African start-ups, with tracks for francophone countries (PPI), anglophone countries (r-IRP), and livestock-focused start-ups. - SAIS CIRCULAR (Sri Lanka): Supports start-ups and SMEs developing circular economy solutions to reduce food loss and plastic waste in Sri Lanka, including incubation, acceleration, and access to finance. Through SAIS, GIZ aims to scale proven digital innovations that improve income, nutrition, or climate resilience in the agri-food sector. SAIS is currently commissioned until June 2029. To ensure the timely, compliant, and efficient delivery of highly individualised support measures to start-ups, SAIS seeks a procurement partner to manage contracting, payment, and documentation. The support needs of start-ups are diverse and often highly specific and cannot be met through pre-structured, one-size-fits-all services. By outsourcing procurement operations to a flexible and service-oriented partner, SAIS can respond quickly to each start-up"s needs while maintaining full compliance with GIZ procurement regulations. The contractor will be responsible for the full lifecycle of support request processing, including procurement, contracting, payment, and expert pool management, in accordance with GIZ procurement regulations. A key feature of the assignment is that most of the contract volume is pass-through funding for third-party services and equipment. The assignment is expected to begin in mid-2025 and run until March 2029, and is a follow-on to an existing procurement partner arrangement. Task 1: Initial Assessment and Workflow Optimization The contractor will begin by reviewing the current request management workflow and tools ("ticketing system") used by SAIS, including MS Teams, Word templates, and manual email-based approvals. Based on this review, the contractor is expected to identify inefficiencies and propose scalable workflow enhancements. As part of this, the contractor is invited to propose the use of off-the-shelf or proprietary digital tools, platforms or systems that reduce manual handling and increase transparency, tracking, and speed. These tools should align with GIZ"s data protection and IT compatibility requirements. Additionally, the contractor should propose a solution for a voucher-based mechanism or virtual credit card model. This solution would allow start-ups to access their pre-approved support budgets for defined service categories (e.g. subscriptions, certifications, travel support) directly via the ticketing system. All such requests must remain subject to prior validation by SAIS staff and full compliance checks by the procurement agency. The goal of this work area is to streamline and digitise the operational backbone of support delivery, while maintaining full documentation, accountability, and transparency. Task 2: Procurement and Contract Management The contractor will manage all approved support requests submitted by start-ups, companies and SAIS staff in accordance with GIZ procurement and contracting procedures. This includes validation of request documentation, sourcing and contracting of service providers or vendors, and processing of payments. Support requests vary in nature and value, including: - Consultant and expert services (e.g. legal, financial, marketing), - Software and subscriptions, - Hardware and equipment purchases, - External service providers (e.g. branding, translation, development). The contractor is expected to ensure cost efficiency and proportionality of transaction and service fees. The workflow must ensure traceability, secure documentation, and clear status visibility for GIZ and the SAIS team. The contractor will provide regular financial reporting on support budgets used, remaining allocations, payment status, and open requests. Task 3: Management of the SAIS Expert Pool The contractor will manage the existing SAIS Expert Pool and be responsible for onboarding, contracting, and coordinating short-term experts to deliver advisory and technical services to start-ups. The SAIS Expert Pool is a curated network of pre-vetted short-term experts and consultants who are contracted to provide highly tailored support services to start-ups participating in the SAIS programmes. This task includes: - Vetting and onboarding new experts based on SAIS quality criteria, - Issuing and managing framework agreements and assignment contracts, - Coordinating deliverables, timelines, and payments, - Monitoring expert utilisation and performance. The contractor must maintain a structured, filterable expert database (e.g. by expertise, region, language) and integrate this system into the digital workflow established under Task 1. The expert pool should be actively updated and reported on, including feedback from SAIS staff and start-ups.