FINMARK TRUST
TERMS OF REFERENCE
Lesotho GIS Financial Access Points Mapping Project – Phase 2
Consultancy Services for the Data Collection and Analytics
File Ref: 20319
Date: September 2026
ABOUT FINMARK TRUST
FinMark Trust (FMT) is an independent trust whose purpose is to make financial markets work for the poor by promoting financial inclusion and regional financial integration.
FMT does this by conducting research to identify the systemic constraints that prevent consumers from accessing financial markets, and by advocating for change based on research findings. Thus, FMT has a catalytic role, driven by its purpose to start processes of change that ultimately lead to the development of inclusive financial systems that can benefit all sectors.
BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT
Financial inclusion is a key pillar of Lesotho’s development agenda under the National Strategic Development Plan and the Financial Sector Development Strategy.
Under the Lesotho Scaling Inclusion through Mobile Money (SIMM) project, the Ministry of Finance, the Central Bank of Lesotho (CBL) and the UNDP, in partnership with FinMark Trust (FMT), implemented Phase 1 of the Financial Access Points Mapping Project from December 2017 to March 2018, which produced the country’s first geo-referenced baseline of 5,597 financial access points.
Given developments in the financial sector since 2018, there is a need to implement Phase 2 to update and extend the database and to deepen the analytics. The GIS database is a key input to a financial market information system: it supports the CBL’s regulatory data capabilities, the National Financial Inclusion Strategy II (2024–2028) monitoring and evaluation framework, and the Extended National Strategic Development Plan II (2023–2027), and it delivers commercial and operational value to financial service providers.
OBJECTIVES
The overall objective is to update the 2018 baseline into a complete, current, geo-referenced GIS database of all financial access points in Lesotho and to generate decision-ready analytics from it.
The specific objectives are to:
- Collect geo-referenced data on all financial access points across the country and produce a clean, validated dataset (Part A).
- Produce spatial analytics, indices and an interactive web-mapping facility from the dataset (Part B).
SCOPE OF WORK / APPROACH
The scope is divided into two parts. Bidders may submit a proposal for Part A only, Part B only, or both Part A and Part B.
Bidders must set out their competencies for each part they bid for, and financial proposals must present the costs of Part A and Part B separately.
PART A – BASIC DATA COLLECTION
The service provider shall design and implement the field data collection to update the geo-referenced database of all financial access points, including:
- Designing and programming the survey tool/questionnaire on a GPS-enabled handheld/mobile platform, for approval and sign-off by FMT prior to fieldwork. The survey length should be under 10 minutes to administer.
- Recruiting, training and managing enumerator teams, including a field pilot to test readiness, and route planning to ensure full geographic coverage across all ten districts.
- Visiting and geo-tagging every financial access point in the access-point universe, namely:
- Mobile money agents.
- Commercial bank branches.
- ATMs.
- POS terminals.
- Microfinance institutions.
- Insurers.
- Post offices.
- Postal agents.
- Money lenders.
- Merchants.
- Capturing, for each access point:
- GPS coordinates and a photograph.
- Institution and touch-point type, and the provider, e.g. M-Pesa, EcoCash, bank, MFI.
- Cash-in and/or cash-out (CICO) status and other financial services offered.
- For merchants: business category and digital-payment acceptance channels, including cash, card/POS, mobile money, QR-based payments, merchant wallets and other digital channels.
- Approximate transaction volumes, e.g. deposits/withdrawals per week, and years in operation.
- Conducting in-field quality checks, including penetration tests and back-checks, and ongoing data quality management.
- Submitting collected data in Excel to FMT on a weekly basis for validation, with a detailed fieldwork report.
- Delivering a final, clean, validated, geo-referenced dataset ready for analysis.
PART B – GEOSPATIAL ANALYTICS
The service provider shall produce spatial analytics from the dataset. The analytics are grouped into broader dimensions, each with an illustrative research question and the policy it informs.
1. Measuring Access and Coverage
Research question: What share of adults live within 30 minutes of a financial access point, and where are the populated access gaps, covering rural and female populations?
Policy relevance: NFIS II Indicator 10 (Access) and its supply-side proxies; access points per 100,000 adults, disaggregated by urban/rural.
Activities include:
- Complete geo-mapping of all fintech agents, merchants and service points, and identification of underserved villages, growth corridors, border towns and commercial centres.
- Mapping of agent and merchant proximity and density relative to population, by district, village and business category.
- Development of indices of access for key items of interest, highlighting gaps in service provision and over-serviced areas.
- Aggregation of results to areas of interest, i.e. wards, villages and catchment areas, such as population within a five-minute drive/walk of an access point and Voronoi service areas.
2. Measuring Usage and Liquidity
Research question: Where are cash-in/cash-out services concentrated, which areas face liquidity shortfalls, and where is usage constrained by poor agent coverage?
Policy relevance: NFIS II Indicator 6 (Usage: mobile-money cash-in/cash-out ratio and POS transactions).
Activities include:
- Visibility of cash-in/cash-out points across the country and identification of areas experiencing liquidity shortages.
- Enhanced network-coverage optimisation using actual uptake data, such as agent minutes or billing as a proxy, rather than theoretical line-of-sight coverage.
- Strengthening of coverage mapping using geotagged social-media data to reflect actual connectivity.
3. Competition and Market Structure
Research question: How does each provider’s coverage, including MNOs, banks, MFIs, fintechs, etc., compare across districts, and where does a single provider or channel dominate?
Policy relevance: CBL market-conduct and competition oversight; the NFIS II interoperability and agent-network-sharing agenda.
Activities include:
- Comparative mapping of providers, including M-Pesa against EcoCash, banks, MFIs and other providers, to benchmark relative coverage and expansion opportunities.
4. Network Optimisation and Market Development
Research question: Where is there agent over-concentration versus underserved growth corridors, border towns and commercial centres, and what is the case for expansion?
Policy relevance: NFIS II agency-banking expansion priority and the Extended NSDP II private-sector development and financial-service-expansion objectives.
Activities include:
- Identification of agent clustering/over-concentration to inform network optimisation and the strategic redistribution of agents to underserved locations.
5. Data Integration, Management and Hosting
Research question: How should the GIS database and web-mapping facility be hosted, governed and kept current, and which contextual datasets add most value?
Activities include:
- Layering of additional contextual datasets to improve insights, e.g. population density, transport (road & rail) networks, land cover and land use, night-time lights, an MSME density model, cellphone coverage, terrain topology and building locations.
- Development and hosting of an interactive, open-source web-mapping facility, e.g. QGIS, R/Shiny, SAGA or GRASS, that combines the data layers and indices and allows users to zoom, pan and filter online.
OUTPUT / DELIVERABLES
The project is planned over an indicative ten (10) week period. Deliverables are submitted to FMT for review and stakeholder validation.
Part A Deliverables:
- Inception report: approach, survey tool, methodology and detailed work plan — Weeks 1–2.
- Trained field teams and piloted survey tool — Week 3.
- Weekly data submissions (Excel) and fieldwork reports — Weeks 3–8.
- Clean, validated, geo-referenced dataset — Weeks 7–9.
Part B Deliverables:
- Analytics plan and data-acquisition approach (additional datasets) — Weeks 1–2.
- Spatial analytics, thematic maps and access indices — Weeks 9–10.
- Interactive web-mapping facility (hosted) and analytics report — Week 10.
- Presentation of findings at dissemination event — Week 10.
INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS
- The service provider will be engaged by, and be directly responsible to, FMT, working closely with the FMT Project Manager on technical matters.
- The Project is governed by a Steering Committee co-chaired by the Central Bank of Lesotho and the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning; FMT provides coordination and technical oversight.
- The service provider is expected to consult, in person, the relevant government ministries, the Bureau of Statistics, the mobile network operators (Vodacom and Econet), financial service providers and other relevant stakeholders during implementation.
- The service provider will prepare reports for FMT review and facilitate stakeholder validation sessions at each stage.
- The service provider shall comply with Lesotho data-protection requirements, including consent, data retention and geolocation-accuracy thresholds.
- Additional datasets provided for the project should be used only for the purposes of this project.
- The service provider shall provide its own computer equipment, internet access, staff and logistics.
SAFEGUARDING
The selected service provider has the responsibility to consider and be aware of potential safeguarding issues and the project’s potential to integrate gender dimensions and contribute to the advancement of gender equality in addressing the Terms of Reference.
The service provider must be able to demonstrate due diligence in relation to the protection and safeguarding of children and vulnerable groups, as per strategies designed to support and manage ongoing risk and abuse, exploitation or neglect of participants in this research project.
REQUIRED SKILLS AND QUALIFICATIONS
Bidders must demonstrate the following competencies for each part they bid for.
Part A – Data Collection
- Demonstrated experience conducting large-scale geo-referenced field data collection, census or survey work, including financial access points, agents or merchants, in Lesotho or comparable settings.
- Proven capacity to recruit, train, deploy and manage large enumerator teams across all districts, including route planning and field logistics in challenging terrain.
- A GPS-enabled handheld/mobile data-collection platform with offline capability, geotagging and photo capture, and a secure central hosted database.
- Robust data-management and quality-assurance processes, including back-checks, penetration tests, questionnaire verification and data security.
- Familiarity with Lesotho context and languages (Sesotho); experience in financial-sector or digital financial services data collection is an advantage.
Part B – Analytics
- Strong GIS and geospatial analytics capability, e.g. QGIS/ArcGIS, including spatial statistics, hot-spot analysis, Voronoi/catchment analysis, travel-time/network analysis and site-suitability modelling.
- Data-science skills, using R and/or Python, for index construction, modelling and processing of large spatial datasets.
- Demonstrated ability to build and host interactive web-mapping facilities and dashboards using open-source tools, e.g. R/Shiny, Leaflet, GeoServer, QGIS Server.
- Experience integrating multiple datasets, including population, transport, coverage, night-time lights, buildings, etc., and deriving access indices.
- Domain knowledge of financial inclusion, digital financial services and agent-network economics.
SELECTION CRITERIA
Proposals will be evaluated on a combined technical and financial basis, with each part (A and B) evaluated on its own merits so that an award may be made for one or both parts.
Technical evaluation will consider relevant experience, methodology, team competencies and the quality of the proposed approach. Financial evaluation will consider value for money against the separated Part A and Part B costs.
Scoring Mechanism:
- Competence and previous experience — 30%
- Knowledge of geospatial mapping and analysis — 30%
- Local capacity — 10%
- Budget — 30%
Maximum Score: 100%
BIDDING AND COSTING CRITERIA
Bidders should submit a technical proposal and a separate financial proposal, with Part A and Part B costs presented separately, to FinMark Trust by the deadline indicated in the accompanying request for proposals.
Bidders may submit a proposal for Part A only, Part B only, or both Parts A and B. Where a bidder proposes both parts, the technical and financial proposals must still address each part separately.
The technical proposal must set out the bidder’s competencies, methodology and team for each part bid for, together with relevant references.
The financial proposal must present costs for Part A and Part B separately, using the pricing schedule below, and, where both are bid, a combined total.
All costs shall be quoted in Maloti (M), inclusive of any applicable withholding tax, which shall be applied in accordance with prevailing Lesotho tax legislation.
PRICING SCHEDULE – PART A: DATA COLLECTION
- Survey tool design and programming
- Enumerator recruitment and training
- Handsets/devices, uniforms and field materials
- Fieldwork (staffing, travel, per diems, insurance)
- Data management and quality control
- Project management and overheads
- Subtotal – Part A
PRICING SCHEDULE – PART B: ANALYTICS
- Geospatial analytics, indices and mapping
- Web-mapping facility development and hosting
- Analytics reporting and dashboards
- Project management and overheads
- Subtotal – Part B
SUMMARY
- Total Part A
- Total Part B
- Combined total (if bidding both)
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
The selected consultant must be prepared to meet with FMT on a date to be announced, for a briefing.
Once the selection process has been completed, FMT will issue a contract confirming the appointment of the consultant.
Queries relating to the preparation of the application should be referred electronically via email to:
Mr Obert Maposa: [email protected]
Ms Florence Mohasoa: [email protected]
GUIDANCE NOTES TO BIDDERS
- FinMark Trust reserves the absolute right to use its discretion in the interpretation of these award criteria.
- Bidders may be required to clarify their proposals by way of a telephone call or presentation.
- Bidders should demonstrate how the firm’s collective past experience can be applied or adapted to address the specific brief set out in the terms of reference.
- Evaluation will focus particularly on the application of experience for the specific task at hand.
- Considerable emphasis is placed on the role and demonstrated expertise, i.e. track record, of the key individuals to be involved in the project rather than on the expertise of the firm itself.
- FinMark Trust wishes to ensure that local capacity is used and developed. International firms are therefore encouraged to partner with local organisations.
- Proposals should address the brief comprehensively and aim for innovation as well as professional presentation.
- Relevant experience in other markets will be an advantage, but proposals should reflect the particular characteristics of the Lesotho market and the challenge set by the Terms of Reference.
- Value for money, as well as absolute cost, will be taken into account.
IMPORTANT TO NOTE
If no communication has been received from FMT after 1 month of your submission, please consider yourself unsuccessful.
Note: The Terms of Reference provided do not state the proposal submission deadline; they indicate that the deadline is contained in the accompanying Request for Proposals.