EPT STEP LWA Africa

The first of two awards to be procured through the Regional and Local Support for Elections and Political Transitions solicitation, the STEP LWA offers an array of services and support to strengthen electoral and political processes in Africa.

By having a qualified local organization deliver these services on a regional scale, USAID seeks to expand and diversify the base of organizations with which Missions can partner on electoral support programming and to increase the sustainability of development assistance in the elections and political transitions arena.

The STEP LWA was awarded in September 2017 and has a five-year period of performance. The Leader award has a ceiling of $2.5 million.

The STEP LWA also provides USAID missions in Africa with a pre-competed mechanism for swift design and start-up of EPT programs.The STEP LWA seeks to achieve more inclusive, transparent, and accountable political and electoral processes in Africa, by drawing on and sharing lessons regionally.

The STEP Leader award has three transitional/fragile democracies in Africa as focus countries: Madagascar, Mali, and Mozambique.

During the program, national elections will be held in all three countries and implementer EISA will conduct targeted activities for the pre-election, election, and post-election periods.

EISA will draw lessons from the country-level interventions and broader regional work, synthesizing them into knowledge products that will be disseminated throughout the region.

The program will also build EISA's institutional capacity and sustainability, with 10 percent of the total Leader award budget to be used for this purpose.