About Me

03/2024 – Present

Digital Financial Literacy Coordinator and Acting Digital Agriculture Project Lead

Lead a DFL project with government parties and lead the AIRADE Program (Digital Agriculture):

As the Digital Agriculture Project Lead

·        Develop and implement a comprehensive digital agriculture strategy aligned with UNCDF’s mission and Ethiopia’s agricultural development goals.

·        Manage stakeholders like Ministry of Agriculture and Agricultural Transformation Institute to implement an input tracking and sales management project in 80 woredas in Ethiopia.

·        Manage a grant scheme for private sector actors engaged in digital agriculture projects in Ethiopia.

·        Collaborate with government agencies, NGOs, and private sector partners to build strong partnerships and leverage resources.

·        Oversee the planning, execution, and monitoring of digital agriculture projects, ensuring they are delivered on time, within budget, and with high-quality outcomes.

·        Collect and analyze data from digital agriculture projects to generate valuable insights and inform decision-making and mobilization of finance for the sector.

·        Design the project financial instruments to provide grants and loans and guarantees associated with the project.

·        Work on raising funds for UNCDF to implement digital agricultural projects.

As the Digital Financial Literacy Coordinator

·        Serve as the overall technical lead and resource person for the implementing partner and UNCDF on digital skill and literacy;

·        Provide guidance in grant management to manage project grants including fund raising;

·        Serve as the overall technical lead and resource person for the implementing partner and UNCDF on digital skill and literacy;

·        Actively provide Technical Assistance to stakeholders in the DFL space in Ethiopia, including but not limited to policy analysis, global benchmarking, and impact assessments in the development of linkage between digital skill and literacy;

·        Develop a detailed implementation plan and its associated budget in alignment with the Project Description and ensure that it is agreed upon by all major partners

·        Plan, designed and implement quantitative and qualitative research to produce market insights and identify future programme priorities in the country office in relation to expanding similar projects.

05/2020 – 03/2024

Financial Inclusion Officer

ICIPE (Mastercard Foundation Fund)

Provide research, program design and project implementation support to the MOYESH program in digitization, digital literacy and financial management.

·     Manage designing, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of all financial inclusion projects.

·     Manage the MOYESH digital literacy project for unemployed youth to generate more income through digital financial services

·     Work on digital literacy project grants and designing loan products to youth partners

·     Work closely with donors and Financial institutions to design guarantee funds to Microfinance Institutions and derisk lending to youth partners

·     Build internal and external stakeholder capacity in digitization and digitalization issues

·     Manage financial literacy trainings and campaigns for youth at the woreda level

·     Provide technical expertise under the MOYESH programme to expand financial inclusion across programme locations.

·     Manage technical review of financial inclusion project proposals and concept notes

·     Provides technical advice in developing, planning and implementing financial inclusion strategies and support partner organizations in implementation of specific financing mechanisms

·     Manage all regional and federal stakeholders working with the program with regards to financial inclusion

·     Provide technical support programme staff and partners on financial services to rural youth, the unbanked and underserved populations, smallholder farmers, MSMEs and other agricultural value chain actors within MOYESH programme.

·     Support efforts to leverage innovative and technology led solutions to achieve the programme’s goals

·     Support project integrate ICT tools and digitalize operations

·     Manage the project life-cycle for all financial inclusion projects

Identify and/or develop required financial tools and methodological approaches and provide technical assistance and training/capacity building to ensure programme interventions achieve or surpass established objectives.

02/2019 – 04/2020

RTI International

Country Lead – Advisor

Serve as a country point of contact on all advisory requirements for off-grid energy projects.

·     Manage designing, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of all renewable energy projects.

·     Manage and execute project grants for renewable energy projects.

·     Implement digital finance and energy projects on financing agricultural value chain and innovative access to finance activities such as PAY-AS-YOU-GO technologies

·     Manage digital literacy in renewable energy for private and public sector partners

·     Developed a digitized payment strategy for PAYGO technologies in Ethiopia

·     Support rural SMEs involved in the agricultural, energy and finance sector in providing capacity building, job creation and training efforts

·     Lead technical review of projects/ programmes funding proposals and concept notes for PAYGO projects

·     Support improvement of RTI and USAID funded projects integrate ICT into their businesses and operations

·     Apply USAID’s funding criteria and other policies and guidance in the review of funding proposals

·     Sporting legal arrangement and coordination role in post-approval arrangements of USAID and RTI funded projects

·     Work on supporting sector wide projects that focus on gender and energy such as job creation for women through productive use in energy

·     Identify domestic and external financing sources and develop and maintain a database of available financing sources for off-grid energy companies, including investors, institutional investors, commercial banks and international finance institutions

·     Support the Association of Ethiopian women in Energy get access to sector specific information

·     Conducting assessments, identification of highest impact opportunities, contributing to annual work plans, implementing approved activities

·     Coordinate provision of technical assistance to off-grid energy companies with other donors to avoid duplication of efforts

·     Identify areas of support required by private sector that can be provided by Power Africa

·     Manage all monitoring and evaluation activities in Ethiopia

01/2018 – 02/2019

MOSS ICT Consultancy

Corporate Project manager

Project manager for 11 digital finance projects

·     Implement the largest off-grid beneficiary cash transfers project in collaboration with Ministry of Finance and Economic Cooperation and Development Partners such as USAID and World Bank that benefited 3.6M beneficiaries every year in Ethiopia.

·     Manage designing, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of all digital finance projects.

·     Implement solutions such as pay-as-you-go solar loans through the MBIRR platform,

·     Coordinate internal resources and third parties/vendors for the flawless execution of projects

·     Manage projects in a way that mainstreams gender, youth and climate issues

·     Develop a detailed project plan to track progress

·     Use appropriate verification techniques to manage changes in project scope, schedule and costs

·     Measure project performance using appropriate systems, tools and techniques

·     Manage project strategies and monitoring/ evaluation activities

Manage 11 project and support staff to deliver project on time and within cost

08/2014 – 01/2018

Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency

Senior Project Officer and Gender Analyst

Leading, gender, agricultural input finance and digitalization projects

Working on donor relation, Monitoring and Evaluation activities

·   Manage designing, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of all agricultural, rural finance, climate related and gender projects.

·   Project lead for rural financial literacy in Amhara, Oromia, Tigray and SNNP regions with regards to saving, loan, insurance, and digital finance services.

·   Led the development of the financial literacy strategy for agriculture in Ethiopia

·   Served as a focal person from ATA in the national implementation committee of the financial literacy program (including digital finance) formed by the National Bank of Ethiopia

·   Project lead for eVoucher system in Amhara, Tigray, Oromia and SNNP regions to automate of the manual voucher system. This project, 4 million USD, automates the input sales system to farmers in rural areas. The technology uses Near Field Communication (NFC) tags to hold farmer profile and entitlements. The E-voucher saves time, makes easier audits and reconciliation between different stakeholders. The project is supposed to reach more than 500k smallholder farmers in Amhara, Tigray, Oromia and SNNP regions in 2010 EC.
Tigray and  SNNP Project lead of the of the new input voucher sales (IVS) system in partnership with the regional Micro-Finance Institution (OMFI) and Multi-purpose Cooperatives.

·   Program analyst on the team that developed The Strategy for Increasing Exports and Forex Revenue for Key Commodities by Engaging Youth & Local Entrepreneurs. This strategy laid the groundwork for the current Cluster Commercialization System the agricultural sector is based on.

·   Gender analyst for the gender program team in ATA leading the gender sensitization on every project and program the organization is involved in, building the capacity of ATA’s government counterparts, and supporting the implementation of gender projects in the Ministry of Agriculture. While being part of this team, I have worked on the National Extension Strategy, Designing Female Friendly Agricultural Technologies, Household Irrigation for Female Farmers, Strategy to Mainstream Gender and Climate Issues in ATA, and Women Economic Empowerment Project through Cooperatives

·   Gender advisor on the agricultural input voucher and the eVoucher projects. As the advisor for both projects, I have worked on tackling gender specific issues regarding agricultural input distribution and access to credit which also covered access to energy as an input

·   Working on climate finance projects in Ethiopia

·   Monitoring and evaluation focal person managing all rural finance project M&E activities

Donor relation focal person for eVoucher project managing donor relationships with key donors

07/2012-08/2013

Asku PLC

Market Researcher

Developing feasibility studies, & market assessments

·   Leading the feasibility study development for high scale soft drink production

·   Leading the feasibility study development for high scale production and export of Injera (local bread)

·   Co-leading the assessment of the health system in Ethiopia

·   Leading the market research/survey on bottled water and soft drinks – Specific emphasis of Aqua Addis market performance

Leading the study on the Ethiopian Economic Factors that Affect an Investor’s Decision

Education and training

Sept 2015 – July 2018
M.A Project Management
Project Management
Sept 2009 – June 2012

BA Finance and Development Economics

Addis Ababa University School of Commerce