Organization profile

Interchurch Organization for Development Cooperation (ICCO Cooperation) is an international non-governmental organisation founded in 1964 in the Netherlands and implements programmes with partners in Central, Eastern and Southern Africa since the 1980s. We work towards a world in which people can live in dignity and well-being, a world without poverty and injustice.

To strengthen its operations in Ethiopia, ICCO would like to invite qualified applicants for the position of STARS Microfinance Field Specialist

The STARS Program of ICCO

“Strengthening African Smallholders (STARS)” is implemented by ICCO to improve the livelihood of Smallholder Farmers (SHF), see also https://www.icco-cooperation.org/en/projects/stars

The three activity areas of STARS are as follows:

1. To develop and implement innovative, sector specific agriculture financial products with MFIs for smallholder farmers;
2. To strengthen value chains and link smallholder farmers into these chains as well as linking them to financial and extension services
3. To broaden the evidence base in rural agricultural finance, value chain development and share lessons learned.

Specification of the job

The Microfinance Field Specialist  will assist the Microfinance Advisor and be responsible for implementing STARS program microfinance related activities. The job holder will be responsible for executing all the activities of the microfinance program including product development, pilot testing, capacity building, pilot monitoring and managing relationships with MFI partners  & consultants. S/He will advise and consult in all the technical details of the new product development.

Reporting Relationships

The Microfinance Field Specialist will be part of a small team of the STARS project office in  Ethiopia. The Microfinance Field Specialist reports to the Microfinance Advisor. The four country teams will be part of a bigger project team managed from Rwanda

Job Category

Third Country National (TCN) salary scale or Ethiopia salary scale as appropriate

Job Summary/Overall goal of the position

The Microfinance Field Specialist will support the Microfinance advisor and be responsible for implementation of the agri-finance product development and value chain finance interventions under the STARS program.

Duties and responsibilities

• Support in needs assessment, feasibility study for new products and product development.
• Training & coaching of loan officers to implement the newly designed loan product
• Conduct a regular visit to pilot branches to provide one-on-one  support and coaching services to loan officers
• Support MFIs on pilot testing and monitoring of the new credit products (agri-loan and value chain products) and follow up to monitoring and documenting the progress of pilot branches, including IT solutions for agri-lending and monitoring at branch and head office level.
• Following up and assist MFIs to meet their target
• Collect and store all MFI portfolio information and performance indicators. Facilitate MFIs MicroScore assessment, external rating, portfolio audit, reporting to MIX market, etc.
• Support MFI to have a gender strategy
• Ensure the linkage between value chain development and value chain finance
• Support MFI in their saving mobilization efforts
• Support the design and implementation of BDS and barefoot BDS models
• Reporting and communication; Monitoring and evaluation of lending Progress
• Document lessons learned, write case stories and replicable best practices for replication and dissemination
• Facilitate and coordinate logistic arrangement for any field works, survey, impact assessment, workshops and training activities
•  Support in MFI analysis/due diligence for refinancing of MFIs (data collection, assessment, preparing documents for financiers) and monitoring of outstanding loans to MFIs and guarantees.

Key Result Areas

• MFI Microscore assessment and external rating
• Partnership between MFI and refinancing agencies
• Capacity building of MFIs to access the agri-finance products and to implement crop specific lending products

Deliverables

• Work plan for Microfinance activities for the programme (annual, quarterly)
• Work plan per MFI and per intervention in the programme 2016-2020
• Dashboard for MFI performance quarterly
• Quarterly report for Microfinance activities
• Success story from the partners of Microfinance activities for communication every quarter.
• Learning report contribution for Microfinance activities
• Report from the Microfinance Consultant for the MFI product development
• Report of workshop Microfinance activities

Terms of employment

• The ICCO regional office human resource manual and Ethiopia terms of employment is applicable

Working hours

• 40 hours a week

Travel

• 50% time travelling to program areas

Department

• Country based

Job Requirements

Person specifications

Qualifications and Skills needed

• Strong background in agricultural economics, business administration or development studies with working experience in Microfinance/ rural/agri-finance.
• Good analytical, communication and coaching skills
• Organizational capacities, networking capacities and team player.
• Good knowledge of international good practice in Microfinance and capacity building processes in microfinance, as well as rural, agri-, and value chain finance.
• Strong capacity to guide innovative financial product development trajectories
• Working knowledge of English (both verbal and in writing). Working knowledge of French for Senegal and Burkina Faso.
• International working experience and experience in rural and value chain finance

Competences needed

• Strategic orientation
• Personal Integrity
• Creative and Innovative
• Entrepreneurial and commercial thinking
• Open and outgoing
• Results Oriented
• People skills
• Coaching skills
• Ability to work independently under pressure and proactive work style

Interested candidates should go to http://icco.hrmagic.co/careers/ and apply online. Ensure you fill in all the required fields and submit accordingly. Please note that it takes some time to complete the application form as there are questions to answer and documents to upload in pdf and not word. The final deadline for submissions is Sunday 27th October, 2019 at 17:00 hrs. Only applications submitted before the deadline will be considered. Short listed candidates will be interviewed in the week of the 04th November, 2019. 

Please note that only those selected for interviews will be contacted. If you are not contacted within 2 weeks consider it as unsuccessful.

We apologize that we cannot provide a response to all applicants. Any form of lobbying will lead to automatic disqualification.