Access to Finance Officer

Financing Pipeline Development and Technical Assistance (30%)

• Financing Pipeline Development: Assess and identify financing opportunities for smallholder (women) farmers to adopt improved backyard poultry practices (and improved animal management practices) through financing.  
• Financing Technical Assistance: Support farmer cooperatives and agribusinesses to develop bankable business plans (both at start-up and growth stages) and connect with focused financing instruments as needed. 
• Prepare strategies to identify credible financing opportunities to promote the adoption of project-promoted practices roll out plans and track progress periodically.  
• Identify and recommend the best-suited financing strategies, pricing system for the business ventures,  
• Identify new business ventures (medium and large-scale business ventures) in the selected value chains and coach/facilitate entrepreneurs who may access provided financing to scale business.  
• Provide technical assistance through formal/informal training, coaching, exposure, and other interventions,  
• Guide, coach and facilitate the Smallholder Farmer Organizations (SFOs) and other Value Chain (VC) actors in the process of branding the products. 
• Document strategies and procedures for the facilitation of branding Heifer farmers’ products 

Build Capacity of Project Staff, Partners, and Farmer Producer Organizations (FPO) (20%)  

• Assist in aligning the organizational development and business development and build the capacity of the stakeholders in financing.  
• Assist in preparing capacity-building plans for project staff, and partners in the field of market system development, enterprise, and value chain development. 
• Orient FPO staff on financing, follow up the job-related functions to achieve the target  
• Build capacity of the partner staff and FPO staff through facilitating training, coaching and other capacity-building initiatives on financing of farmers, tracking repayment of loans, value addition at FPO through financing etc.
• Ensure stakeholders have a good orientation on financing needs and biosecurity problems to be solved through financing 
• Facilitate training and other capacity-building initiatives as per the Implementation Plan.
• Ensure FPO staff and implementing partners are trained on the biosecurity financing tools customized by the financial intermediary.
• Assist project partners to support FPOs and value chain players to engage and leverage financing to do so. 

Monitoring, Review and Reporting (20%) 

• Ensure that the partner and the financial intermediary meet the identified monitoring and evaluation requirements and the deadlines
• Reviewing the adoption of financing tools at the project level with partner staff on a monthly basis
• Participation in ongoing training and workshops
• Documentation and sharing of the best practices in terms of financing and adoption of biosecurity practices in the project.
• Work in collaboration and consultation with the Country Program Office (CPO) team
• Activity-based reports are to be submitted to the Project Manager as per the schedule
• All financing in the project is to be reviewed and reported to assess implications on the adoption of project-promoted practices.
• Forecasting of financing needs at the project level is to be done jointly monthly and submitted to the Project Manager.
• Participate in all trainings with financial intermediary, FPOs and workshops Guarantee Administrator regularly throughout the project
• Internal and external financing-related field visits are organized following the organizational protocol.
• All activities of the specific initiative are at par in quality with project standards

Portfolio Management and Due Diligence of Loanees and Lenders (25%) 

• Work with borrowers to put together an investment package that will meet the requirements of the lenders.
• Act as a linkage between potential loanees, investees and lenders to ensure regular updates on the status of loans requested. 
• Portfolio management to assess the repayment status of the loaned-out amount

Leadership & General Operations (5%) 

• Manage the biosecurity loan product development process.
• Develop market development and private/public sector engagement strategy for the project.
• Ensure systematic documentation of successes and lessons learnt for internal programmatic use and external sharing.
• Develop project implementation plans for biosecurity loan products with clear timelines and deliverables.
• Timely delivery of milestones relating to Biosecurity loan products.
• Produce periodic reports and knowledge documents.

 Perform other duties as assigned  

• This will be dependent on the specific duties assigned.

Minimum Requirements

• A bachelor’s degree from a recognized university in Finance, Accounting, Economics, Agribusiness, Agricultural Economics, Rural Development, Enterprise Development or other related fields and a minimum of five (5) years of experience with an international organization in a similar context is required.
• Experience working with financial institutions supporting farmers and FPOs (farmer producer organizations)/cooperatives and associated businesses.

Preferred Requirements

• Technical experience with the commercial sector, agribusiness development in a mix of economic growth/trade, value chain competitiveness, investment promotion, or agriculture development. 
• Prior work experience in a USAID-funded project.