REQUEST FOR EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST
(CONSULTING SERVICES)
MULTINATIONAL
Consultancy title: Recruitment of a Firm for the Design, Development, and Pilot Validation of the TRUST SDK: An AI powered Pan-African Cross-System Trust Scoring Solution for Digital Payments
PROJECT: INSTITUTIONAL SUPPORT FOR DIGITAL PAYMENTS AND E-COMMERCE POLICIES FOR CROSS-BORDER TRADE (IDECT)
Sector: ICT
Financing Agreement reference: 2100155041216
Project ID No.:P-Z1-G00-018
The Smart Africa Alliance has received financing from the African Development Fundtowards the cost of the Institutional Support for Digital Payments and e-Commerce Policies for Cross-border Trade (IDECT) Project, and intends to apply part of the agreed amount for this grant to payments under the contract for Recruitment of a Firm for the Design, Development, and Pilot Validation of the TRUST SDK: An AI-powered Pan-African Cross-System Trust Scoring Solution for Digital Payments.
The IDECT project seeks to foster cross-border trade and regional integration through the establishment and implementation of Digital Payments and E-Commerce Policies. The TRUST SDK will contribute to these objectives by strengthening trust, interoperability, and transaction reliability across digital payment ecosystems, thereby supporting the growth of digital trade and the implementation of Africa’s Single Digital Market vision. The SDK will assess trust across systems and operators using transaction metadata where no shared risk assessment mechanism currently exists.
The objective of this assignment is to design, develop, and validate a reusable SDK capable of generating transaction trust scores using anonymized transaction metadata from multiple payment systems. The SDK, powered by AI, should support:
- Cross-system transaction trust assessment
- Risk scoring (AI-driven risk scoring)
- Explainable decision-making
- API-based integration into existing payment solutions
- Scalability across multiple payment corridors (cross-border) and operators
The Consulting firm will be responsible for submitting the following deliverables:
Deliverable 1: Requirements Analysis and Architecture Design _Assessment of business, technical, and regulatory requirements for the TRUST solution, including the development of the overall system architecture, data model, interoperability framework, and implementation roadmap.
Deliverable 2: AI-powered TRUST SDK Development _Design and development of the AI-powered TRUST Software Development Kit (SDK), including transaction trust scoring engine, APIs, explainability features, and integration components required for deployment within digital payment ecosystems.
Deliverable 3: Pilot Validation Report _Testing and validation of the TRUST SDK using anonymized Pan-African cross-system transaction datasets to assess model performance, accuracy, scalability, and operational feasibility, including recommendations for improvement and scale-up.
Deliverable 4: Knowledge Transfer, Training and Final Documentation _Delivery of comprehensive technical documentation, source code, deployment guides, API specifications, user manuals, training materials, and knowledge transfer sessions to enable Smart Africa to independently manage and scale the solution.
The assignment is expected to be completed within Six (6) months from contract signature followed by a maintenance phase.
The Smart Africa Alliance Secretariat now invites eligible consulting firms to express their interest in providing these services. Interested firms must submit information demonstrating their qualifications to perform the assignment, including company brochures, a description of similar assignments, experience under similar conditions, and the availability of appropriate skills among staff. Firms should also demonstrate that they have the required personnel with the necessary qualifications and relevant experience to carry out the services described.
Consulting firms may constitute joint ventures to enhance their chances of qualification.
Eligibility criteria, establishment of the short-list, and the selection procedure shall be in accordance with the African Development Bank’s Procurement Policy for Bank Group Funded Operations, dated October 2015, which is available on the Bank’s website at http://www.afdb.org.
Interested consultants may obtain further information including the detailed terms of reference at the address below during office hours [7:00 am -15:00pm GMT] or by sending an email to: tenderenquiries@smartafrica.org. The detailed TORs can also be obtained on the Smart Africa website: www.smartafrica.org
Expressions of interest must be delivered electronically to procurement@smartafrica.org by September 15th, 2026, at 17:00 (Local time, Kigali) and mention “Consultancy Firm to Carry Out the Design, Development, and Pilot Validation of the TRUST SDK”.
Attn: Smart Africa Alliance
10th Floor, in Career Centre Building
KG 541 ST, Kigali, Rwanda
Tel: +250 788-822155/784013646
P.O. Box: 4 913
Email: procurement@smartafrica.org