Finance Officer Job Heifer International

About Heifer International

Heifer International’s mission is to work with communities to end world hunger and poverty and to care for the Earth. Dan West was a farmer from the American Midwest and member of the Church of the Brethren who went to the front lines of the Spanish Civil War as an aid worker. His mission was to provide relief, but he soon discovered the meager single cup of milk rationed to the weary refugees once a day was not enough. And then he had a thought: What if they had not a cup, but a cow? That “teach a man to fish” philosophy is what drove West to found Heifer International. And now, nearly 70 years later, that philosophy still inspires our work to end world hunger and poverty throughout the world once and for all. HOW IT WORKS We empower families to turn hunger and poverty into hope and prosperity – but our approach is more than just giving them a handout. Heifer links communities and helps bring sustainable agriculture and commerce to areas with a long history of poverty.

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Financing Pipeline Development and Technical Assistance (30%)

• Financing Pipeline Development: Assess and identify financing opportunities for smallholder (women) farmers to adopt improved backyard poultry practices (and improved animal management practices) through financing.
• Financing Technical Assistance: 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 the adoption of project-promoted practices roll out plans and track progress periodically.
• Identify and recommend the best-suited financing strategies, pricing system for the business ventures,
• Identify new business 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) and other Value Chain (VC) actors in the process of branding the products.
• Document strategies and procedures for the facilitation of branding Heifer farmers’ products

Build Capacity of Project Staff, Partners, and Farmer Producer Organizations (FPO) (20%)

• Assist in aligning the organizational development and business development and build the capacity of the stakeholders in financing.
• Assist in preparing capacity-building plans for project staff, and partners in the field of 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, tracking repayment of loans, value addition at FPO through financing etc.
• Ensure stakeholders have a good orientation on financing needs and biosecurity problems to be solved through financing
• Facilitate training 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 partners to support FPOs and value chain players to engage and leverage financing to do so.

Monitoring, Review and Reporting (20%)

• Ensure that the partner and the financial intermediary meet the identified monitoring and evaluation requirements and the deadlines
• Reviewing the adoption of financing tools at the project level with partner staff on a monthly basis
• Participation in ongoing training and workshops
• Documentation and sharing of the best practices in terms of financing and adoption of biosecurity practices in the project.
• Work in collaboration and consultation with the Country Program Office (CPO) team
• Activity-based reports are to be submitted to the Project Manager as per the schedule
• All financing in the project is to be reviewed and reported to assess implications on the adoption of project-promoted practices.
• Forecasting of financing needs at the project level is to be done jointly monthly and submitted to the Project Manager.
• Participate in all trainings with financial intermediary, FPOs and workshops Guarantee Administrator regularly throughout the project
• Internal and external financing-related field visits are organized following the organizational protocol.
• All activities of the specific initiative are at par in quality with project standards

Portfolio Management and Due Diligence of Loanees and Lenders (25%)

• Work with borrowers to put together an investment package that will meet the requirements of the lenders.
• Act as a linkage between potential loanees, investees and lenders to ensure regular updates on the status of loans requested.
• Portfolio management to assess the repayment status of the loaned-out amount

Leadership & General Operations (5%)

• Manage the biosecurity loan product development process.
• Develop market 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 timelines and deliverables.
• Timely delivery of milestones relating to Biosecurity loan products.
• Produce periodic reports and knowledge documents.

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Perform other duties as assigned

• This will be dependent on the specific duties assigned.

Minimum Requirements

• A bachelor’s degree from a recognized university in Finance, Accounting, Economics, Agribusiness, Agricultural Economics, Rural Development, Enterprise Development or other related fields and a minimum of five (5) years of experience with an international organization in a similar context is required.
• Experience working with financial institutions supporting farmers and FPOs (farmer producer organizations)/cooperatives and associated businesses.

Preferred Requirements

• Technical experience with the commercial sector, agribusiness development in a mix of economic growth/trade, value chain competitiveness, investment promotion, or agriculture development.
• Prior work experience in a USAID-funded project.

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