Software Engineering for Women’s Digital Financial Services

The African Development Bank Group (AfDB) or Banque Africaine de Développement (BAD) is a multilateral development finance institution. The AfDB was founded in 1964 and comprises three entities: The African Development Bank, the African Development Fund and the Nigeria Trust Fund. The AfDB’s mission is to fight poverty and improve living conditions on the continent through promoting the investment of public and private capital in projects and programs that are likely to contribute to the economic and social development of the region. The AfDB is a financial provider to African governments and private companies investing in the regional member countries (RMC).

The M-KOPA KENYA has received financing from the African Development Bank toward the cost of the Executing Human Centered Design Research to Test the Applicability of Smartphone-Enabled Digital Financial Services for Women Project, and intends to apply part of the agreed amount to payments under the contract for firm consultant.

The services included under this project are:

• Human Centered Design Research – Structured to cover 375 women and 375 men to give a comparative baseline of how men and women access digital financial services (DFS) and inform unique value propositions for women.
• Development of the technology/minimum viable product – design of the technology interface jointly with a group of 100 women (drawn from the 250) to ensure relevance to women informal traders, ease of use, factor literacy levels etc.
• Test the minimum viable product – to be linked to existing DFS services of M-KOPA has, as part of completing the loop (the end-to-end process will inform future capital funding for designing varied micro-loan products required by women beyond the current range – subject to the additional debt financing).

The M-KOPA Kenya now invites eligible consultants to indicate their interest in providing these services. Interested individual consultants must provide information indicating that they are qualified to perform the services (brochures, description of similar assignments, experience in similar conditions, availability of appropriate skills among staff, etc.). Consultants may constitute joint-ventures to enhance their chances of qualification.

Eligibility criteria, establishment of the short-list and the selection procedure shall be in accordance with the African Development Bank’s “Procurement Framework of October 2015”, which is available on the Bank’s website at http://www.afdb.org.

Interested consultants may obtain further information at the address below during office hours 8.30 am – 5.00 pm GMT.

Expressions of interest must be delivered electronically to the address below by 8th October, 2021 before 5.00 pm GMT.

Email: tilak.nathwani@m-kopa.com

Request for Expressions of interest