CALL FOR APPLICATION

The Grand challenge

Are you an assembler/manufacturer of solar products but find it difficult to thrive in Ethiopia? Here is an opportunity for you to solve your critical challenges.

The Grand Challenge will select high potential assemblers and manufacturers and provide technical assistance to upscale capacity.

If you are an SHS, solar pump, or solar PUE manufacturer/assembler in Ethiopia, apply before January 16, 2023, through Link Here or the QR code found in the document below.

ABOUT SAM PROGRAM

The Solar Appliance Manufacturing (SAM) Program is a solar manufacturing promotion and support initiative of Precise, Ministry of Irrigation and Lowlands, and Ministry of Water and Energy. The program is implemented under Precise’s Energy Market Accelerator (EMA) Program with financial support from Shell Foundation. The overall objective of the program is to support local manufacturing and assembly of SHS (Solar Home Systems), solar pumps, and other SAS (Stand Alone Solar) technologies to accelerate Ethiopia’s progress toward the wide use of solar energy for irrigation (productive use) and universal energy access while building local technical capacity, creating jobs, and enabling aftermarket knowledge and services.

The pilot program works to address challenges standing in the way of creating a vibrant manufacturing ecosystem for solar pumps and other SAS technologies in Ethiopia and provides targeted support to high potential solar pump and other SAS technology manufacturers selected based on predetermined criteria and a grand challenge selection process.

THE GRAND CHALLENGE

To ascertain that the selection and support of high potential local assemblers and manufacturers of solar appliances and SAS is conducted in a systematic, effective, and transparent way, a grand challenge competition has been designed. The grand challenge competition intends to select high potential solar Appliance local assemblers and manufacturers that meet the pre-determined eligibility and evaluation criteria and provide targeted support to the selected existing and potential assemblers and manufacturers to help them scale their local assembly and manufacturing capacity.

The program will partner with successful applicants who meet eligibility and evaluation criteria and who are selected by the evaluation committee and will provide targeted support based on their needs.

ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENT

To be eligible to participate in the grand challenge, applicants must meet the following eligibility criteria.

The applicant must be a registered entity and incorporated in Ethiopia.
The applicant should be operating in Ethiopia for at least 3 years.
The applicant should have audited financial statements for at least 3 years.
The applicant should be engaged in assembly and manufacturing of solar pumps or demonstrate the capacity to enter assembly and manufacturing of solar pumps
The applicant should have existing facility that is currently used or can be used for assembly and manufacturing of solar pumps
The applicant should have the technical capacity in terms of qualified staff and the financial capacity of local currency working capital needed for solar pump local manufacturing.
The applicant’s manufacturing proposal must be implementable in Q1 2023 with a project duration of 12 months and ending by December 31, 2023.
The Applicant shall not have been the subject of bankruptcy, liquidation, judicial settlement, safeguarding, conviction of illicit activities, cessation of activity or any other similar situation resulting from a similar procedure.

Only applications that meet the eligibility requirements and minimum criteria for the submission will be scored.

EVALUATION CRITERIA

The Evaluation Committee will score the applications according to the evaluation criteria below. Only shortlisted applicants and that score at least 70 out of 100 will be considered and move to the due-diligence stage:

Technical Criteria – 40 Points: This includes the reliability, efficiency, type of product, use of fintech (Like paygo), lifetime, quality, ... etc. of the products
Organizational and Production Capacity – 25 Points: This includes company’s experience, total production to date, production capacity, staff size, after sales service, distribution channel, … etc. of the company
Local value addition, forex savings and financial feasibility – 35 Points: This primarily focuses on the quantifiable forex savings the company proposes to make by assembling or manufacturing compared to the importation of a complete buildup system. This proposal should clearly show forex savings per unit of product, and the total forex requirement per year.

APPLICATION AND SELECTION PROCESS

The Solar Appliance Manufacturing Program will follow a structured 7 step process to administer the selection and application process for the grand challenge

Step 1: Request for Application – The program will disseminate the Request for Application through various channels and invite all current and potential solar pump assemblers and manufacturers to participate in the grand challenge competition process.

Step 2: Eligibility screening – Eligibility will be assessed by the applications screening team members according to the eligibility requirements stated above.

Step 3: Evaluation of eligible applications by the Evaluation Team – The Evaluation Team will evaluate the applications based on the evaluation criteria to create a shortlist of applications.

Step 4: Due diligence – due diligence on the applications and their applicants will be conducted by the program team with the oversight of the evaluation team on the shortlisted applications that receive the minimum qualifying score (70 out of 100) in step 3 process.

Step 5: Approval of the selected applications by the steering committee – applications selected will be reviewed, discussed and approved by the program steering committee.

Step 6: Notification of applications - all applicants will be notified of their applications' status after final approval from the program steering committee.

Step 7: MoU (MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING) Agreement with selected companies and implementation – The program will agree with the selected companies, sign MoU and provides support to locally manufacture the targeted solar pumps.

*For any help you might need regarding your application please contact abel@preciseethiopia.com *