Broad Agency Announcement for Remote Monitoring of the Humanitarian Supply Chain | BAA BHA 21 000001

Opportunity Information: Apply for BAA BHA 21 000001

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), through its Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA), is seeking new ideas for remotely monitoring humanitarian supplies as they move through the international supply chain. The opportunity is issued as a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA), which is designed to attract a wide range of technical approaches rather than prescribing one specific solution. The central goal is to find practical, scalable, and cost-effective technologies that can tag, track, locate, and monitor both food assistance and non-food items (NFIs) from shipment through delivery, improving confidence that commodities arrive where they are supposed to, in good condition, and with fewer losses along the way.

A key focus is remote sensing and monitoring capabilities that generate useful, quantifiable data on commodity condition and handling. USAID/BHA is interested in applications that can capture baseline parameters and ongoing measurements such as temperature, humidity, moisture, tilt, and shock while goods are in transit. They also signal interest in monitoring additional factors that could affect quality and safety, which leaves room for applicants to propose sensors or analytics tailored to real-world risks in humanitarian logistics (for example, spoilage risk, exposure to water intrusion, or rough handling). The intent is not just raw data collection, but turning that information into timely insights that can support better decisions during transport and storage.

Beyond sensing, the announcement emphasizes improved visibility and accountability across the supply chain. USAID/BHA wants solutions that make it easier to know the location, condition, and overall quality of humanitarian commodities as they travel globally. With better visibility, the agency aims to reduce waste, loss, damage, operational risk, and inefficiencies that can occur when shipments are delayed, mishandled, diverted, or exposed to damaging conditions. The BAA highlights the value of actionable outputs such as analytics, dashboards, and reporting, suggesting that proposals should consider the full pipeline from data capture to interpretation and user-friendly presentation, rather than treating monitoring as a standalone technical feature.

Another major objective is strengthening operational oversight and information sharing with stakeholders. The announcement explicitly mentions making information available not only within USAID or the U.S. Government, but also to receivers of commodities, private sector partners, and donor governments. In practice, that points toward solutions that can support appropriate transparency and coordination, such as standardized reporting, configurable access controls, and outputs that are understandable to both technical and non-technical users. It also implies attention to implementation realities, including connectivity constraints, varied operating environments, and the need for systems that can function across many countries and logistics contexts.

Awards under this BAA are expected to fall under "Applied Research" or "Development" as defined in U.S. law (48 USC 35.001). Applied research is described as work that typically follows basic research and tries to determine and exploit the potential of scientific discoveries or technology improvements to advance the state of the art. Development is described as the systematic use of scientific and technical knowledge to design, develop, test, or evaluate a new or improved product or service to meet specific performance objectives, including engineering design, prototyping, and testing. In other words, this opportunity is geared toward maturing solutions into workable, demonstrable capabilities through activities like R&D, prototyping, piloting, field testing, evaluation, and scaling, rather than funding purely theoretical research or routine procurement of an already-established commercial service.

Structurally, USAID/BHA frames the effort as collaborative: they are looking to co-create, co-design, co-invest, and partner with applicants across the lifecycle of innovation, from early development through deployment at scale. The funding opportunity is listed as discretionary, uses an "Other" funding instrument type, and has unrestricted eligibility, indicating that a broad range of organizations could potentially apply (subject to the detailed eligibility terms in the full announcement). The opportunity is identified as "Broad Agency Announcement for Remote Monitoring of the Humanitarian Supply Chain" with funding opportunity number "BAA BHA 21 000001," CFDA number 98.001, and it was originally posted on 2020-12-14 with an original closing date of 2021-02-01. The award ceiling and expected number of awards are not specified in the provided source text, which typically means applicants would need to consult the full solicitation for budget expectations, submission requirements, and selection criteria.

Overall, this BAA is a targeted call for technologies and systems that can make humanitarian logistics more transparent and data-driven by instrumenting shipments with monitoring tools, translating sensor outputs into usable operational insights, and enabling broader oversight across partners. The underlying purpose is practical: protect commodity quality and safety, reduce losses and inefficiencies, and improve confidence among stakeholders that humanitarian assistance is being handled and delivered effectively.

• The Agency for International Development in the other sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Broad Agency Announcement for Remote Monitoring of the Humanitarian Supply Chain" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 98.001.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2020-12-14.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2021-02-01. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Eligible applicants include: Unrestricted.

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