Associate Business Advisor at TechnoServe Kenya

Job Summary:

The Associate Business Advisor will report to the Senior Business Advisor and will work closely with the regional project team, as well as team members from the Global Entrepreneurship team. The primary role of the ABA will be to work with TechnoServe on testing our TA approach for Agri-SMEs to inform scale up. Our aim is to revolutionize the way TA is delivered to Agri-SMEs in Africa. 

 Key Roles and Responsibility

Program Implementation:

• Provide personalized support/advisory to the Agri-SMEs during the program implementation and ensure they complete program based activities on time. 
• Support planning and organizing the Growth and Investment Pitching sessions which includes identification and recruitment of investors and supporting the Agri-SMEs to develop their pitching decks. 

Capacity Development:

• During Cohort three, the BA will support the Technical Assistance through training, group and individual coaching and mentorship of the recruited Agri-SMEs on areas relevant to a growing business. Focus will be on typical business challenges and company priorities around generating top-line growth, addressing operations/management inefficiencies, accessing finance, market development/ customer acquisition & retention. 
• Support management of the whatsapp group to provide support, answer questions and share information of interest and promote networking

Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL): 

• The ABA will support the team to develop data driven updates and reports to the supervisor and the donor. The collected data will be used as input for a joint workshop that will look at how to incorporate our lessons learned to further optimize our approach for scale-up.

Basic Qualifications:

• A Bachelor's Degree in economics, business or a related field is an advantage or
• 2 years of relevant work experience.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Strong background advising and coaching agri- SME’s in East Africa is highly desirable
• Proven analytical and modeling skills
• Demonstrated ability to gather data (through desk research and interviews) and synthesize large amounts of information to provide a cohesive assessment of opportunities and constraints within a market 
• Demonstrated leadership skills, teamwork and relationship building
• Excellent written and verbal communication 
• Strong computer skills, including advanced skills in MS Word, PowerPoint and Excel 
• Able to work independently, flexibly and responsively to deliver high-quality deliverables 
• Able to adapt to changing working conditions
• Able to prioritize and meet deadlines
• Strong background in agriculture, economics, business and strategy development.