Accelerating Access to Finance for WSMSEs through Leveraging Data & Technology

Accelerating Access to Finance for WSMSEs through Leveraging Data & Technology

The Africa Digital Financial Inclusion Facility (ADFI) aims to remove barriers to the growth and use of digital financial solutions to accelerate financial inclusion in Africa. The facility works through three main pillars namely (i) digital infrastructure (ii) policy and regulation (iii) products and innovation with gender inclusion and capacity building as cross cutting themes.

ADFI was launched in 2019 by the African Development Bank in partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), the French Development Agency (AfD), the Ministry of Finance, Government of Luxembourg, joined by the Ministry of Economy and Finance, France and the Women's Enterprise Finance Initiative (We-Fi) in 2020 and 2022 respectively.

With support from We-Fi, ADFI seeks to accelerate access to finance for women businesses (WSMEs) by leveraging data and technology through a program that will intervene across five (5) countries (Cameroon, Egypt, Kenya, Mozambique and Nigeria) selected from the five(5) regions across Africa.

The program that will be executed in partnership with key institutions, will facilitate the development of responsive digital financial services that will help an estimated 8,000 WSMEs improve their operational efficiency, access to finance, business resilience and recovery from the impact of COVID-19.

The program through the technical support funding from both We-Fi and ADFI seeks to mobilise increased access to credit for WSMEs from the private sector.

To support design and implementation of the program ADFI is launching a request for expressions of interest (REOI) from consulting firms with experience in providing innovative financial services solutions with emphasis on WSMEs.

The consulting terms of reference are outlined below:

Areas of Interventions

Partnership Building – Identify and develop partnerships for the project working with the AfDB through ADFI and the Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa (AFAWA).

Identification of the WSMEs target pool – to be included in the in-country projects
Human centred design (HCD) and research – identify needs of WSMEs, link to digital financial services (DFS) providers and facilitate development of relevant DFS to WMSEs.

Digital financial solutions design – Facilitate the design of digital credit; and complementary digital solutions such as insurance.

Prototyping and Testing – Testing different digital credit instruments; business processes associated with the credit access; and linking the testing of the digital credit solutions to the WSMEs pool identified at the HCD level.

Facilitating Go-live/Go-to Market Strategy (GTM) – Work with the WSMEs and the partners on the design and execution of GTM strategy.

Capacity Building – Support the coaching and mentoring of WSMEs in business skills, financial and digital literacy; and capacity building of stakeholders.

These interventions have been categorised into Phase A and B and detailed in the REOI document.

Evaluation/selection Criteria

Academic and professional qualifications of the proposed team

Subject-matter experience and track record of the company

Previous experience on designing programs and projects for WSMEs that facilitate access to finance; experience in digital financial solutions

Experience within Africa and the target countries

Operations in the target countries

How to Apply

For more information and job application details, see; Accelerating Access to Finance for WSMSEs through Leveraging Data & Technology