Marie Helene Ndiaye

Marie Helene Ndiaye serves as an Acquisition & Assistance Assistant at USAID/Senegal, supporting the agency’s mission to advance sustainable development across West Africa through strategic procurement of technical assistance and capacity-building services. In this role, she facilitates the acquisition lifecycle for non-construction contracts, ensuring alignment with U.S. foreign assistance objectives in governance, public health, education, climate resilience, and humanitarian response. She works closely with program officers and technical teams to translate mission needs into compliant solicitation documents, evaluate proposals, and manage award execution under FAR and USAID’s Automated Directives System. Her work is central to delivering expert advisory services through cooperative agreements and contracts that strengthen local institutional capacity. Marie Helene collaborates with a diverse array of international and local consulting firms, technical service providers, and implementers with deep regional expertise. While no single contractor dominates her portfolio, she consistently engages firms with proven track records in development programming, monitoring and evaluation, and institutional strengthening. Her procurement approach emphasizes performance-based contracting, clear statement of work development, and rigorous source selection criteria focused on technical merit and local engagement. Her contracting activity reflects a strong preference for open, non-set-aside competitions, with 100% of her acquisitions conducted under unrestricted solicitation. This indicates a focus on selecting the most qualified providers based on technical capability rather than socioeconomic criteria, though she remains attentive to equitable access and local participation where feasible under program requirements. Her primary procurement focus is on NAICS 541618 — Other Management Consulting Services — encompassing strategic planning, policy analysis, program design, and technical advisory services. She routinely procures expert consultants and firms specializing in governance reform, health systems strengthening, education sector diagnostics, and climate adaptation planning, ensuring USAID/Senegal’s interventions are evidence-based, locally contextualized, and sustainably implemented.