Keisha Foster

Keisha L. Foster serves as a Contract Specialist with USAID/Nigeria, where she plays a pivotal role in executing the agency’s mission to strengthen governance, public health systems, and sustainable development through strategic procurement. She manages the full lifecycle of acquisitions for professional, scientific, and technical services, ensuring alignment with U.S. foreign assistance objectives and USAID’s performance monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) frameworks. Her work directly supports the implementation of data-driven programs that build institutional resilience and local capacity across Nigeria’s subnational structures, with a strong emphasis on health systems strengthening and technical assistance. Foster collaborates with a diverse range of contractors delivering high-value professional services, including international consulting firms, research institutions, and local Nigerian organizations with expertise in public health, data science, and governance. Her procurement approach emphasizes competitive bidding, transparent evaluation criteria, and performance-based contract management to ensure accountability and impact. She maintains consistent engagement with vendors capable of delivering complex, long-term technical support services under fixed-price and cost-reimbursement contract types. Foster’s contracting portfolio reflects a strong preference for open, non-set-aside competitions, with 100% of her acquisitions conducted under general market solicitation. While she does not prioritize socioeconomic set-asides such as 8(a), HUBZone, or SDVOSB programs, her process remains inclusive, allowing all eligible firms to compete on technical merit and past performance, consistent with USAID’s global procurement guidelines. Her primary focus lies in NAICS 541990—All Other Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services—where she procures specialized services in health systems analysis, MEL design, data infrastructure development, and governance capacity building. She routinely awards contracts to firms with demonstrated expertise in behavioral science, digital health platforms, and institutional diagnostics, ensuring technical rigor and local relevance in all procurement actions.