West Africa Information Sharing Exercise

Background
The Bureau of Counterterrorism (CT) of the U.S. Department of State is seeking organizations interested in implementing a project to facilitate a joint exercise with West African civilian security agencies to promote cross-border coordination, information sharing, and collaboration on counterterrorism threats.

Grant Details
The program aims to encourage regional partners to increase bilateral and multilateral collaboration and information sharing to disrupt, degrade, investigate, prosecute, and respond to cross-border terrorist activity. The exercise seeks to leverage an understanding of how security and judicial agencies in Coastal West Africa operate, collaborate, investigate, prosecute, and incarcerate cross-border VEO threats. The program objectives include delivering a comprehensive study and report by mid-2025, improving the capacity of a selected African partner to design, lead, and host a joint exercise by 2026, and enhancing West African law enforcement cooperation to counter cross-border threats by 2026.

Eligibility Requirements
Eligible applicants include not-for-profit organizations, public and private educational institutions, for-profit organizations (only if allowed by appropriation), public international organizations (PIOs), governmental institutions. Each applicant must have a Unique Entity Identifier (UEI) and an active registration with the SAM.gov. Applicants are only allowed to submit one SOIC per organization.

Period of Performance
The proposed programs should be completed in 12 months or less with an anticipated start date of September 30, 2024.

Grant Value
Total available funding is up to $986,679 for one award under the Cooperative Agreement funding instrument.

Place of Performance
The specific countries where the joint exercise will take place include Benin, Togo, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, and possibly Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mauritania, Nigeria, and/or Senegal.