Senior Director, Africa Investment Forum at African Development Bank - AfDB

Reference: ADB/19/119
Location: Cote d'Ivoire
Grade: EL4
Position N°: 50092350

The Complex

• The President, plans, supervises and manages the business of the Bank Group.
• Under the direction of the Boards of Directors, the President conducts the business of the Bank and the African Development Fund and manages operations and activities in accordance with the Agreements establishing the African Development Bank and the African Development Fund.
• The President supervises several Departments and Units including Office of the President; Independent Development Evaluation Department; Integrity and Anti-Corruption Department; Compliance Review and Mediation Unit; Secretariat to the Sanctions Appeals Board; Administrative Tribunal; Office of the Auditor General); Group Risk Management Directorate;  General Counsel and Legal Services Department; Communication and External Relations Department; Staff Integrity and Ethics Office and Office of the Secretary General & General Secretariat).

The Hiring Department/

• The Africa Investment Forum Unit in The Office of the President assists the President in planning, supervising and managing the business of the Africa Investment Forum activities.
• Africa Investment Forum is a multi-stakeholder, multi-disciplinary platform dedicated to advancing private and public-private-partnership projects to bankable stages, raising capital, and accelerating the financial closure of deals and tracking those investments. The Africa Investment Forum is Africa’s investment market place, through which the African Development Bank, along with its partners, is structuring deals, screening, credit enhancing projects, attracting investors, and facilitating transactions to close Africa’s investment gaps. The Africa Investment Forum’s objectives are to reduce intermediation costs, improve the quality of project information and documentation, and increase active and productive engagements between African governments and the private sector as well as increase regional integration. The Africa Investment Forum offers investors access to a structured platform offering bankable, de-risked projects within an enabling environment.
• The Africa Investment Forum facilitates awareness raising about the investment opportunities in Africa for international investors, social impact investors, institutional investors (pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, and others) both local and global. It provides an opportunity for the Africa Investment Forum partners to determine the investment needs of these various categories of investors facilitate tailored investible structures and showcase Africa’s investment successes and enabling policies that would be attractive to these various classes of investors who are looking to deploy funds in Africa.
• The AIF as a market place brings together the African Development Bank, global multilateral financial institutions and regional financial institutions to de-risk investments at scale, to focus their investment products on agreed key transformative transactions so as to scale up and accelerate Africa’s investment opportunities.
• The Africa Investment Forum will continuously track the implementation of commitments made at the annual event to ensure transactions reach financial close and policies and bottlenecks to facilitate Africa Investment Forum projects are cleared and implemented.

The Position
Under the supervision and guidance of the President, the key objectives and responsibilities of the position of the Senior Director, Africa Investment Forum are the following:

• Grow the Africa Investment Forum through robust leadership, strategic plans and the necessary resources.
• Deliver in collaboration with all departments of the Bank and established Lead Partners, a highly successful Africa Investment Forum especially in the preparation and identification of bankable projects.
• Deliver on the strategic implementation of the Africa Investment Forum in all aspects including overseeing robust communications, and overseeing efficient processes are implemented across functions and organizational partners.
• Identify and develop defined long term strategic partnerships/sponsorships with other institutions and organizations for the sustainability of the Africa Investment Forum.
• Strategically develop and grow a sustainable Institutional Investors value proposition for the Africa Investment Forum.
• Steer continuous growth and innovation for the Africa Investment Forum brand as the premier investment marketplace and platform in Africa, through which the African Development Bank, along with its partners, facilitate transactions, to close the continent’s investment gap.
• Lead the mobilization of multi-stakeholders to advance private sector and public-private-partnership projects to bankable stages, raising capital, and accelerating the financial closure of deals. Maintain a helicopter view of the Africa Investment Forum deal tracker to track investments facilitated by the Africa Investment Forum platform.
• Provide leadership in innovative financing mechanisms to attract private capital to infrastructure.
• Establish the Africa Investment Forum as a veritable business development conduit for boosting the Bank’s project pipeline development and syndication and co-financing investment opportunities.

Duties and Responsibilities
Under the supervision and guidance of the President, the Senior Director, Africa Investment Forum will:

• Drive and support the inception and rollout of the Africa Investment Forum.
• Direct a small direct-report team with core responsibility for - attracting investments through the Africa Investment Forum; - structuring bankable projects for the Africa Investment Forum platform; - developing partnerships and planning and managing the event aspects of the Forum.
• Work with all complexes and teams across the Bank to nurture and actualize their plans to attract investment and project funding as needed, and develop a robust project pipeline across all sectors.
• Work with partner institutions such as development banks, financial institutions and bilateral aid agencies to develop a joint platform to developing a robust project pipeline across all their sectors and attracting investments in Africa.
• Ensure up to date Africa Investment Forum’ investment Tracker and related key analysis on investment flows in Africa in collaboration with the private sector investment departments.
• Develop cross-house and inter-organizational processes for the identification and preparation of a robust pipeline of bankable projects and investment opportunities around the year to feed into the Africa Investment Forum.
• Build an unparalleled database on private investment plans and flows in Africa, with a particular focus on the Africa Investment Forum Deal Tracker, and to then use that information to foster positive change.
• Identify a list of investment opportunities in Africa focused on private and Public-Private Partnership projects.
• Develop an unparalleled institutional investor profiles database – for domestic / foreign; sovereign wealth funds; pension funds; insurance companies; family offices; endowments with investment objectives, risk appetite, etc. Identify and target Africa Investment Forum projects suitable for these institutional investors and build their interest in the Africa Investment Forum pipeline of projects;
• Collaborating with Bank Complexes, develop a profile of various countries’ investment policies and guidelines governing their institutional investors;
• Engage through the Bank’s complexes with policymakers, regulators and other stakeholders to identify solutions to unlock increased investment in Africa by institutional investors.
• Internally, collaborate with all Complexes (Sectors, Regional, Services) and with teams across the Bank as needed to develop the pipeline and relationships needed to make the annual Africa Investment Forums a success. In addition, support a number of build-up investment fora on specific sectors (i.e. agriculture, energy, infrastructure).
• Externally, coordinate with key partners in the development space including development banks, bilateral aid donors, and other Africa investment fora to strengthen collaborative efforts rather than duplication to enhance the pipeline of projects and better target investment.

Responsible for Strategic Partnerships of the Africa Investment Forum through:

• management of ongoing relationships with existing partners and where relevant, leveraging those relationships to greater collective impact;
• Overseeing the conceptualization of new strategic initiatives that could be built around or benefit from corporate, foundation, government, bilateral organizations or other partnerships;
• In conjunction with the Bank’s Complexes and Lead Partners, expanding and diversifying the funding base to increase Africa Investment Forum’s sustainability; and
• Continuously growing new high-level strategic partner relationships.

Selection Criteria
Including desirable skills, knowledge and experience:

• Hold at least a Master's Degree or equivalent in Management Science, Business Administration, Economics, Finance, International Development, or related discipline.
• Have a minimum of fifteen (15) years of experience at increasingly senior levels in the financial sector including tangible experience in or working with multi-lateral financial institutions with proven experience in developing countries, five (5) years of which are at a management level.
• Demonstrated experience in developing and structuring private sector and Public-Private Partnership projects
• Experience in private sector environment as well as relationship development, building and management with institutional investors are added advantages.
• A track record in delivering complex institution-wide initiatives involving public and private sector partners.
• Evidence of successful track record in investment decision making and closing deals
• Demonstrated ability to lead relevant, meaningful dialogue with proven experience in providing high quality strategic and policy advice at high levels to national governments/private sector entities on financial sector issues.
• Strategic mind-set; strong capacity to analyse actions from the perspectives of stakeholders and translate strategic thinking into compelling plans of action and to take prudent business risks to make effective, timely, and well-thought decisions.
• Evidence of ability to build and lead motivated and committed teams across functional boundaries, and utilize talent and expertise of team members in a productive way.
• Demonstrated ability to present and win support for ideas; a good listener; and cultural sensitivity, commitment to diversity and capacity to initiate and manage innovations and change.
• Good knowledge of financing instruments and options.
• Strong convening power and techniques.
• Ability to communicate effectively (written and oral) in English or French, preferably with a working knowledge of the other.
• Competence in the use of standard Microsoft Office Suite applications; knowledge of SAP is an added advantage.