The Ugandan Jobline

Job Title:  Financial Inclusion Coordinator  

Organisation: Farm Africa

Duty Station: Eastern Uganda, Uganda

Reports To:  Project Coordinator (AGRA Project)

Duration & Hours: Fixed-term, full-time contract

About Organisation:

Farm Africa is a leading charity that works in partnership with smallholder farmers and small businesses in eastern Africa to improve the quality, quantity and value of their produce, so that they can support their families with more resilient livelihoods. We build the positive case for farming in harmony with nature, so that increasing yields goes hand in hand with restoring ecosystems and biodiversity.

About AGRA Project:

Farm Africa secured a two-year AGRA funded project to support farmers in Eastern Uganda. The project focusses on strengthening markets to facilitate the adoption of high-yielding climate-smart and nutrient-dense seed varieties of maize, beans, and rice by smallholder farmers (SHFs).

Job Summary:   Financial Inclusion Coordinator will lead the efforts to address constraints in entrepreneurial access to financial services and digital services for smallholder farmers associated with the project. S/he will provide expertise and engage effectively with financial service providers, digital service providers, private sector entities, other AGRA supported entities to achieve the project objectives.

Key Duties and Responsibilities:

To play a key role in activity planning and sequencing of activities to ensure maximum impact:

• Work in close consultation with the Project Coordinator (PC) to review and prepare the project’s work plan and budget as part of the monthly, quarterly and annual planning process.
• Manage monthly, quarterly and annual work plans for project activities and logistics, identifying and responding to the implications of interdependencies between different sub-project work stream activities.

To deliver project activities to a high standard, and in line with Farm Africa and donor guidelines and requirements:

• Develop the access to finance and digitization for smallholder farmers
• Profile and build capacity of 400 VSLAs to save for a purpose, especially for agricultural inputs
• Train VSLAs on financial literacy, entrepreneurship and business planning
• Perform analysis of supply and demand of financial services for farmer groups and entrepreneurs.
• Identify, approach financial partners and, understand their specific barriers on lending to farmer groups/entrepreneurs and work with them to develop/customize solutions.
• Facilitate business opportunity meetings with financial institutions providing financial services
• Link 200 VSLAs to access diversified and affordable women and youth-centric financial services from public and private providers
• Work with digital service providers to leverage online/mobile technology solutions for profiling, saving and lending
• Stay updated on developments in the MSME, digitization and financing space, including new concepts, key partners, policy movements, and important events.

To deliver assigned activities in accordance with financial guidelines and within available budgets by:

• Closely monitoring expenditure on all relevant activity lines, ensuring that availability of funds is confirmed and approved before delivery of an activity begins
• Supporting the Project Accountant & Administrator (PA&A) and PC with budgeting and reforecasting budgets as required
• Ensuring that all expenditure incurred is in compliance with and exceeds the basic standards contained in the Farm Africa finance procedures manual.
• Participate in reviewing budget monitoring reports, and provide timely explanations and corrective actions for any significant variances relating to the AGRA project
• Ensuring that procurement of goods and services is carried out in line with Farm Africa procedures and follows the terms and conditions stipulated in the donor’s Financial Management Guidelines

Monitoring, evaluation learning & reporting:

• Contribute to the development and implementation of Monitoring & Learning Plan (MLP) for the project in line with Farm Africa’s guidelines and the donor’s requirements
• Support mid-term, final evaluation and other external evaluations, ensuring that learning and recommendations from those evaluations are explicitly incorporated into the project’s future implementation activity
• Contribute to internal and external reporting, and annual & semi-annual project performance reviews and workshops
• Document and share case studies, success stories, best practices and key lessons on access to finance and digitization.
• Review key and critical lessons learned to identify success factors for scaling program efficacy

Playing a key role in delivering the wider objectives of Farm Africa’s AGRA project including:

• Assisting with facilitating monitoring and communications visits from Donors and/or the wider Farm Africa team
• Undertaking any other duties as reasonably requested by the project coordinator Supporting the Business Development Officer to build the financial management capacity of SHFs engaged in the project.

Playing a Play an active role as a member of the Farm Africa Country team

• Contribute to the development and implementation of Farm Africa’s strategy Identify and explore opportunities to grow and expand the country project pipeline, both in relation to the current project or related to new project opportunities Work with the PM, CD and the UK Programme Funding Unit to prepare funding proposals where requested, ensuring that any lessons learned during implementation are documented and built into future project design
• Participate in country-level or Pan-Farm Africa programme meetings with other project coordinators, as reasonably requested

These essential functions are not to be interpreted as a complete statement of all duties performed. Employees will be required to perform other job-related duties as required. All work responsibilities are subject to having performance goals and/or targets established.

Qualifications, Skills and Experience:

Essential

• Relevant academic qualification (Degree or equivalent) in in Finance, Business, Economics, Agribusiness, Agriculture and/or Financial Inclusion.
• A minimum of eight (8) years of relevant experience in entrepreneurship programs and ecosystem-building initiatives with a sector-agnostic approach.
• Five years of related experience working in financial institution, product development, digital finance, microfinance/micro-lending, technology for development, and/or payments platforms.
• Substantial exposure to DFS strategy management, with direct exposure to top management strategy formulation and decision making.
• Exposure to a wide range of strategic decision-making processes and as a result have become comfortable assessing business processes and requirements to inform the design and implementation of DFS projects.
• Substantial exposure in conducting customer centric research for DFS and using customer insights to drive DFS adoption, usage, and impact Substantial exposure in implementing digital field applications, mobile payments agent banking, and or other DFS projects
• Experience in project management
• Experience working with MNOs, FinTech/regulators is an added advantage
• Minimum of 5 years of leadership and management experience in project management.
• Experience working in digital economy-related programs in the region is an added advantage.
• Strong understanding of building sustainable business models and the role of system players, including markets, finance, and enterprise support, in fostering enterprise growth and development.
• Strong understanding of enterprise support models that have shown results and best practices for adoption.
• Understanding of entrepreneurial support organizations’ role in catalysing economic transformation and job creation for youth
• Strong analytical skills, strategic thinking,
• Command of quantitative and qualitative business analytics.
• Excellent verbal, written, and presentation skills, with the ability to articulate information to various constituents across cultures.
• Excellent people skills and ability to coordinate technical and cross-functional teams.
• Excellent listening and interpersonal skills. The ability to speak a local language is highly preferred.

Desirable

• Experience of working in an M&E or knowledge management role in an INGO
• Experience conducting field research in Western Uganda

Our Values

Investing in smallholder farming is the number one way to combat poverty in rural Africa. Farm Africa is a leading NGO specialising in growing agriculture, protecting the environment and developing businesses in rural Africa.

• EXPERT: Expertise and insightful evidence-based solutions are at the heart of everything Farm Africa does.
• GROUNDED: Our teams and partners work closely with local communities, engaging them in every level of decision-making.
• IMPACTFUL: We deliver long lasting change for farmers, their families, and the environments they live in.
• BOLD: We model innovative approaches and are not afraid to challenge strategies that are failing.

How to Apply:

To apply, please send a CV, salary history, and a two-page supporting statement detailing how you meet the person specification and your availability/notice period to recruitment@farmafrica.org including the job tittle in the subject line.

Please DO NOT send additional documents such as certificates and references with your application. Successful candidates ONLY will be required to provide these documents during the referencing process.

Deadline: 5th February 2025 by 5:00 pm EAT

Due to the urgent requirement to fill this position, applications will be assessed and suitable candidates invited for interview on a rolling basis. This may mean that the position is filled before the closing date so qualified candidates are urged to submit their applications promptly.

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