The United States Agency for International Development has started accepting applications for a $30 million grand challenge calling on innovators to submit ideas to combat Zika and “the disease threats of tomorrow.”
“To get ahead of infectious diseases like Zika, we need to move quickly to find and scale new tools and transformative solutions,” USAID Administrator Gayle Smith said in a statement.
The grand challenge is an addendum to the to the USAID Development Innovation Accelerator Broad Agency Announcement for Global Health, and is an example of how the agency is increasingly turning to a contracting technique used elsewhere in the U.S. government to see if the model might work to involve new actors in addressing development challenges.
As USAID looks to partner with a more diverse group of actors, the agency is contending with regulatory restrictions that can be cumbersome or limiting. The Broad Agency Announcement, or BAA, may be a way to address that challenge. The BAA is a new way for the agency to communicate with partners to design solutions before determining what procurement tool may be the best fit.
Keep reading this article at: https://www.devex.com/news/usaid-uses-new-contracting-technique-to-try-to-lower-barriers-to-entry-87858
