Glossary
Procurement, in plain language.
Tender vocabulary is dense by design. These are the terms used across TenderAfrica, explained so that a first-time bidder can act on them. Where a term links to a screen, the definition tells you what it means there.
A–Z · 66 terms · updated November 2026
A
- Addendum (plural: addenda)
- A formal published amendment to a tender document set — dates, quantities, specifications or clarifications. Addenda are mandatory reading; missing one can invalidate a bid.
- Advance payment guarantee (APG)
- A bank or insurance guarantee securing a client's advance payment. It is normally required before payment is released and usually reduces available credit lines.
B
- Bid
- A priced, compliant offer submitted by a bidder in response to a tender. In TenderAfrica, the interested bid is the pipeline object and the bid is the execution record that carries tasks, approvals and outcomes.
- Bid security (tender security)
- A guarantee or deposit submitted with a bid to secure the bidder's obligations during the validity period. It can be forfeited on withdrawal or non-compliance.
- Bidder
- The legal entity (or consortium/JV) submitting a bid. The client remains the bidder of record; TenderAfrica never becomes the bidder.
- BoQ (Bill of Quantities)
- An itemised quantity and pricing schedule, common in works and goods tenders.
- BRELA
- Business Registrations and Licensing Agency (Tanzania) — company registration, business licences and related records.
C
- Canonical tender record
- The single normalised tender record that every TenderAfrica module references, with provenance back to every contributing source. No module keeps its own shadow copy.
- Clarification deadline
- The last date on which bidders may ask the procuring entity questions about a tender. Answers are usually published to all bidders.
- Compliance pack
- The set of legal, tax, statutory, sector and declaration documents a bidder must submit with a tender.
- Consortium / JV
- Two or more firms bidding jointly under a consortium or joint-venture agreement with a defined lead partner, roles and liability.
- Contingency
- An explicit allowance added to a bid price for identified, quantified risk — as opposed to unexplained margin.
- Contract award
- The formal decision by the procuring entity to award a contract to a bidder.
- Coupa / SRM / corporate portal
- Private-sector e-procurement or supplier-relationship portals operated by corporates or their service providers for supplier registration, sourcing and tendering.
- CR-1 gate
- TenderAfrica's internal eligibility gate for assisted bid work: verified KYC, a valid readiness assessment, parsed tender documents, a signed engagement letter and approvals, and a conflict-of-interest screen.
D
- Debarment / sanctions screening
- A check of bidder and expert eligibility against sanctions, debarment and exclusion lists (for example UN or World Bank lists).
- Deduplication (dedupe)
- Detecting and merging the same tender appearing across multiple sources without losing provenance or history.
- Donor-funded tender
- A tender funded by an international financial institution, UN agency or bilateral donor, often with additional eligibility, declaration and procurement rules.
E
- EAT (East Africa Time)
- UTC+3, the timezone used for every date and deadline displayed in TenderAfrica.
- Eligibility hint
- A plain-language restatement of what the source notice says about who may bid. It is not an eligibility ruling — always check the tender document.
- EOI (Expression of Interest)
- A pre-qualification step where suppliers express interest before a shortlist or full tender is issued.
F
- Framework agreement
- A long-term arrangement with pre-qualified suppliers, often with call-off orders during the term rather than a single purchase.
- Freshness
- How recently a tender record was confirmed from its source, shown as a label and a last-verified timestamp.
I
- ICB / NCB
- International Competitive Bidding / National Competitive Bidding — procurement methods with different eligibility and advertising rules.
- Incoterms
- Standard international commercial terms defining who bears cost, risk and customs duties in goods transport (for example EXW, FOB, CIF, DAP).
- Integrity pact
- A declaration by bidder and/or officials committing to anti-corruption conduct in a procurement.
- Interested bid (My bids)
- A tender a user has deliberately added to their pipeline for further work — the platform's central pipeline object.
- ITT / RFP / RFQ
- Invitation to Tender / Request for Proposal / Request for Quotation — common tender document types with different emphasis (compliance and price vs technical proposal vs simple price).
K
- KYC (lite)
- Identity and eligibility verification of the client organisation sufficient to deliver professional services, not full banking KYC.
L
- LDs (liquidated damages)
- Pre-agreed damages for late or non-performance, usually a percentage of contract value per week or month, often capped.
- Local content
- Requirements to use domestic goods, labour, services or suppliers, common in extractives, energy and some public procurement.
- Lot
- A separately bid-able portion of a tender — for example by region, item or phase.
N
- NeST (National e-Procurement System of Tanzania)
- The public e-procurement system operated under PPRA (nest.go.tz, formerly TANePS) used to publish and submit many Tanzanian public tenders.
- No-bid decision
- A documented decision not to pursue a tender, with reasons such as margin, risk, capacity or eligibility. A first-class outcome, not a failure.
- NSSF / WCF / OSHA
- Tanzanian statutory bodies/obligations: National Social Security Fund, Workers' Compensation Fund and Occupational Safety and Health Authority. Compliance evidence is commonly required in bids.
P
- PDPA
- Personal Data Protection Act (Tanzania, 2022) — governs collection, use, transfer and retention of personal data.
- Performance security (performance bond)
- A guarantee securing performance during contract execution, usually a percentage of contract value. It is a cash or collateral commitment, not free.
- Pipeline
- The portfolio of interested bids and their progression stages. The user-facing label is “My bids”.
- Portal
- An external website or system where tenders are published and/or submissions are made (for example NeST, UNGM, Tendersure or a corporate supplier portal). Sources and portals overlap but are not identical.
- PPRA
- Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (Tanzania) — regulator for public procurement and e-procurement.
- Prequalification
- A stage screening suppliers for eligibility or capacity before inviting full bids.
- Price validity
- The period for which a bid price must remain valid. A shorter validity can be rejected; a longer one transfers price risk to the bidder.
- Procuring entity
- The buyer organisation issuing the tender or contract. The in-product tooltip is “the buyer”.
- Provenance
- The source record and timestamps from which a canonical tender was derived, retained for verification and audit.
R
- Readiness assessment
- A structured evaluation of a company's compliance documents, procedures and presentation against tender requirements, producing a score, hard-fail status and remediation plan.
- Readiness threshold
- The minimum readiness score required for assisted bid eligibility under the CR-1 gate (default 70, versioned).
- Review label
- The provenance label on advisory output: AI-assessed, Analyst-assessed, Expert-verified or Reviewed and approved. No risk or readiness output is shown without one.
- Risk item
- One identified tender-specific risk with cause, probability, impact, expected cost range, mitigation and evidence.
- Risk register
- The structured set of risk items for a tender, with ownership and status.
S
- SAM / UEI
- System for Award Management (US Government) and the Unique Entity ID used for US-funded contracts and grants. SAM registration is free and renews every 365 days.
- SLA
- Service-level agreement or commitment: a measurable response or turnaround time.
- Source
- An origin of tender data — a web portal, paid aggregator, feed or manual record. Multiple sources can publish the same tender.
- Statutory deductions
- Employee-related taxes and contributions (for example PAYE, NSSF, WCF, NHIF as applicable) that a bidder must demonstrate compliance with.
- Subcontracting
- Delegating part of a contract to third parties; may be restricted or require approval and disclosure in the tender.
T
- Tender
- The procurement process and documents issued by a procuring entity inviting bids; in TenderAfrica, the canonical opportunity record.
- Tender document
- Any document in the tender set (ITT, specifications, BoQ, contract form, addenda, forms). Usually the copyright of the procuring entity.
- TIN / VRN
- Tanzanian Taxpayer Identification Number and VAT Registration Number.
- ToR (Terms of Reference)
- The scope document for consultancy and service tenders.
- TPA / TRA / TASAC
- Tanzanian Ports Authority, Tanzania Revenue Authority and Tanzania Shipping Agencies Corporation — bodies whose charges and procedures drive port and import cost risk in goods tenders.
- TZS / USD
- Currency codes. TZS is primary for the Tanzania market; USD is common in donor-funded tenders. Every amount in TenderAfrica shows its ISO code.
U
- UNGM
- United Nations Global Marketplace — registration and tender portal for UN agencies. Registration is free; agencies may require Level 1 or Level 2 registration.
- UNDP Quantum
- UNDP's e-procurement supplier platform. Registration requires company documents and MFA; the legal name must use Latin characters only.
- UNOPS eSourcing
- UNOPS's procurement system. Bidders must first be registered on UNGM with UNOPS included.
V
- Vendor registration
- A procuring entity's or portal's process of onboarding a supplier before it can receive or submit tenders.
W
- Won / Lost / No-bid
- Terminal pipeline outcomes in My bids, used for analytics and learning.
- Working capital
- Cash needed to fund mobilisation, goods, finance instruments and payment lags between contract award and payment.
Still unclear?
Terms vary between procuring entities and donors. If a tender uses a term not listed here, check the tender document's own definitions and ask the buyer through the official clarification channel before the clarification deadline.