Procurement Summary

Item                                     Details

RFP Title                           WAZZII Platform Feature Development and Service Design

Procurement Method        Open competitive tender

Primary Market                 Kenya

Contract Period                Initial implementation period of approximately 12 months

Reporting To                     Product and Delivery Lead

Clarification Deadline       4 November 2026

Proposal Deadline           13 November 2026

Submission Email            [email protected]

Who We Are

Girl Effect is an international non-profit that builds media and technology girls choose, use and trust. Across Africa and South Asia, our youth brands — including Wazzii and Tuki in Kenya, Big Sis in South Africa, Chhaa Jaa and Bol Behen in India, and Yegna in Ethiopia — reach millions of adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) with content and digital tools that support the decisions shaping their lives, from sexual and reproductive health (SRH) to wellbeing, education and work. Our approach is girl-centred by design: girls co-create our products, our evidence teams measure what actually changes for them, and our safeguarding architecture treats their safety as a design constraint, never an afterthought.

Girl Effect has spent a decade building conversational products for young people, and several years deliberately and publicly charting what responsible technology for girls looks like. 

What is WAZZII

Today. WAZZII is Girl Effect’s WhatsApp-based chatbot for AGYW in Kenya, offering confidential SRH information, signposting and human help desk support in English and Sheng. It draws on a decade-deep corpus of more than 50 million questions young people have asked our chatbots — one of the richest datasets in existence on what girls actually want to know. Human help desk operators, working on the RapidPro help desk, remain central to the experience.

The next evolution of its design. Over the coming two years, WAZZII will evolve from a conversational companion into a trusted service-navigation platform: girls will move from a conversation to finding a real, vetted, youth-friendly provider nearby; prepare for the visit with confidence; access services using codes issued in the chat; and be supported to continue afterwards — with verified loops confirming a girl was actually served. Tens of thousands of girls are expected to use these capabilities directly, and the learning will shape Girl Effect’s chatbot portfolio globally. This tender selects the partner for the service design and platform engineering behind that evolution.

The Girl Effect Tech Stack

Girl Effect has built an ecosystem of technologies which underpin its user-facing solutions. By using the existing tech stack, we ensure our in-country teams can focus their time and budget on delivering impact. The stack consists of:

• RapidPro: Low-code chatbot building platform through which we connect to instant messaging platforms, build out user engagement pathways including informational content, quizzes and surveys, and connect to other tools via API. Hosted on partner org’s multi-tenant AWS infrastructure

Wagtail: Python-based CMS, used to build our user-facing websites. Connects to RapidPro via API to provide structured content such as service directories. Self-hosted on AWSIntelligence Module: GE’s self-built tool to manage connectivity with LLMs. Connects via API to RapidPro to build user-facing GenAI workflows.Self-hosted on AzureAPIs: Manage connections between the different tools in the system. Self-hosted on AWS

We are open to suggestions of changes that could be made to the stack which would provide tangible benefits to our programmatic output, whether through improved functionality or cost efficiencies.

Objective 

To appoint an experienced technology and service-design partner to design, build, test, deploy and support the next phase of WAZZII as a safe, accessible and measurable service-navigation platform for adolescent girls and young women in Kenya.

The engagement will follow a service-design-led approach, with user needs, safeguarding requirements and tested service journeys informing the final technical build.

What You will do

Girl Effect is seeking an experienced partner to deliver WAZZII’s next evolution through a human-centred design approach: service design leads, and engineering follows. The partner’s senior service designer works with girls, operators and the Girl Effect team to understand needs, shape journeys and define the feature requirements — and the build then delivers against those requirements. The partner will build on WAZZII’s existing stack and be onboarded to current systems and documentation at inception. AI functionality is not in scope of this TOR.

Service design. Key activities include:

• Co-creation workshops with young people — multiple rounds across the engagement, designed and facilitated with Girl Effect — shaping the finder, the redemption moment, visit preparation and continuation support around how girls actually live, move and pay
• Design sprints with the Girl Effect team — per feature cluster, turning co-creation insight and programme requirements into tested, buildable designs before engineering begins
• End-to-end journey mapping — from first conversation to provider visit to continuation, kept current as the build evolves
• Escalation flow design — with Girl Effect’s safeguarding team, so every journey has a safe, human path out
• Service blueprint for the redemption moment — the seconds at the pharmacy counter where the whole service succeeds or fails for a girl
• Feature requirements definition — workflow maps and functional requirement packs per feature cluster — the outputs that define what gets built, for this engagement and for future platform capabilities
• Design QA — on every girl-facing feature, including accessibility and low-bandwidth performance

Feature development. Many of the features likely to be built as part of these requirements include, but are not limited to:

• Code redemption system — girls receive single-use codes in the chat that unlock services at participating pharmacies and clinics. The partner builds the full lifecycle: secure code generation, delivery in-chat, validation at the counter, and reconciliation — with anti-fraud controls (single-use enforcement, expiry, anomaly detection) and reliable performance on low-end devices and patchy connectivity
• Provider dashboard — a simple web dashboard for participating pharmacies and clinics: validate a girl’s code in seconds at the counter, track stock of supported products, view redemption history and reconciliation status, and access basic reporting. Designed for busy counter staff with minimal training, on the devices providers actually have
• Geolocation & provider finder — a girl shares her area in the chat and receives the nearest vetted youth-friendly providers — services offered, opening hours, indicative pricing, and simple directions. Provider records are managed by Girl Effect through an admin interface; the directory exposes open APIs so future partner services can be surfaced
• Structured chat journeys — new structured flows in Sheng and English — method exploration, visit preparation, follow-up scheduling — authored by Girl Effect, implemented and instrumented by the partner so every journey step is measurable
• Cost comparison tool — a lightweight in-chat calculator letting girls compare the costs of methods and services across provider types, supporting informed choice before a visit
• Help desk enhancements — workflow improvements on the existing RapidPro help desk — routing, tagging, queue management and reporting for operators.
• Code generation tools — bulk and offline code generation for on-ground activations and community events, with attribution so redemptions can be traced back to the channel that issued them
• Quality, security & operations — QA throughout; security audit and penetration test before any girl-facing launch; hosting and infrastructure; maintenance and bug-fix support through the engagement

Scope Confirmation and Change Control

The feature descriptions above represent the anticipated scope. The final feature requirements will be confirmed through the inception and service-design stages.

To control scope and cost:

• Each feature cluster must have an approved requirements pack and acceptance criteria before development begins.
• No material change to the agreed scope, cost or timeline may proceed without written approval from Girl Effect.
• Proposed changes must document the rationale, impact on costs, timeline, security, dependencies and other deliverables.
• Work completed without the required written approval may not be eligible for payment.
• Girl Effect may prioritise, defer or remove features based on user evidence, technical feasibility, available budget or programme priorities.
• Girl Effect may commission optional or future features through separately approved work orders or contract amendments.

 Deliverables

Service design

Development features

The final feature set is confirmed through the service design process; the deliverables below reflect the features currently anticipated.

Technical and Operational Requirements

The proposed solution should:

• Be secure, scalable, maintainable and suitable for future expansion.
• Work effectively on low-end devices and under limited connectivity conditions.
• Apply privacy-by-design and data-minimisation principles.
• Use documented and supportable technologies.
• Integrate with Girl Effect’s approved systems and interfaces.
• Provide appropriate audit logs, access controls and administrative permissions.
• Support secure backup, restoration and business-continuity arrangements.
• Avoid unnecessary collection or exposure of personal and sensitive information.
• Meet agreed accessibility and usability standards.
• Provide clear operational monitoring and error reporting.
• Avoid unreasonable dependency on proprietary tools or a single supplier.

Bidders must identify all third-party software, services, licences and recurring costs required for the proposed solution.

Project Management and Working Arrangements

The engagement will be managed by Girl Effect’s Product and Delivery Lead.

The successful partner will:

• Work through two-week delivery sprints.
• Use Girl Effect’s agreed Jira or programme management environment.
• Participate in weekly delivery meetings.
• Maintain an updated delivery plan, risk register, issues log and decisions log.
• Provide concise sprint and monthly progress reports.
• Demonstrate completed work at agreed sprint reviews.
• Escalate material delays, dependencies, security risks and safeguarding concerns promptly.
• Ensure that each production release is supported by appropriate technical and operational documentation.

Who You Are

• Relevant experience delivering large-scale digital platforms, chatbot services, dashboards, system integrations or comparable solutions.
• Strong service design and participatory design capability.
• Experience designing digital services for young people or users in sensitive contexts.
• Experience with WhatsApp, RapidPro or comparable conversational platforms.
• Strong software engineering, quality assurance, security and deployment practices.
• Ability to integrate with and improve an existing technology environment.
• Capacity to provide implementation and post-launch support in Kenya.
• Appropriate safeguarding, data-protection and information-security controls.
• Financial and operational capacity to deliver the assignment.

Proposal Submission Requirements

Bidders must submit separate technical and financial proposals (Max 10 pages).

Technical Proposal

The technical proposal should include:

• Understanding of the assignment and proposed solution.
• Service-design and participatory-research approach.
• Proposed technical architecture and integration approach.
• Delivery methodology, workplan, sprint structure and key milestones.
• Quality-assurance, testing and release-management approach.
• Safeguarding, data-protection and security approach.
• Hosting, maintenance and support model.
• Proposed project team, roles, CVs and level of effort.
• Relevant organisational experience and at least three comparable assignments.
• At least three client references.
• Key assumptions, dependencies, risks and exclusions

Financial Proposal

The financial proposal must be submitted in USD and include:

• A fixed price by deliverable and implementation phase.
• Personnel roles, professional rates and level of effort.
• Hosting, infrastructure and recurring costs.
• Third-party licence and service costs.
• Maintenance and support costs.
• Applicable taxes shown separately.
• Proposed reimbursable expenses shown separately.
• Optional feature or enhancement rates, where relevant.
• Clear assumptions, dependencies, exclusions and pricing conditions.

Evaluation

Proposals will be evaluated in the following order:

• Pre-screening;
• Technical evaluation;
• Pitch, demonstration or clarification stage, where required; and
• Financial evaluation.

Evaluation Criterion

• Relevant organisational experience and comparable platform delivery 15%
• Service-design and participatory-design capability 15%
• Quality and feasibility of the technical approach 20%
• Security, data protection, safeguarding and quality assurance 10%
• Proposed team, delivery plan and Kenya support model 10%

Technical Total 70%

• Financial proposal and overall value for money 30%

Total 100%

Girl Effect may:

• Request written clarifications;
•  Invite shortlisted bidders to a pitch or technical demonstration;
• Conduct reference checks and due diligence;
• Request a best-and-final offer; or
• Negotiate the final scope, work plan and commercial proposal with the preferred bidder.

The lowest-priced proposal will not necessarily be selected.

Project Timelines

• Terms of reference published: 29th October 2026
• Questions/Clarification Deadline: 4th November 2026
• Consolidated FAQ shared with all prospective bidders: 6th November 2026
• Deadline for proposal submission: 13th November 2026
• Inception: onboarding to existing stack; interfaces defined; design sprint 1 and co-creation round 1- Months 1–2 post-contract
• Build releases (redemption system, dashboard, finder first)- Months 2–6
• Co-creation rounds 2–3; design sprints per feature cluster- Months 2–5
• Security audit and launch readiness-Month 6
• Operations, maintenance and iteration- Month 7 onward

Timings are indicative and will be finalised at contracting; deliverable acceptance, not elapsed time, triggers payment milestones.

Clarification Process

Bidders may submit clarification questions to [email protected] by 4th November 2026

The email subject should state:

Clarification Question – WAZZII Platform Tender

To ensure a fair and transparent open-tender process:

• Girl Effect will not provide substantive answers to all bidders.
• All relevant questions and responses will be compiled into a consolidated FAQ.
• The FAQ will not identify the organisation that submitted each question.
• The consolidated FAQ will be shared with all prospective bidders through the same publication or communication channels used for the RFP.
• Bidders are responsible for reviewing the FAQ and any formal tender updates before submitting their proposals.
• Verbal information or guidance will not amend the RFP unless confirmed by Girl Effect in writing.

Girl Effect may decline to answer questions received after the clarification deadline.

How to Apply

Submit the technical and financial proposals as separate attachments to:

[email protected]

Applications must be received by 13 November 2026

Use the email subject:

WAZZII Platform Feature Development and Service Design – Kenya

Late, incomplete or incorrectly submitted proposals may not be evaluated.

Girl Effect may contact only shortlisted bidders. Unsuccessful bidders will be notified following completion of the procurement process.

General and Commercial Terms

• Contracting: The successful bidder will sign Girl Effect’s standard services agreement, statement of work and applicable data-processing and information-security documentation.
• Payment: Payments will be linked to the satisfactory completion and written acceptance of agreed deliverables. Girl Effect may withhold payment for incomplete, defective or unapproved work.
• Pricing: The agreed implementation pricing will remain fixed unless a change is approved through the formal written change-control process.
• Expenses: Only reasonable expenses approved in writing in advance will be reimbursable. Reimbursable expenses must be supported by appropriate documentation.
• Intellectual Property: Girl Effect will own all foreground intellectual property, deliverables, source code, configurations, designs and documentation created specifically under the engagement, subject to agreed treatment of pre-existing tools and third-party materials.
• Source Code and Access: The partner must maintain current source code and documentation in repositories approved by Girl Effect and provide Girl Effect with appropriate administrative access throughout the engagement.
• Open-Source and Third-Party Components: All open-source and third-party components must be disclosed, appropriately licensed, maintained and approved for use.
• Confidentiality and Data Protection: The partner must protect Girl Effect’s confidential information and personal data and comply with applicable data-protection requirements.
• Safeguarding and Conduct: Appointment is subject to satisfactory due diligence, reference, safeguarding, information-security and compliance checks. The successful bidder must comply with Girl Effect’s code of conduct, safeguarding and anti-fraud requirements.
• Subcontracting: No material part of the assignment may be subcontracted without Girl Effect’s prior written approval. The lead bidder remains responsible for all subcontracted work.
• Warranties and Defects: Bidders should propose a warranty period during which defects in accepted deliverables will be corrected at no additional cost.
• Conflicts of Interest: Bidders must disclose any actual, potential or perceived conflict of interest.
• Tender Costs: Girl Effect will not reimburse costs incurred in preparing or submitting a proposal or participating in clarification, pitch or negotiation stages.
• Right to Award: Girl Effect may clarify, negotiate, amend, suspend or cancel the procurement; reject any or all proposals; award the full or partial scope; award in phases; or make no award.
• No Commitment: Publication of this RFP does not constitute a commitment to enter into a contract.
• Equal Opportunity: Girl Effect welcomes submissions from qualified organisations that meet the stated regulatory, technical and service requirements.
• Proposal Validity: Proposals must remain valid for 90 days from the submission deadline.