Senior Investment Platforms Officer at African Development Bank - AfDB

Position Number: 50097570
Location: Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire
Position Grade: PL5

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 / Division

• 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

• The Senior Investment Platforms Officer plays a central role in identifying, building and managing strategic relationships with relevant stakeholders vital to the success of the AIF.
• Under the supervision of the Senior Director, the Senior Investment Platforms Officer will proactively identify potential investment partners, including multilateral development partners, investment opportunities and manage relationships with institutional and non-traditional investors.
• The Senior Investment Platforms Officer will also build, maintain and expand a robust pipeline of bankable projects for on boarding to the AIF platform.

The Senior Investment Platform Officer will also:

• Coordinate the implementation of the AIF Digital Platform "The Platform";
• Develop and implement an AIF Management Information System tool and data warehouse;
• Enhance the AIF registration Database;
• Maintain and sustain other AIF IT tools (AIF databases, mobile applications, IT Infrastructure gap analysis, etc.).

Key Functions
Pipeline Development and Management:

• Assess the attractiveness of specific investment opportunities with a strong focus on credit quality and development impact and make recommendations to the AIF management
• Originate and structure deals in collaboration with investment officers across multiple AIF work streams and sector complexes within the Bank.
• Task manage pipeline development efforts in coordination with sector complexes and regions to present to partners and showcase on the AIF platform.
• Drive identified work streams around pipeline development, project preparation, policy and regulations, and credit enhancements in collaboration with sector and regional colleagues to advance the Africa Investment Forum.
• Work with legal department to ensure that all deals have appropriate legal documentation and that financial close is achieved in a timely fashion.

AIF legacy Systems (MIS, Swap card, Registration, Web Portal):

• Develop IT infrastructure Strategy documents for the AIF.
• Establish Virtual Boardroom Development and Partnership, Roadshow modules.
• Review the registration database structure to ease interoperability with other tools and make sustainable
• Ensure that all relevant digital investment initiatives are fully integrated into the AIF strategic planning process for leadership commitment, resource allocation and execution.
• Support sustainability of other AIF IT tools (eventApps, registration system etc.).
• Drive the launch of the AIF Digital Platform and the MIS -2 phase development.

Resource Mobilization:

• Identify, develop and assist with the management of long-term, strategic relationships between the Africa Investment Forum, Investors (institutional and non-traditional), Multilateral Development Banks, government officials, and the private sector community.
• Articulate strategic interests of investors and translate them into tailored partnerships and engagement plans; match these to the pipeline of projects that are investment ready or under preparation, ensuring continuous successful delivery of these plans and maximizing value of engagement.
• Help build a robust database of the various categories of investors and their investment policy/plans in Africa’s private sector, their investment flows in Africa to date, and subsequently use that information to proactively match them to investable solutions/pipeline of investments and or project structures.
• Work with the various arms of the Bank’s departments to drive policy issues that will ease institutional investment in Africa Investment Forum transactions.
• Support the development of investment promotion strategies in Africa, including targeting potential Investors and promoting AfDB’s products and services proactively.
• Prepare, present and maintain detailed and compelling investment documentation in collaboration with relevant sector teams.

Design Specific Initiatives and Partnerships:

• Participate in and contribute to key partnerships meetings, (including those with other Multilateral Development Banks and other international organizations, institutional and non-institutional Investments) to seek for new resource mobilization and partnership opportunities for the AIF.
• Contribute to the development of strategic options for positioning the AIF in the global investment architecture.
• Manage the development and maintenance of the AIF’s digital investment platform and the Bank’s engagement with sister platforms.
• Act as a trusted adviser to all users, guiding them on the platforms and ensuring that they derive the highest value from their engagement (matchmaking Investments and projects).
• Source relevant content for the AIF’s digital investment platform from the internal stakeholders and external partners
• Assist with securing strategic corporate partners for the AIF digital platform.
• Contribute to shaping the content program for the Africa Investment Forum’s annual events.

External Liaison and Knowledge Sharing:

• Support the engagement with AIF Advisory Council
• Provide technical leadership and support to webinars, knowledge and lesson sharing events with internal and external stakeholders.
• Participate in and contribute to activities for advocacy, dissemination and knowledge building relating to AIF’s work-streams and initiatives.
• Engage with the Chief Economist’s Complex for relevant content to feed the AIF website and digital platforms.
• Assist the Management team by providing technical input and comments on policy, papers and other documents relating to the AIF’s participation in various fora.

Competencies (Skills, Experience and Knowledge)

• Must have a minimum of a Master’s Degree in International Development, Computer Science, Economics, Development Finance, Business Administration, Finance or related discipline
• Have a minimum of five (5) years of relevant working experience, in the field of development financing, financial services, resource mobilization, and project finance.
• Experience working in developing/emerging market economies is essential
• Experience working in Financial sector in Africa and/or specialized experience in similar organization/s is desirable, and would be considered an advantage

Behavioral Competencies:

• Ability to make sound decisions as well as commit to decisions
• Ability to initiate, effectively and independently interact with the senior government officials, senior management of potential clients as well as financial and technical partners in order to build networks across the region to generate new business, partnerships and collaborative opportunities
• Excellent organizational, administrative, and time management skills including an ability to deal with conflicting priorities and deliver high quality work on schedule
• Proven ability to work independently and efficiently to deliver under pressure and meet tight deadlines;
• Willingness to travel extensively and geographic flexibility;
• Excellent presentation skills

Technical Competencies:

• Solid experience in deal origination, structuring and project management.
• Demonstrable knowledge of international development financing and the global funding architecture particularly as related to Africa.
• Experience in investment appraisal of multi-sector projects.
• Experience in client and relationship management.
• Results-focused and effective, ability to work under time pressure with high degree of accuracy and with a strong capacity to produce high-quality work.
• Demonstrate initiative, monitor issues and tasks, to meet deadlines and priorities
• Communicate effectively, written and oral fluency in English and/or French with a working knowledge of the other. Fluency in Portuguese is an added advantage.
• Strong analytical, coordination and organizational skills with capacity to work as part of a team in a multicultural environment.
• Good knowledge and understanding of a range of technologies to support investment portfolios.
• Competence with standard MS Office software, preferable experience of SAP.