The Symbiotics Association for Sustainable Development (SASD) set up the Technical Assistance Package on Education Finance (TAPEF) with the goal of creating and enhancing financial institution capacity to deliver sustainable education finance across selected African countries. In the framework of the TAPEF, six financial institutions (FIs) operating in different countries in Sub-Saharan Africa receive advisory services with regard to market research, institutional diagnostics, capacity building, product development and roll-out, as well as risk management. Symbiotics contracted IPC to provide these technical assistance measures to the financial institutions.

IPC’s experts implemented the following tasks:

• conducting market research on the education sector, including demand for and supply of financial services in the market
• conducting a diagnostic of each FI’s setup and a gap analysis with regards to education finance products and internal capacities
• setting up an education finance strategy and respective business plan together with the partner FIs
• developing and/or adapting products, procedures, processes, manuals and credit risk frameworks
• developing implementation plans for MIS, including impact indicators and reporting requirements according to the education finance strategy of the partner FIs
• supporting the planning and execution of internal communication and marketing campaigns
• conducting a training needs assessment related to the education finance strategy, reviewing existing training material, identifying internal trainers and developing a capacity building plan
• designing training material according to the developed training plan—including a train-the-trainer session—using participative training methods and conducting the trainings
• supporting the pilot launch of developed/adapted education sector products and services and supporting the roll-out phase