Senior Portfolio Officer- Investing In Women Full Time

About Us

AECF (Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund) is a leading non-profit development organization supporting innovative agribusiness and renewable energy enterprises to reduce rural poverty, promote resilient communities, and create jobs.

We catalyze the private sector by surfacing and commercializing new ideas, business models, and technologies designed to increase agricultural productivity, improve farmer incomes, expand clean energy access, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and improve resilience to the effects of climate change. We finance high-risk businesses that struggle to access commercial funding. We are committed to working in frontier markets, fragile contexts, and high-risk economies where few mainstream financing institutions dare to go.

Over 17 years, we have supported 536 businesses in 27 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, impacted more than 36 million lives, created over 35,000 direct jobs, and leveraged US$840 million in matching funds.

The Role

The Senior Portfolio Officer will be responsible for supporting the management of the Investing in Women Nigeria Program, an investment designed to support women-owned and women-led enterprises, cooperatives, and women groups which is funded by Global Affairs Canada. They will provide technical and grants management support to a portfolio of investments in small and medium-sized enterprises and women’s cooperatives in the agriculture sector in Kano, Nigeria.

The incumbent will be 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. The role holder is expected to have the right experience in agriculture value chain analysis, cooperative engagement, and development.

This role will report to the Programme Manager.

• Lead the portfolio construction including promoting competitions, developing scoring criteria, assessing applications, drafting and presenting investment memos to both the internal and external investment committees.
• Accompany investees throughout the implementation, ensuring efficiency, effectiveness and adherence to AECF’s grant implementation principles.
• Maintain strong working relations with investees (and service providers) professionally and efficiently to ensure value for money, and to minimize the potential for fraud, inefficiency and waste.
• Conduct regular monitoring of grant implementation to track milestones, compliance, timelines and deliverables including the analysis of periodic reports and provision of feedback to investees, and regular site visits to investees.
• Analyze fund disbursement requests in a timely manner and make recommendations.
• Prepare regular reports on grantee performance, identify any significant deviations or delays to planned grant implementation, propose recommended courses of action, and in consultation with relevant colleagues, work with investees to meet their performance obligations.
• Ensure all investee site visits are conducted on a periodic basis, as per the agreed site visit schedule.
• Coordinate the identification of investees who require technical assistance.
• Ensure legal review and opinion on investments that require the legal department’s review.
• Contribute to the development of periodic management and donor reports.
• Contribute to proposal development for various potential program areas.
• Actively contribute to the portfolio learning agenda in alignment with AECF’s broader learning goals (in collaboration with the Impact, Knowledge, and Insights teams) to enhance the Fund’s reputation and capabilities, drive systemic change in relevant market systems across Africa, and support advocacy initiatives.
• Foster ongoing improvement of the portfolio through insights gained from continuous learning.
• Ensure compliance with internal controls and risk management of the portfolio in accordance with the wider AECF Limited Management Framework.
• Implement the programme risk and mitigation framework, in line with the overall AECF Risk and Compliance Management Framework.

Requirements

• A bachelors degree in finance, business administration, international development, social sciences, development finance, or a related field.
• Minimum seven (7) years’ experience in portfolio or investment management, including experience with financial and operational due diligence of early or growth-stage businesses.
• Have experience in Agribusiness value chain analysis, co-operatives engagement, and development
• Experience in private sector-led development, sustainable finance, value chains strengthening or economic diversification.
• Extensive experience of investment, grant-making, due diligence processes, and grant management in the renewable energy sector.
• Extensive knowledge and understanding of program design and development, project cycle management, and financial budgeting and reporting.
• 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.
• Have demonstrated organizational and project management skills.
• Have an understanding of the donor landscape and demands of international development.
• Have 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.
• Fluency in written and oral English and Hausa languages.

Tagged as: Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund, Nigeria