Details
Mission and objectives
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is the UN's global development network, advocating for change and connecting countries to knowledge, experience and resources to help people build a better life. UNDP is on the ground in some 170 countries and territories, supporting their own solutions to development challenges and developing national and local capacities that will help them achieve human development and the Sustainable Development Goals. Our work is concentrated on three main focus areas: Sustainable development; Democratic governance and peacebuilding; Climate and disaster resilience. UNDP helps countries attract and use aid effectively. In all our activities, we promote gender equality and the protection of human rights. UNDP has enhanced its support to countries to work towards the eradication of extreme poverty, enabling us to build back better and work towards innovative solutions to the complex global challenges. We have refined our service offering through six signature solutions to provide a more integrated response to the development challenges that we are all facing in this complex global environment. This includes a mix of policy advice, technical assistance, catalytic financing and innovative programmes tailored to country specific needs to accelerate progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals through six our signature solutions on - poverty, governance, resilience, environment, energy, gender equality.
Context
According to the World Bank, financial inclusion means that individuals and businesses have access to useful and affordable financial products and services that meet their needs – transactions, payments, savings, credit and insurance – in a responsible and sustainable way. Increasingly, technology is being used to drive inclusion by delivering these products and services more cheaply, and accessibly. However, digital financial inclusion is a new niche for UNDP, where program guidance doesn’t yet exist. And while digital financial inclusion is a familiar topic to many private sector, public sector and development actors, there’s an opportunity to explore, with partners, how to deliver holistic interventions to make financial systems more inclusive. One key is community-embeddedness. For those in development and government, this is obvious. For the private sector, getting deep community insight to inform product development might be a stretch. But for all actors—public sector, private sector, and development—there’s room to explore how multiple coordinated interventions in policy, markets, and enabling infrastructure, can boost the effectiveness of digital solutions designed for inclusion.
Task description
Within the framework of the Digital Financial Inclusion Rave organized by the UNDP Accelerator Lab network at global level, Zambia, Cameron and South Sudan Country office Accelerator Labs have partnered to generate knowledge for a comparative study on the usage of mobile wallets within these three Countries. The R&D Raves, as per the UNDP Accelerator Lab global network, are a way to turn knowledge into action that advances the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The R&D Raves intend to serve as learning spaces where we work with partners to surface knowledge about a specific system, or theme, and explore ways to create momentum toward change. The exercise to do a desk review and data collection for analysis comes after a Rave on Digital Financial Inclusion held in Nairobi from the 4th to the 7th of June 2024 organized by the global Accelerator Lab team with participants from 23 other Country Accelerator Labs, Private sector partners, representatives from the UNDP Kenya office , Donors from Japan and key solution holders operating within related financial inclusion spaces . Based on the above, the online volunteers selected will be under the supervision and guidance of the Head of Solutions Mapping of the different mentioned UNDP Country Accelerator Labs, and will provide the following support: - Do research and desk review to identify all available mobile wallets in Cameroon,South Sudan and Zambia, respectively (Stakeholder Mapping) - Conduct an online survey targeting targeting an identified population sample - Provide support on the most used mobile wallets by region and for what services - Identify existing wallets which are not used or rarely and why - Do a comparative analysis on the preference of one wallet over another. - Scan the horizon for positive Deviants (Anyone or Persons promoting use of Digital wallets for services or areas which are not common). - Seek if at all, for any other local financial inclusion solutions which are not necessarily digital but widely used. This exercise aims to acquire relevant data through a holistic approach. Generate new and unknown data, contribute towards knowledge and learning in a comparative study at global, and leverage citizen science and collective Intelligence to influence systems to learn from one another and create positive