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Lesotho SIMM Project
Hackathon Innovation for inclusive finance services
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) under the Lesotho SIMM Project in collaboration with the Ministry of Finance and FinMark Trust, is hosting a hackathon innovation for inclusive financial services on the 20th – 22nd April 2018, at Maseru Avani. Thus your respective media house is invited to the launch on 20th at 9am.
The purpose of this Hackathon is to promote product innovations for Inclusive Financial services, especially for the poor and rural populations, based on identified market challenges. The Hackathon is aimed at finding innovative solutions to address some of the identified challenges to financial inclusion, focusing on access and use of mobile financial services (mobile money and mobile banking) in Lesotho.
The objectives of this initiative are to:
1. Design and develop the next-generation applications to improve on existing digital financial systems and product offering,
2. Facilitate use of technology to bridge the financial inclusion divide in Lesotho,
3. Create Lesotho – relevant technological solutions to solve local challenges; and
4. Leverage existing information, networks and human capacity to build innovations.
As part of preparations for the Lesotho SIMM Project, UNDP conducted an analysis and scoping study of the mobile money sector in Lesotho in March 2016 and identified systemic problems in the enabling business environment (ecosystem challenges) that are preventing the sector from catering financial inclusion products to low-income people and rural customers. The identified challenges, to be addressed by this Hackathon challenge include:
1. Different and long steps for payment of various services in the country
2. Locations of agents and merchants which accept mobile money or financial access points various areas and districts of Lesotho are not clearly known
3. Limited usability of the services among the semi-literate, aged and visually impaired in the services offering for financial services
4. Management of community/group savings/credit programs to reduce vulnerability and insecurity among participants
5. Limited user - friendly financial education programs/products appealing to different user and population groups
6. Lack of KYC requirements for the mobile money users allowing for anonymous transactions, money laundering and possible financing of terrorism activities using mobile money platforms
7. Innovative idea from stakeholders, that are aligned to the Lesotho SIMM objectives.
The Hackathon is expected to explore both small and big ideas for solutions to development challenges. The expected outputs to this Hackathon are the Lesotho – generated prototype applications of products and services that may be adopted by the sector, based on the presented challenges or own ideas.
The Hackathon will have the following awards:
· Up to 7 Awards for selected solutions, including 1 award selected by participants
· Each Award will include:
o Cash Prize of US$ 5,000 (equivalent)
o Mentorship and technical support for winning teams to enable finalisation of the prototype
· In addition, all participants will receive a Certificate of Participation
This Hackathon is targeted at Basotho youth, (aged 18 – 35), youth-led fintechs or developer companies/partnerships. The youth can be in school and out of school youth, as individuals or within companies.
For further enquires contact:
Alex Tsemane;
Lesotho SIMM Project - Project Officer
Irene Seme
Communication officer
irene.seme@undp.org / +266 58031290