About the Role

The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) is seeking a Senior Associate, Nutritious Foods Financing to support with the day-to-day activities of the Nutritious Foods Financing Facility (N3F) Programme. This role will be on a 2 years’ fixed-term contract basis, subject to availability of funding. This position is open to GAIN’s country offices in London, Utrecht and Nairobi.

Reporting to the Senior Lead, Innovative Finance, you will lead on the provision of technical assistance to SMEs across the food value chain in Sub-Saharan Africa for the Nutritious Foods Financing Facility (N3F). The Senior Associate will also co-lead and contribute to GAIN’s work on innovative financing and coordinate activities under the Nourishing Food Pathways (NFP) work package focused on innovative finance for nutrition. You may be asked to contribute to other activities of GAIN’s Nutrition Enterprise Unit as required.

Key Responsibilities include

• Identifying the key technical assessment needs of SMEs operating in the food value chain that are in the potential pipeline for the N3F Fund, working together with the investment officers at our partner asset investment management company
• Developing technical assistance support packages tailored to individual SMEs and group training according to common needs in the portfolio
• Overseeing the implementation of project workplans and ensuring that all assignments deliver maximum value for money
• Reviewing and refining procedures, monitoring mechanisms, and feedback forms for the provision of Technical Assistance to SMEs
• Working closely with GAIN’s Knowledge Leadership and our partner’ MEL groups to ensure monitoring, evaluation and learning take place
• Managing the NFP activities focused on innovative finance and nutrition investing, including consultancy collaborations, exploring the nexus between nutrition and gender, and mapping of the nutrition investment landscape
• Representing GAIN at national and regional technical meetings and workshops and assisting in the coordinating and organisation of national and international events, technical meetings, and workshops
• Maintaining up-to-date market knowledge/intelligence, geographic and sector mappings on the food and agriculture financing and (social) (impact) investing landscape and sharing the same within the GAIN team and more broadly, including identifying key partners to influence and support in communication pieces (blogs, reports, articles)

About You

• The ideal candidate will have professional experience directly or indirectly related to food supply chains, SMEs, technical assistance and experience in a technical assistance facility / accelerator / incubator preferably within the sub-Sahara region. Candidates’ with experience relating to impact investment, development finance will be a key asset.
• The postholder will have demonstrated expertise in the provision of technical assistance (TA) to SMEs and a deep understanding of what makes an SME scale their operations, grow, and succeed.
• You will have excellent communication skills and be willing to work in multicultural and multi-lingual environments as well as demonstrated excellence in report writing, research and analytical ability. Also, you will be highly flexible and be willing to travel in challenging environments.
• In addition to this, you will possess fluent written and spoken English, candidates’ with proficiency in French or Portuguese will be an additional advantage.
• A Masters’ degree in finance, business, food value chain, economics or related field is preferable. You will have excellent project coordination, management, negotiation, and advocacy skills and able to operate within the private and public sectors to effectively liaise with food enterprises and development agencies at senior level.