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Job Title:  Project Manager – SME Strengthening and Financial Services

Organisation: Catholic Relief Services (CRS)

Duty Station:  Kampala, Uganda

About US:

Catholic Relief Services (CRS) is an international non-governmental organization (NGO) supporting relief and development work in over 100 countries around the world. CRS carries out the commitment of the Bishops of the United States to assist the poor and vulnerable overseas. CRS’ Catholic identity is at the heart of our mission and operations, serving people on the basis of need, regardless of creed, ethnicity or nationality. CRS works through local church and non-church partners to implement its programs.

Project Summary: The Vines Project, implemented by CRS Uganda, is a five-year project that will make Uganda the world’s next leading supplier of high-quality vanilla. Vines will leverage the expertise of CRS and its partners to enhance the production of safe, pure vanilla and develop sustainable market links with US vanilla companies, directly transforming the lives of 16,200 farmers, 836 supply chain actors and create 15,820 new jobs to reach 32,856 vanilla stakeholders. The Vines strategy reflects best practices in sustainable development and will leave Uganda with a robust vanilla farming community resilient to the boom/bust nature of the market and a cadre of private sector agricultural extensionists to support more sophisticated production, processing, and marketing needs.

Job Summary:  As the Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) Systems Strengthening & Financial Services Manager you will be responsible for designing, executing and adjusting the strategic direction for Vines’ business and financial capacity building support to vanilla value chain stakeholders. Within that strategy, you will lead efforts to develop stronger, more agile farmer organizations and other businesses within the markets system to enhance service delivery to farmers and facilitate closer relationships with processors. You will help develop certification schemes for Ugandan vanilla and strengthen direct trade business models to secure vanilla markets. You will facilitate farmer access to savings and appropriate credit through CRS’s Savings and Internal Lending Community (SILC) model and support agricultural lending to SMEs involved in the vanilla value chain. You will coordinate with consortium partners on market analysis, business planning, farmer business capacity building, agripreneur and youth training, input supply and business relationship management.

Key Duties and Responsibilities: 

• Provide technical leadership to program activities related to SME systems and financial services.
• Under the guidance of the Chief of Party (COP), provide leadership, supervision, and oversight to all program activities that seek to strengthen MSMEs and enhance access to finance for Ugandan vanilla market system actors (farmers to processors), ensuring efficient and effective project implementation and high-quality delivery of project targets.
• Work with the COP and MEAL Manager to prepare reports, lessons learned and project work-plans that contain clear objectives and achievable benchmarks, reflecting short and long-term strategic priorities.
• Collaborate with Vines’ Agroforestry, Post-harvest/Food Safety and MSME strengthening teams to develop coordinated capacity building programming the includes agribusiness development and financial service provision.
• Provide overall support for agribusiness and financial service development to the program.
• Facilitate and strengthen linkages between actors across the value chain, support commercial negotiations and foster cooperation among market actors, including cooperatives and industry associations.
• Ensure the recruitment, availability, quality, capacity, results and sustainability of Private Service Providers (PSPs) delivering Vines’ SILC program.
• Ensure the quality and appropriateness of activities to achieve the target indicators in a cost-effective, timely, and sustainable manner.
• Manage SME strengthening and financial services team, including onboarding, training and setting a clear direction for Vines’ financial services component to ensure a technically strong.
• Provide direction and technical advice through quarterly coaching sessions and daily support, to ensure the team is motivated and executing at a high level.
• Participate in the identification, appraisal and recruitment of Private Sector Actors under the VIEF fund.
• Lead the linkage of farmer organizations such as SILC groups, cooperatives and others to formal financial services and oversee the financial linkage service by financial institutions to SMEs and Processors.
• Manage and build relationships with Supply chain Partners
• Perform any other duties as assigned by the CoP

Qualifications, Skills and Experience:

• The ideal applicant must hold a Master’s degree in a relevant field including international development, agriculture, economics, business, marketing, and/or supply chain management.
• At least twelve years demonstrated experience with USG or other similar development projects focused on value chain and market systems & access development, including improving financial services for the poor,
• Demonstrated ability to work and coordinate effectively with a wide variety of stakeholders,
• including national and local government, donors, community-based organizations, and the private sector
• Strong strategic, analytical, systems thinking, and problem-solving skills, with capacity to see the big picture and ability to make sound judgment and decisions.
• Experience engaging partners and strengthening partnerships. Knowledge of CRS partnership
• strategy a plus
• Established relationship with and/or substantive knowledge of agribusiness firms
• Critical thinking and creative problem-solving skills with ability to make sound judgment.
• Proactive, results-oriented, and service-oriented.
• Strong Microsoft Word and Excel skills.
• English, total fluency with strong written capacity.
• Must be willing and able to travel up to 50% within Uganda.

How to Apply:

All applicants please Email a cover letter and CV only to ug_recruitment@crs.org

Note:

• Large files and/or scans of documents will lead to rejection of your application, in the subject line of the email, copy and paste – PROJECTMANAGERSMESTRENGTHENINGANDFINANCIALSERVICES only
• All applications that do not contain this exact subject line will be rejected and not read

Deadline: 23^rd November 2021 at 5:00pm.

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