RFP2417 Impact Story Producer for AFI Impact Story 2024 – Rwanda At Alliance for Financial Inclusion

2. Project Background: Impact Story in Rwanda

As a member-driven organization, AFI continuously seeks to refine its own evidence-building and results-oriented reporting, in order to better understand and present the picture of financial inclusion as a sector of interest to its members and relevant stakeholders. AFI is seeking technical support to assist in the collection of narratives that capture the country’s financial inclusion progress, though a collection of personal and grassroots-level stories of change.

These narratives are intended to complement existing performance evaluation of AFI’s work with financial regulatory institutions. Guided by a strong evaluation thinking and AFI technical knowledge of the financial inclusion landscape, these stories should contribute to understanding the financial inclusion landscape and how AFI has been contributing to it. These people-centered narratives will also be part of AFI communications of results in an audiovisual format.

The collection of narratives will be conducted during the planned country mission in September 2024, and will involve ground travel in the country, through a series of interviews with stakeholders including government officials, financial service providers, technical experts, grassroots groups as well as members of the public.

3. Overall Objective:

This project will focus on collecting narratives of financial inclusion from individuals and organizations in the country. These “impact stories” will feature financial service providers and their users to show how financial inclusion policies change lives on the ground. These stories capture the work that AFI and its network has been doing, including its engagement with other players, and will contribute to the evidence base for AFI’s collaborative and cooperative model, including the country’s policymaking.

The approach taken by the project is in response to the following observations:

1. As financial regulators members are catalyst for change as they are responsible for policies that affect society, even as they don’t interact with the demographics impacted on a daily basis;
2. AFI has an evidence gap on impact-level changes of the financial inclusion policies; and
3. Financial inclusion is also being supported as well as challenged by other actors and other initiatives – to understand the impact of AFI’s work, the interaction with the work of others would be necessary to understand the extent of AFI’s effectiveness and utility.

AFI is seeking a local expert to support its country-led Impact Stories, as Impact Story Producer. The Producer will play a vital role in the qualitative data collection which is split into two modes:

1. Qualitative feedback collected by group or individual interviews with regulators, public sector agents, financial service representatives including agent/franchisee, and user/consumers, as well as grassroots groups;
2. Field observations of the country, both sectoral and demographic. This is to deepen the context and fill in the details collected in the interviews.
   1. The first phase (with AFI and NBR remote supervision): The Impact Story Producer will identify relevant interviewees and provide technical and local knowledge support in country context.

This data collection work will be done in two phases:

1. The second phase: A field mission, to interview identified informants. The Impact Story Producer will lead on the logistical planning with AFI and NBR support. The field mission will conclude with a debriefing for AFI and NBR.

The information gathered is expected to be delivered in an audiovisual package that includes photography, audio, and video recordings. An indicative list of interview questions has been prepared, and as part of the preparatory work it will be reviewed and revised as necessary.

The Impact Story Producer should have extensive country knowledge with an awareness of international development. This role may be ably executed by an individual or a group of relevant experts.

4. Scope of Work:

The Impact Story Producer is expected to provide technical support in developing a field mission agenda that includes indicative list of interviews with informants selected according to the section above. The tasks that are expected to achieve this objective include:

• Contributing country context feedback that supports the planning of the mission;
• Prepare a proposed list of interviews based on the criteria provided;
• Organize the logistics for the field mission to meet the scheduled interviews;
• Capture audiovisual records of the interviews, and desk research (when necessary).

5. Timeline and Deliverables:

This work would be undertaken from August 2024 to October 2024. The key timelines are summarized in the table below:

Refer link in ‘How to Apply’ section for more detailed information.

6. Travel:

The majority of the work will be completed remotely with virtual meetings. Domestic travel is only expected for field mission accompanied by AFI and NBR staff.

7. Consultant Experience:

The producer performing this task must have the following qualifications:

• At least three (3) years’ experience in story collection and field research as trained in disciplines such as journalism or ethnography, with subject experience in any of the following subjects: finance; public policy; economics; sociology. Professional experience and/or knowledge in financial inclusion preferred but not essential;
• Experience in writing and researching about development issues in emerging or developing economies is compulsory; experience in these issues from the lens of marginalized communities is an advantage;
• Key competency in media production required to deliver an audiovisual package, including video editing & audio engineering, and photography editing. This project will not be providing support for equipment;
• Fluency in English (oral and writing) is compulsory; fluency in local languages to conduct the assignment an added advantage; and
• Ability to maintain and keep confidential information within the scope of the project.

8. Reporting:

The Impact Story Producer will be working under the supervision of the Monitoring and Evaluation Unit, based in AFI Office in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, with support provided by the relevant AFI Regional Office in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. The expert is expected to work remotely with at least one on-site field mission accompanied by AFI staff. They will be expected to provide regular reports and updates to AFI during the assignment.

9. Payment Terms:

The payment terms/schedule proposed for this consultancy are as following:

Refer link in ‘How to Apply’ section for more detailed information.