Jobs at Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund (AECF)

The Programme

• The Investing in Women in Nigeria (IIW-Nigeria) is a 6-year programme funded by Global Affairs Canada (GAC) that seeks to economically empower women working in the agriculture sectors as entrepreneurs, smallholder farmers, producers, and employees and to address the barriers that prevent women from participating in agricultural value chains in Kano State, Nigeria.
• Women account for 75% of farmers in Nigeria and agriculture is the economy’s second-largest source of employment (36%). Yet women farmers are significantly constrained by restrictive gender norms that limit their mobility, agency, ability to own land and access finance, inputs and technology. Climate volatility further exacerbates these challenges, especially in the North, which is prone to drought and flooding.
• Through the project, the AECF will launch challenge fund competitions that will award performance-based grants to women entrepreneurs, producer groups, and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) offering employment, products and services that benefit women, that address barriers to women’s participation in agriculture, and are climate smart.
• It will also provide business advisory services to the companies that are supported with grants, work with micro finance institutions to improve their ability to reach individual women farmers and engage with local community and political structures to support women in agricultural value chains.
• The initiative seeks to contribute evidence on the effectiveness of funding the private sector to drive and improve women’s economic empowerment along various agricultural value chains.

The project seeks to:

• Increase access to finance for women-owned/led companies and those creating economic opportunities for women.
• Increase access to business development services to support the growth of agribusiness that are beneficial to or led by women.
• Address social norms through community-level and locally gender equality capacity building initiatives, advocacy and awareness campaigns and the recruitment of local champions.
• The project will support micro, start-up and growth level businesses through matching funding and technical assistance, and work to reduce systemic gender barriers to women’s economic empowerment at the grassroots level.

The Role

• The Incumbent will be part of the IIW-Nigeria project team and collaborating with Gender team leading AECF’s work in social finance, women economic empowerment and gender lens investing.
• The role holder will deliver gender activities across in the project including technical assistance to portfolio companies, coordinate and support the work of gender officers embedded in country, and work in close collaboration with AECF impact, knowledge, and partnership team to contribute to the overall learning, though leadership, dissemination and business development of AECF’s GLI work.

Key Responsibilities

• Act as the principal resource on gender equality issues, practices, and policies relevant to the project and in the project context.
• Provide technical assistance to portfolio companies on gender integration and gender smart solutions for increased business performance.
• Take the lead in conducting and updating gender-based analysis, and contribute to the other technical analyses.
• Identify and maintain a data base of key stakeholders to represent women’s rights and gender equality issues.
• Provide input and advice on expected results at intermediate and immediate levels in the logic model.
• Update the project gender equality strategy.
• Identify and review supporting outputs and activities to achieve gender equality outcomes.
• Provide input into defining, collecting, and analyzing sex-age disaggregated baseline data; define gender-sensitive and sex-age disaggregated indicators and targets for the draft performance measurement framework (PMF).
• Provide inputs into all aspects of the project work plan and budget.
• Coordinate implementation of the gender equality strategy and related project activities.
• Strengthen the project team, implementing organizations and partners’ gender equality knowledge, skills and capacity with training and tools.
• Assist in monitoring results against the PMF and gender equality strategy.
• Provide inputs to project reports.

The Candidate
Suitable candidates should:

• Hold a Bachelor’s Degree qualification in Gender Economics, Gender Studies, Development Studies, Economics, Development Finance, or other relevant fields of study.
• Possess a minimum of four (4) years of post-training experience in one or more of the following areas: gender economics, social entrepreneurship, impact investing, management consulting, development, renewable energy, agribusiness, SME finance, rural financial services and/or renewable energy and adaptation to combat climate change.
• Possess hands-on experience in agribusiness and renewable energy sectors.
• Possess strong experience/ interest in social finance and impact investing in the international development context.
• Possess experience working in an international team and proven ability to deliver in a complex environment with multiple, divergent stakeholder interests.
• Be fluent in written and oral English and Hausa languages.

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The Programme

• The Investing in Women in Nigeria (IIW-Nigeria) is a 6-year programme funded by Global Affairs Canada (GAC) that seeks to economically empower women working in the agriculture sectors as entrepreneurs, smallholder farmers, producers, and employees and to address the barriers that prevent women from participating in agricultural value chains in Kano State, Nigeria.
• Women account for 75% of farmers in Nigeria and agriculture is the economy’s second-largest source of employment (36%).
• Yet women farmers are significantly constrained by restrictive gender norms that limit their mobility, agency, ability to own land and access finance, inputs and technology. Climate volatility further exacerbates these challenges, especially in the North, which is prone to drought and flooding.
• Through the project, the AECF will launch challenge fund competitions that will award performance-based grants to women entrepreneurs, producer groups, and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) offering employment, products and services that benefit women, that address barriers to women’s participation in agriculture, and are climate smart.
• It will also provide business advisory services to the companies that are supported with grants, work with micro finance institutions to improve their ability to reach individual women farmers and engage with local community and political structures to support women in agricultural value chains.
• The initiative seeks to contribute evidence on the effectiveness of funding the private sector to drive and improve women’s economic empowerment along various agricultural value chains.

The project seeks to:

• Increase access to finance for women-owned/led companies and those creating economic opportunities for women.
• Increase access to business development services to support the growth of agribusiness that are beneficial to or led by women.
• Address social norms through community-level and locally gender equality capacity building initiatives, advocacy and awareness campaigns and the recruitment of local champions.
• The project will support micro, start-up and growth level businesses through matching funding and technical assistance, and work to reduce systemic gender barriers to women’s economic empowerment at the grassroots level.

The Role

• The Role holder is responsible for supporting the management of the Investing in Women Nigeria programme, an investment programme designed to support women owned and women led enterprises and other organisations and funded by Global Affairs Canada.
• He/she will lead the technical and grants management support to a portfolio of investments in small and medium sized enterprises and women’s producer organisations in the agriculture sector in Kano, Nigeria.
• The incumbent is expected to work flexibly and collegially in processing grants, managing relations with investees, supervising the implementation of investment contracts, reporting to management and external donor partners and coordinating technical assistance.

Key Responsibilities
Portfolio Monitoring & Reporting:

• Ensure investee performance in line with grant agreements through effective relationship management.
• Lead the planning and execution of investee performance monitoring activities, including data verification exercises to ensure the quality of programme results.
• Implementation of the financial policies, procedures, and systems guidelines for grant recipients.
• Ensure all investee site visits are conducted on a periodic basis, as per the agreed site visit schedule.
• Coordinate identification of investees who require technical assistance and arrange to deliver services based on the AECF TA and Learning service delivery framework.
• Reviewing periodic narrative and financial reports, as well as disbursement requests from grant recipients.
• Ensure legal review and opinion on grants that require the legal departments review.
• Provide periodic reports on the programme, information trends and other relevant information as requested.
• Contribute to the development of periodic management and donor reports.
• Contribute to proposal development for various potential program areas.

Impact and Learning:

• Contribute to the portfolio learning agenda through collection of investee progress reports and validation of impact reported following AECF guidelines on impact measurement.
• Contribute to baseline, mid-term and endline evaluations.
• Contribute lessons learned to regular reporting as well as ad hoc learning papers produced under the IIW Nigeria programme.

Risk and Compliance:

• Ensure compliance with internal controls and risk management of the portfolio in accordance with the wider AECF Management Framework.
• Implement the programme risk and mitigation framework, in line with the overall AECF Risk and Compliance Management Framework.

The Candidate
Suitable candidates should:

• Possess a Bachelor’s Degree in Business, Finance Economics, Sustainable Development, or related field.
• Have four (4) to five (5) years experience in portfolio or investment management, including experience with financial and operational due diligence of early or growth-stage businesses.
• Have experience in private sector development, sustainable finance, strengthening value chains or economic diversification - preferably in sustainable or blue economy-related industries.
• Hold a professional accounting qualification e.g., ACCA, will be an added advantage.
• Have experience working with SMEs, and financial intermediaries working with micro and small businesses. Experience with gender lens investing, will be a distinct added advantage.
• Be able to demonstrate organizational and project management skills.
• Have an understanding of the donor landscape and demands of international development.
• Possess excellent analytical and communication skills with the ability to prepare investment/grant memos, proposals, and reports to a high level of proficiency.
• Have a high degree of initiative and energy, “can-do” attitude, flexibility, teamwork, and attention to detail.
• Be fluent in written and oral English and Hausa languages.