ICTworks

Artificial intelligence is moving from hype to reality, offering powerful tools to transform health, education, livelihoods, and climate resilience. Yet in Ethiopia, many communities remain underserved by both technology and policy.

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Responsible AI solutions can help close service gaps, improve efficiency, and build resilience—if they are designed inclusively and ethically. That is exactly the goal of the EthiopiAI Programme from the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO).

£4.6 million EthiopiAI Grant Program

EthiopiAI is investing £4.6 million in grants to support organisations that develop and deploy responsible AI automation and optimisation solutions. This programme emphasises technical assistance to strengthen local capacity, build regulatory frameworks, and ensure ethical AI use across multiple sectors.

• Priority areas include health, education, humanitarian response, climate action, and economic development.
• Projects must focus on Ethiopia and align with national and local development priorities.
• Strong proposals will combine technical innovation with training, policy engagement, and partnerships with local institutions.

Apply Now: Deadline is 3 October 2025.

This is a rare chance to secure significant funding to shape how Ethiopia harnesses artificial intelligence for inclusive growth. AI is moving fast. This programme is your opportunity to make sure it moves in the right direction.

Use GenAI to Write a Winning Proposal

The RFP says proposals should include a cover letter, CVs, and a 10-page technical proposal with clear methodology, work plan, budget, and risk mitigation strategy. But who has time to write all that by the deadline?

Do not write this yourself. Use Generative AI to co-write it with you.

Please use GenAI to accelerate your proposal writing and increase your chance of success. Here is a proposal created with Perplexity’s Research Mode and the following prompt. You can start here, but please use your own organizations’ experience, staffing, and approach as needed.

Use This GenAI Prompt

You are an accomplished proposal writer for FCDO grants. You want to respond to the EthiopiAI RFP.

You will use this draft proposal outline to write a final submission that will satisfy the grant goals. Check your work to make sure the proposal is complete and responds to the RFP criteria. Suggest the types of organizations and people that would be the best fit to win this proposal.

Your final output must include:

1. Cover letter
2. CVs (create summaries of the type of people and experience that would best win this proposal)
3. Technical proposal (10 pages, Arial, font size 12) with:
   1. Executive summary (1 page)
   2. Technical approach & methodology: how the partner will develop, implement, deploy AI applications in the priority sectors proposed.
   3. Team skills & experience and proposed team composition
   4. Capacity-building plan: what training/tools will be delivered
   5. Policy engagement strategy: how to work with policymakers on AI policy, ethics frameworks, communication & uptake.
   6. Partnerships: collaboration with local institutions, government bodies, NGOs.
   7. Work plan, timelines & budget (2 pages) (clear days per team member)
   8. Outputs & outcome indicators: monitoring plan; how progress will be assessed; approach to testing AI solutions before deployment; method for evaluating impact; how lessons are learned and used
   9. Risk assessment & mitigation plan (1 page)
4. Grant budget: detailed budget template (staff, travel, technical development, training) using the provided budget template.

What is Your Role Then?

I love using Generative AI to create proposals quickly. Yet, these tools “hallucinate” (a nice way of saying they lie fluently) and can quickly go off topic. For example ChatGPT wrote about Kenya, not Ethiopia.

Your role, as the human in control, is to give the AI all the right data to start with: the correct company information, personnel CVs, data sources. Then you need to give it the prompt that will result in quality output. Finally, you need to review every line of the proposal to ensure it accurately represents your organization.

You are going to be submitting the proposal, not AI. You need to make sure the proposal is correct, regardless of how you created it.

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