Associate, Product & Operations
- Full-time
Company Description
Aceli Africa is a market incentive facility initially created to mobilize $600M in private sector lending for agricultural SMEs in Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda by 2025. Aceli offers financial incentives to increase the risk appetite of 25+ global and local financial institutions to make loans ranging from USD $25K-$1.5M to high-impact agricultural SMEs. Financial incentives have been designed based on an original dataset of agri-SME lending economics that Aceli Africa gathered and analyzed in collaboration with Dalberg Advisors. Incentives are tiered to promote lending to agri-SMEs with limited access to finance and those that meet higher standards for improving farmer and worker livelihoods, promoting gender and youth inclusion, contributing to food security and nutrition, and benefiting climate and the environment. Aceli also facilitates technical assistance to expand the ability of SMEs to qualify for and manage financing as well as capacity building for lenders to serve this market.
Along with our learning partners, Aceli aims to quantify the impact and economic development return on investment of our model and make the case for African governments to take over funding the incentives from international donors in the medium-term. Aceli is supporting a growing number of partner financial service providers to unlock lending for agricultural SMEs in East Africa.
To date, Aceli has secured $62M for activities in the four initial focus countries for 2020-25 from Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, IKEA Foundation, Swiss Development Corporation, UK FCDO, USAID, and other leading funders. Aceli Africa is an initiative of the Global Development Incubator (GDI), a nonprofit incubator of social impact initiatives based in the United States with an affiliated entity based in Kenya; this position is being contracted by GDI.
Job Description
Aceli Africa is seeking to hire an Associate to support in assessing the eligibility of agricultural loans for Aceli’s financial incentives. Interested candidates should send a cover letter indicating their qualifications for this position along with an updated CV by 5 pm East Africa time on May 31, with “Associate, Product & Operations” in the subject line. Applications will be considered on a rolling basis. Only Kenyan nationals are eligible to apply.
Key responsibilities:
The Associate will report to the Senior Associate, Product & Operations, and work closely with the Impact & Learning Team to assess and onboard lenders, review loans registered by lenders against established criteria for incentives eligibility, and enhance Aceli’s engagement with lenders. Specific responsibilities include:
• Provide support in reviewing applications and conducting due diligence on financial service providers interested in joining Aceli’s financial incentives program;
• Participate in lender onboarding activities and track their loan registration against targets; • Review and analyze loan data submitted by participating lenders to assess eligibility for financial incentives in line with the established guidelines;
• Support in appropriately storing and retrieving all documents and data received from lending partners;
• Proactively identify and support process improvements, including the creation of standard and ad-hoc reports, dashboards and tools;
• Support engagement with stakeholders to address any arising issues / questions from the financial incentives program;
• Support with the relevant analysis for internal and external communication including periodic reports to stakeholders and donors.
Qualifications
• A bachelor’s degree in Finance / Economics or similar fields;
• Minimum of two years of full-time project management, investment or lending experience; • Excellent verbal and written communication skills;
• Keen attention to detail;
• Curious and entrepreneurial mindset;
• Excellent time management with demonstrated ability to meet deadlines;
• Problem-solving skills with ability to learn quickly;
• Able to move fluidly between collaborative and independent work styles; and • Familiarity with impact investment in general and/or agricultural lending in particular • Personal commitment to having a positive impact on farmer livelihoods and economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Additional Information
The Global Development Incubator is an Equal Opportunity Employer and considers all applicants based on merit without regard to race, sex, color, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.