Terms of Reference for Design, Deliver, and Scale a Digital Gig Readiness Bootcamp and Employment Linkage Model

Livelihoods Improvement for Women and Youth (LIWAY II) is a four-year program (March 2025–December 2028) funded by Sweden (Sida) and implemented by SNV and Mercy Corps. LIWAY aims to contribute to sustainable poverty reduction and social stability in Addis Ababa by increasing the incomes of 143,000 poor people, at least 50% women, through improved wage and self-employment opportunities using a climate-smart Market Systems Development (MSD) approach.

The program operates across four priority market systems: Labour, Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs), Medium and Large Enterprises (MLEs), and Skills. Within the Labour and Skills systems, LIWAY has identified the digital economy, including freelancing, remote work, outsourcing services, and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) as an emerging opportunity for urban youth employment. Despite growing demand for digital workers, participation of low-income youth remains limited due to inadequate market-relevant digital skills, weak employability and communication competencies, limited access to digital resources such as laptops and internet connectivity, and limited pathways to employment opportunities.

Addis Ababa’s digital gig ecosystem is expanding, yet a severe gap remains between skills training and actual market entry for diverse job seekers, including low- and medium-skilled TVT graduates and individuals with informal education. While conventional initiatives focus heavily on technical training, these youth face massive gig/freelance work readiness gaps struggling with platform navigation, personal branding, pricing, financial literacy, and digital payments alongside critical foundational deficiencies in professional ethics, customer service, time management, and others. To bridge these gaps, LIWAY has previously piloted interventions with private digital freelance and gig work platforms like Afriwork, GoodayOn and AlenHomes to lower job-search costs and build inclusive matching infrastructures. Early pilot lessons demonstrate that securing sustainable freelance and gig employment requires moving away from classroom settings toward a model combining hands-on marketplace coaching, soft-skills integration, peer mentorship, and direct pipelines that connect certified, work-ready freelancers to local and international digital service demands.

To address these challenges, LIWAY seeks to partner with a qualified service provider to design and deliver a Digital Gig Readiness Bootcamp combined with employment linkage support. The assignment will equip low-income youth with practical digital, freelancing, and employability skills, facilitate connections to employers, BPO firms, outsourcing companies, and digital work platforms, and provide structured post-training support to improve job placement and income-generation outcomes.

The intervention will also promote market-based and sustainable approaches to digital employment by strengthening partnerships with private-sector actors, improving access to essential digital work resources, and testing practical service delivery models that can continue beyond project support. Lessons learned, partnership models, and implementation experiences will be documented to inform future scaling and replication of digital employment initiatives in Addis Ababa.

The service provider will be expected to submit the following streamlined, practical deliverables across the lifecycle of the 5-months intervention:

1. Project Inception & Setup: – An inception report outlining the implementation approach, work plan, training schedule, participant recruitment and selection process, partnership engagement strategy, and sustainability approach to be tested during the assignment.
2. Training Execution & Employment Tracking: A complete digital gig readiness training package, including the adapted curriculum, learning materials, and cohort completion reports alongside a comprehensive employment tracking database. This database must document participant profiles, CVs, portfolios, platform registrations, employer partnerships, job placements, freelance engagements, and initial income-generation outcomes, with all participant data fully disaggregated by gender and key demographics.
3. Sustainability & Project Closeout Report: A comprehensive final report evaluating the tested sustainability models and operational workflows, alongside a complete data-driven breakdown of overall quantitative achievements against project KPIs. This document must capture key operational lessons learned covering training execution, market placement, and system infrastructure while providing a practical scaling framework and actionable strategic recommendations for future replication.