Access to Finance Officer-Transform Project at Heifer International

RESPONSIBILIIES AND DELIVERABLES:

Financing pipeline development and technical Assistance

• Assess and identify financing opportunities for small holder farmers to adopt improved backyard poultry practices (and improved animal management practices) through financing.
• 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 adoption of project promoted practices and roll out plans and tract progress periodically
• Identify and recommend the best suited financing strategies, pricing system for the business ventures,
• Identify new businesses 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)/other Value Chain (VC) actors in the process of branding the products.
• Document strategies and procedures for facilitation of branding Heifer farmers’ products

Support in due diligence of the loanees and lenders / portfolio management

• Work with borrowers to put together an investment package that will meet the requirements of the lenders.
• Act as linkage between potential loanees, investees and lenders to ensure regular updates on status of loans requested.
• Portfolio management to assess the repayment status of the loaned-out amount.
• Contribute to the biosecurity loan product development process.
• Support the business 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 timeline and deliverables.
• Timely delivery of milestones relating to Biosecurity loan products.
• Produce periodic reports and knowledge documents

Build capacity of the project staff, partners, and Farmer Producer Organizations (FPO)

• Contribute towards alignment of organizational and business development to build capacity of the stakeholders in financing.
• Assist to prepare capacity building plan of project staff, partners in the field on 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, track repayment of loans, value addition at FPO through
• Ensure stakeholders’ have good orientation on financing needs and biosecurity problems to be solved through financing
• Facilitate trainings 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 partner to support FPOs and value chain players to engage and leverage financing to do so.

Monitoring, learning and reporting

• Ensure that the partner and financial intermediary meet the identified monitoring and evaluation requirements and deadlines
• Reviewing the adoption of financing tools at the project level with partner staff on monthly basis
• Documentation and sharing of the best practices in terms of financing / adoption of biosecurity practices in the project.
• Work in collaboration and consultation with Country Program Office (CPO) team
• Activity based reports to be submitted to Area Investment Manager as per the schedule
• All financing in the project to be to assess implication on adoption of project promoted practices.
• Review and reporting/ forecasting of financing needs at the project level on monthly basis
• Participate in all trainings with financial intermediary, FPOs and workshops Guarantee Administrator regularly throughout the project
• Facilitate internal and external financing related field visits following the organizational protocol

ESSENTIAL COMPETENCIES:

• Clear understanding of the dairy and poultry value chains.
• Innovative, analytical, and solutions oriented.
• Knowledge of enterprise development and linkages to poverty alleviation.
• Strong interpersonal/people management skills and excellent oral and written communication skills a must.
• Experience working with farmer group programs in agriculture value chain.
• Transferable skills from the commercial sector with ability to develop and evaluate investment opportunities and promote such opportunities to financial institutions.
• Strong consumer marketing, financial analysis, and stakeholder/ relationship management skills.
• Experience in supporting and monitoring field-based programs in the country.
• Ability to generate innovative solutions in work situations

Qualification And Skills

• 5 years of experience in banking / lending / financial analysis geared towards supporting the agribusiness sector.
• Exposure working with FPOs (farmer producer organizations) and associated businesses
• Exposure to access to finance in the international development / INGO context
• Demonstrated project and donor reporting experience.
• Comfortable learning new technologies including project management systems
• Excellent influence skills, active listening, negotiation, and presentation skills
• Competence to build and effectively manage interpersonal relationships at all levels of the organization