ADFI's Request for Expression of Interest (REOI)
The African Development Bank has received technical assistance funding from the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi) to implement the ADFI WSME Program: Enhanced Access to Finance Leveraging Data and Technology in five target countries, namely, Cameroon, Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, and Mozambique. The program aims to leverage technology and data, tools that have transformed and accelerated inclusion in Africa, to support women's businesses in building resilience and improving overall efficiency, as well as work with financial service providers and the broader financial ecosystem to design responsive solutions. Therefore, the Africa Digital Financial Inclusion Facility (ADFI) is seeking expressions of interest from the Financial Service Providers (FSPs) and other financial ecosystem service providers in the target countries.
For impact and sustainability, the program seeks to leverage the TA funding component to mobilize lending to the WSMEs from participating Financial Service Providers (FSPs) either through their existing lending programs, new lending from the Bank (for institutions that qualify), or other lenders. AfDB's PIFD 1 and the African Digital Financial Inclusion Facility (ADFI) team are leading the program's implementation, working closely with colleagues from AFAWA/Gender.
The TA funding of approximately USD 15M across the 5 countries intends to mobilize WSME lending of USD 105M (minimum average of USD 21M per country) to at least 8,000 WSMEs, with a total of 12,000 WSMEs trained on the use of digital financial services for business efficiency, growth, and resilience. The WSMEs lent to will/should be part of the client portfolio of the participating FSPs. The program has an ecosystem approach, and whereas the lending FSPs will be lead partners and the executing agencies, we anticipate the possible participation of other key institutions such as insurance companies, mobile money operators, tech companies, key value chain institutions working with WSMEs, etc.
The FSPs can submit individual expressions of interest to participate or make submissions in partnership with other providers. The TA will cover (AfDB-led) experts’ recruitment to support implementation, the country-level partnerships and program development, product design, product & DFS capacity building for the WSMEs, go-to-market planning for program scale, and knowledge management.
The Bank (AfDB) has published an REOI, with a deadline of 19th May 2025, on the Bank/UNDP/ADFI websites, seeking expressions of interest to participate in the program from FSPs and other financial ecosystem service providers in the target countries. The link to the REOI (which has more information) is accessible here: REOI-ADFI WSME PROGRAM-EXECUTING AGENCY-FINANCIAL SERVICE PROVIDERS-GENERAL SERVICE PROVIDERS-PARTICIPATION.