The Ugandan Jobline

 Job Title:    Financial Inclusion Officer

Organization: Mercy
Corps

Duty Station:
Uganda

Reports to: Financial
Inclusion Team Leader

 

About US:

Mercy Corps has been
present in Uganda since 2006, focusing its interventions on economic and
agricultural development, maternal child health and nutrition, governance,
conflict management and humanitarian response. In 2017, Mercy Corps had an
impact on almost 1 million beneficiaries in Uganda through our work focusing on
building resilience and enabling economic growth, improving opportunities to
attain better health and nutrition, and improving governance and conflict
management. Common themes include community engagement, inclusive development,
gender, and working in partnership with local government, the private sector
and civil society actors.

 

About USAID Project:

The $41 million
USAID Food for Peace Activity (Apolou) and the $5 million USAID Resilience
Challenge Fund (RCF) Activity support agriculturalists, agro-pastoralists, and
pastoralist households living across the districts of Amudat, Kotido, Kaabong,
Karenga, and Moroto in Karamoja.

 

Job Summary:  The Financial Inclusion Officer will implement
all aspects of the market systems development strategy in the Apolou Activity.
This includes strengthening private sector interventions in livestock and
agriculture value chains, as well as scaling up financial inclusion and other
products/services as relevant. The Financial Inclusion Officer will work
directly with the Financial Inclusion Team Leader to developing agent
input/output and aggregator networks, increasing local partners’ access to
market information and financial services. The Officer will ensure that private
sector led, project-support development is tailored to the unique needs,
opportunities and constraints of women and youth and that activities are
integrated with all other consortium supported sectors.

 

Key Duties and Responsibilities: 

Strategy & Vision

·        
Support
the Financial Inclusion Team Leader to develop and implement team strategy

·        
Identify
new opportunities for innovation and growth among private sector led
interventions

Program Management

·        
Participate
in market assessments in the target communities to determine capacity gaps,
business opportunities and potential hindrances that could be mitigated through
engagements with public and private sector actors. This will include but not be
limited to rapid market assessments, value chain analysis and business support
activities for the key stakeholders.

·        
Identify
and engage private sector actors to effectively expand their business models in
Karamoja Sub Region. This will include profiling businesses and conducting due
diligence on potential partners, support the negotiation process to finalize
teaming and partnership agreements, and providing ongoing business development
support to key partners

·        
Foster
ongoing positive cooperation with relevant stakeholders including SMEs and the
public sector to identify, assess and develop networks for potential linkages
between market actors, producers and final consumers etc.

·        
Identify
capacity gaps of MSME partner actors in Karamoja, design and conduct tailor
made trainings, mentorship and coaching to boost their competitiveness in the
market and boost returns on investment,

Monitoring,
Evaluation and Learning

·        
Establish
procedures and guidelines to monitor and evaluate the progress and impact of
economic development support work including setting and measuring benchmarks
along results chains;

·        
Keenly
analyze project implementation strategies to identify constraints to program
success and provide timely recommendations to inform decision making processes.

·        
Provide
data in support of the team’s submission of timely monthly and quarterly
reports, strategic reviews, annual reports and midterm evaluations that will be
indicative of program progress during implementation.

·        
Collect
data about all groups working with the financial inclusion intervention and
work with MEL team to update CommCare with up to date group data.

Influence &
Representation

·        
Ensure
close coordination and sharing of information with relevant stakeholders such
as local government authorities, financial service providers and NGOs as and
when advised by the line manager.

·        
Liaise
with local government officials, local NGOs and civil society organizations,
and other key stakeholders to ensure support for and acceptance of Mercy Corps’
market based interventions.

·        
Coordination
with District Implementation Team

·        
Build
the capacity of the members of the implementation team on their particular
sector through orientations, one on one discussions and demonstrating in the
field.

·        
The
district implementation team after conducting a needs assessment will decide an
intervention to be layered. The district implementation team will require
support in developing a sector specific plan for a particular community. The
member of the technical team will support the district team to plan the
intervention that is related to the particular sector and purpose.

·        
The
district implementation team member will mobilize the extension service agents
which will go on to mobilize the community groups to provide the services to
conduct the activity in the field. The member of the technical team will coordinate
with the district implementation team to conduct the activities in the field.

·        
The
technical team member will monitor the activities conducted in the field and
provide feedback to the technical extension service agents to improve the
quality of implementation of activities.

·        
The
technical team member will meet quarterly with the district implementation team
to review the activities conducted in the field and reflect with the team to
understand how the quality of implementation of activities would be improved.

·        
Collaborate
with the MEL team on the design and implementation of the Apolou CLA/Learning
Agenda

Finance, Compliance
AND Operations Management

·        
Ensure
compliance with donor and Mercy Corps regulations related to financial
inclusion

·        
Generate
activity scopes of work for review by team leader

 

Qualifications, Skills and Experience: 

·        
The
applicant for the Mercy Corps Financial Inclusion Officer job placement must
hold a Bachelor’s in Business Administration, Agribusiness, or other related
field

·        
At least
two years of  work experience with the
private sector or market facilitation approaches

·        
Familiarity
with the Karamojong business environment will be an added advantage.

·        
Excellent
English Language skills, with Nga’Karimojong language skills a plus

·        
Computer
literate with dexterity with Microsoft Office

·        
Success
Factors

·        
The
success of the Financial Inclusion Officer is measured by the ability to
effectively implement a light touch market system strategy,

·        
The
capacity of the officer to positively collaborate across teams, ensuring that
MSD interventions are relevant, and gender and youth inclusive.

·        
The
extent to which the MSD/ FI approaches are layered onto other Apolou
interventions that are implementing through group strategies.

 

How to Apply:

All suitably qualified
candidates are encouraged to apply online at the link below

 

Click
Here

 

Deadline: 30^th September 2020

 

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