Summary
Date Posted: Thursday, December 08, 2022 , Base Salary: Not Disclosed

JOB DETAILS:
REQUEST FOR APPLICATIONS (RFA)
USAID Zambia Enterprise Development & Growth Enhanced (EDGE) Activity
Position: Credit Scoring – Consultant
Location: Lusaka, Zambia
Period of performance: 3 months (exact dates to be determined)

Overview:
ACDI/VOCA is a nonprofit international development organization, based in Washington, D.C., USA. Since 1963, ACDI/VOCA has supported 148 countries to empower individuals and their communities to succeed in the global economy, by delivering technical and management assistance in agribusiness, financial services, and enterprise development.
ACDI/VOCA is currently implementing the Zambia Enterprise Development and Growth Enhanced (EDGE) Activity, a five-year program, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The aim of the Zambia EDGE Activity is to increase the profitability for agricultural small and medium enterprises (SMEs) by addressing their key investment constraints on access to finance, limited business management skills and technology, and access to markets, thereby increasing SMEs’ productivity and ability to create new jobs in Zambia. The EDGE Activity conducts multiple activities via implementing partners and local experts, which are monitored, tracked, analyzed reported by a small Monitoring and Evaluation & Collaboration, Learning and Adaptation team, and supported, via data collection, by multiple resources within the project. The EDGE Activity is subject to a third-party evaluation process at the mid and end term of the project.

Context:
Zambia EDGE is seeking experienced and talented professionals for the Credit Scoring Consultant position, to assist Good Nature Agro with the development of a credit scoring mechanism. This position will be co-managed by USAID/Zambia EDGE and Good Nature Agro (GNA), and it is expected to be a short-term assignment.
The Credit Scoring Consultant will join a fast growing team embarking on a bold growth trajectory including working to: Release exciting new seed varieties created by our Seed Breeding and R&D Team, Launching a sector disrupting digital platform that will linking farmers across supply chains, acquiring land and doubling factory processing capacity, expanding further operations into Malawi, increasing exports and building new business lines, scaling innovative new sales and partnerships strategy, building out the Good Nature Source commodity production capacity to over 100,000 farmers, growing our leadership team and investing in talent development. Last season the team provided credit and extension services to more than 29,000 farmers and the seed produced reached more than 250,000 farmers. GNA is closing its Series B equity round.

Position Objectives:
The successful candidate will be responsible for understanding GNA’s goals and core operations related to credit. Duties and responsibilities under this consultant condition include, but are not limited to:
• Review GNA’s credit under its Seed, Source, and Asset Finance divisions,
• Meet with third party lenders including Banks, MFIs and Asset Finance providers, to understand the data and supporting conditions required for them to comfortably lend to farmers on GNA’s platform,
• Design and create a functional credit scoring tool,
• Work with the legal team to ensure that the framework, I.P and naming conventions we develop are trademarked or patented locally, regionally and/or globally,
• Develop a concurrent credit scoring questionnaire for partners that don’t yet have their data in the GNA Farmer Profile Module –
• this would ideally be a pre-integration requirement before new partners load their farmer data into the GNA platform,
• Work with the Digital Platform and Business Intelligence team on surveys and M&E frameworks to get KYC information in accordance with the lender thresholds,
• Work with the GNA Business Intelligence team to verify the credit scoring tool is accurate against historical data,
o Assist to generate one score for how well a farmer can achieve harvest/yield expectations, and.
o A second score for how likely a farmer will repay their loan.,
• Review the Zambian Credit Bureau policies and practices to ensure this tool is compatible – the system in place needs a second set of eyes to refresh what is in place. This requires working with the GNA Agronomist and Production team, as well as other external stakeholders (MoA, WFP, etc.),
• Analyze GNA’s types of partners, the roles they play and draft a tool for each of the major types (approx 3), that can quickly indicate if the partnership is likely to both succeed and be beneficial to all involved.
• Indicate which data needs to be collected and at the ideal time and formats, this includes all surveys and monitoring tools to get the KYC information, including any third party data required such as soil ratings.

Minimum Qualifications:
• A Master’s degree in economics, project management, development studies, social science, or related field; additional specialized training or certification in monitoring and evaluation is an asset.
• A minimum of 5 years of demonstrated expertise in data collection, analysis and systems and monitoring and evaluation systems development, with a preferred focus on private sector engagement, value chain and agribusiness development, capacity building, access to finance and/or Small-medium Enterprises (SMEs) and entrepreneurship strengthening.
• Experience with SME scoring, score card development, credit worthiness, and/or similar activities and interventions preferred
• A demonstrated ability to apply analytical methods practically in the complex setting in which Zambian SMEs operate is highly preferred.
• Superior and demonstrated writing, reporting, and oral presentation skills
• Fluent spoken, written, and reading abilities in English is required.
Shortlisted candidates will be asked to submit a costed technical proposal and present their technical approach, experience, and level of effort (including justification of fees) to a selection committee comprised of GNA, Zambia EDGE, and ACDI/VOCA Home Office representatives.

Work Hours: 8

Experience in Months: 60

Level of Education: Associate Degree

Job application procedure
Please submit a resume to ZambiaProcurement@ZambiaEDGE.org no later than December 31, 2022. Please include the position title in the subject line. The resume and related application documents shall be provided as a single attachment and list long-term employment history and any relevant short-term consulting work. Due to the high volume of applications we are not able to respond to inquiries via phone or email. Only shortlisted candidates considered for an interview will be contacted. ACDI/VOCA is an equal opportunity employer. Women, minorities, and people from diverse groups are encouraged to apply.



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