Job Description

Description :

TechnoServe (www.technoserve.org) is a non-profit, economic development organization with sustained commitment to its 50-year old founding mission to work with enterprising men and women in the developing world to build competitive farms, businesses, and industries. We are business specialists assisting farmers and other entrepreneurs in 29 countries, increasing their access to information, capital, and markets. The increased income our clients derive enhances resilience and prosperity for their families and communities. In 2021, TechnoServe assisted 407,000 farmers and businesses resulting in $250 million of new revenues and wages for participating farmers, businesses, and employees.

TechnoServe was competitively selected by the UK government\xe2\x80\x99s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) to lead part of a five-year program \xe2\x80\x93 Commercial Agriculture for Smallholders and Agribusinesses Technical Assistance Facility (CASA TAF). The CASA Technical Assistance Facility (TAF) Programme is an \xc2\xa38M funded program and forms part of FCDO\xe2\x80\x99s Inclusive Green Growth Centre of Expertise (COE) which aims to support a climate-resilient and inclusive global agriculture sector through technical assistance to a variety of stakeholders including impact investors, agribusinesses and FCDO country missions. Technical assistance ultimately aims to change how investors, donors, and governments view and invest in agribusinesses that build smallholder resilient supply chains.

CASA TAF operates across all FCDO priority countries across Africa and Asia. It is working with seven investor partners, and to date has supported 24 agri-business investees of these partners to design and implement new business models to improve the resilience of farmers. By 2025, the program will have supported the increased resilience and food security of ~90,000 smallholders and demonstrated the impact of these models to catalyze additional investment into agriculture.

Job Summary

TechnoServe is seeking an Inclusive Business Manager who will oversee the delivery and quality execution of technical assistance projects through our agribusiness portfolio companies.

Primary Functions & Responsibilities

Stakeholder management of agribusiness partners

• Advise on inclusive business strategies and design of agricultural TA projects, drawing on own experience and best practices from working across various value chains and smallholder inclusive business models in Sub-Saharan Africa and/or Asia.
• Understand key stakeholders\xe2\x80\x99 interests, targets and pressures within agribusiness portfolio companies to develop influencing strategies
• Manage and lead target-setting discussions for those that directly align with CASA TAF output and outcome KPIs
• Establish CASA TAF\xe2\x80\x99s value addition by consistently sharing learnings from CASA TAF and TechnoServe projects
• Identify institutional gaps within agribusinesses, make these visible across management teams and present scenarios for adaptation moving forward
• Regularly liaise with and update investor partners associated with agribusinesses, elevating key risks and highlighting progress, challenges or areas for problem solving/trouble-shooting

Management of technical assistance providers

• Manage TA providers to ensure efficient and effective delivery, in line with planned objectives and budgets. This could include short secondments to businesses within our portfolio to kickstart new projects, introduce innovations and/or troubleshoot existing initiatives; ad-hoc and planned steering committee meetings; performance feedback and check in meetings etc.
• Facilitate connections and develop a pool of experts who can provide leadership and guidance in specific commodities and/or other thematic areas to provide specialist technical guidance and/or direct TA provision where needed. Leverage and call-on this pool to plug gaps identified where appropriate.
• Review expense projections on a monthly basis to ensure planned spending is on track
• Review progress against KPIs and planned activities regularly (at least monthly) to ensure planned activities are on track; raise key risks, challenges or highlights with CASA TAF and company management and other relevant stakeholders, as needed.

Project design and management

• Manage the end-to-end process, including business/project scoping, designing, proposing, obtaining approval for, tendering, and supervising a selection of the technical assistance projects for agribusinesses
• Facilitate monitoring and assessment of TA project delivery, quality and impact on SHFs and agribusiness operations; advising on areas for improvement and identifying need/opportunity for new interventions. Provide technical guidance and support to implementing partners on increasing quality TA delivery and optimising SHF impact.
• Provide direct technical assistance (if needed) to support implementation of inclusive business models. Provide technical advisory in specific areas such as smallholder extension, access to finance, smallholder aggregation, climate and nature positive interventions, digitisation and/or gender inclusion.
• Support successful execution, stakeholder alignment and learning through facilitating project steerco meetings; client/farmer visits, workshops etc.
• Prepare and submit relevant sections for donor progress reports and communications/learning products (e.g. bulletins); support facilitation of portfolio review meetings.
• Quickly identify, assess, and manage risks related to execution. Proactively communicate risks timeously with key stakeholders.
• Provide other support to the TA Provider, Fund Managers and investee companies as required to ensure sustainability of interventions for portfolio projects

Monitoring, evaluation and learning

• Proactively share learnings with the core team, investors, learning partners and external stakeholders and participate in broader knowledge exchange sessions.
• Proactively promote CASA and TechnoServe in the wider development sector, seeking opportunities for collaboration and partnership as well as nurturing potential agriculture business development prospects
• Lead thinking on Theory of Change given technical context of the agribusinesses we work with, identification of KPIs of technical assistance projects, data collection from companies and TA providers
• Lead discussion on evaluation results with companies, TA providers and external stakeholders

Basic Qualifications

• Degree in Agribusiness, Development or related courses, with minimum of 10 years\xe2\x80\x99 experience in business management or operations.
• A proven track record in designing and executing technical assistance projects in the agriculture sector.
• Experience of private sector oriented development programme design; with experience in identifying and unlocking shared value opportunities.
• Strong project management skills including proven track record in managing projects, measurement plans and budgets (ideally sub-awards).
• Strong analytical skills, including quantitative analysis.
• Demonstrated capacity to produce high quality reports and proposals.

Preferred Qualifications

• Ideally held a leadership role of Project or Program Manager with direct reports.
• Financial and impact modelling expertise.
• Strategy consulting experience with top tier firms.
• Experience working in impact investment.

Travel

• Comfortable and experienced with significant travel throughout Asia and Africa.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

• Excellent interpersonal communication skills and demonstrated ability to influence others to adopt new approaches. Proven ability to create buy-in and build consensus among colleagues and stakeholders.
• Proactive and can work with limited direction.
• Results oriented, with a proven track record of working to achieve project targets.
• Proven ability to create buy-in and build consensus among colleagues and stakeholders.
• Strong skills in business software (Excel, PowerPoint etc.).
• Ability to pivot, make quick and sound decisions when there are risks or change in priorities.
• Has a strong sense of ownership, accountability and can-do attitude.
• Demonstrated ability to manage executive teams and manage direct reports.

How to apply

Qualified and interested applicants should submit a cover letter and resume to Sridhar at on or before 15th October 2023 or apply through the job posting. Please indicate CASA TAF Inclusive Business Manager, Delivery in the subject line. Only applicants meeting minimum qualifications will be considered or contacted. Applications will be considered as received.

Skills : Business Strategy: Advanced

TechnoServe