ABOUT THE ORGANIZATION:
Established in 2006, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) is an African-based organization, with a vision of a food secure and prosperous Africa achieved through rapid, sustainable agricultural growth based on smallholder farmers, majority of whom are women. Its programs develop practical solutions to significantly boost farm productivity and incomes for the poor while safeguarding the environment. AGRA works to catalyze a uniquely African Green Revolution by creating transformative partnerships.
Background: AGRA is implementing the project Financial Inclusion for smallholder farmers in Africa project (FISFAP), funded by the Master Card Foundation. The project will be implemented in Kenya, Tanzania, and Ghana between years 2015 and 2020. FISFAP’s overall goal is to reduce food insecurity and increase the incomes of about 700,000 smallholder farmers in target countries by 2020 through financial institutions and agriculture value chain actors, especially agro dealers, aggregators-warehouse operators, and farmer based organizations. The project will also work with financial value chain actors such as banks, crop insurance, and MFIs.
ABOUT THE JOB:
AGRA is seeking a Program Officer - Special Products and Client Engagement. S/he will be responsible for providing special focus on ensuring that every stage of financial services delivery is client-led and that the product design, access, usage, refinement, and outcomes are ensured for clients in an appropriate, timely, accessible, and affordable manner.
Tasks and Responsibilities:
- Formulate a framework and guidelines for essentially setting up a client engagement and product design “live-lab";
- Provide inputs on program design and partnership strategy to scale lessons from the lab;
- Design appropriate program feedback systems to track the relationship between farmers and value chain actors and financial institutions, that is, act as the client voice – being the relationship manager between the farmer (client) and the service provider (banks and VCA);
- Build partner capability – financial and otherwise, on developments in behavioral finance, human centered design, related data, research and analytics across the program to really ensure that client preference, behaviors, and outcomes are being used to develop products and services, measured and taken into account in business decision making;
- Build an appropriate savings portfolio in the program;
- Monitor tangible shifts in customer orientation and service delivery across partners and aggregate lessons with support from other team members to ensure that the program overall delivers on enabling access to a range of products and services in a sustainable manner;
- Ensure that indicators on availability, access, and quality of products and client voices (with the M&E officer) are integrated into the overall FISFAP M&E framework;
- Results-oriented, accountable, with proactive leadership skills. Ability to lead by example, drive change, and move from program concept to on-the-ground reality.
Qualifications:
- Holder of a Master’s degree in Business Administration, Economics, Agriculture Economics, Behavioral Economics, Economic Anthropology/Sociology or its equivalent from a recognized university with 8-10years;
- Should be a reputable individual well versed in financial service provision and innovative products and establishing financial linkages and intermediation in Sub-Saharan Africa;
- Should be well networked with leading edge agencies working on behavioral finance, human interactions with technology, and financial services and approaches that facilitate adoption, usage and outcomes of products and services;
- Should have substantial experience in the provision of advisory services to financial institutions in agricultural finance innovative financial products operations particularly from the perspective of the business case for embedding customer orientation;
- Should have substantial experience in the execution of projects which specifically target smallscale farmers, value chain actors or rural populations;
- Ability to travel up to 50% of time required.
HOW TO APPLY:
Interested candidates can send their resume and cover letter to fisfap@agra.org
