Job Description
UNCDF’s expertise is in three primary areas of work: (1) development and financing of inclusive digital economies through a market development approach, largely driven by digital finance and innovation; (2) local development finance through fiscal decentralization (including local climate adaptation finance), municipal finance and structured project finance, to drive market transformation in local economic development; and (3) investment finance, to drive capital accumulation and market transformation in financially underserved areas, including investment sourcing, due diligence, de-risking, deployment of loans and guarantees, and crowding in of investment capital from domestic and international investors. Women’s and youth’s economic empowerment are specifically articulated across all UNCDF work in terms of objectives, approaches, theory of change, targets, and indicators.
UNCDF uses a combination of grant, reimbursable grant, loans, guarantees and technical assistance to support early stage businesses, SMEs, projects, microfinance institutions and municipal investments. Up till today UNCDF’s use of loans and guarantees has been growing and there is now an even higher ambition to make better and wider use of these financial instruments. UNCDF has also seen a strong increase in demand for its loan and guarantee services from other UN agencies, not least UNDP. UNCDF’s investment activity is structured around on-balance-sheet catalytic investments and off-balance-sheet third party managed funds, for which UNCDF sources pipeline aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), primarily in LDCs. In response to the need to deploy different kind of risk tolerant capital, a blended finance impact fund was launched by Bamboo Capital Partners, as the result of a joint initiative between UNCDF and this private asset manager. The fund, called BUILD, is able to provide finance to an additional set of potential investees coming from UNCDF and the wider UN system.
About the LDC Investment Platform:
UNCDF’s LDC Investment Platform (LDCIP) serves as UNCDF’s center of excellence on innovative development finance by creating the conditions for investment viability in financially underserved areas, in the LDCs. The aim of the LDCIP is to be part of a system that (a) demonstrates to domestic and international investors that LDC markets can and do generate returns, provide opportunities for successful investment, and merit the attention of a wider range of investors and that (b) uses those demonstration effects to support policy and regulatory improvements which will help the scale up of investment activities.
The LDC Investment Platform (LDCIP) team reports directly to the Executive Secretary. It supports UNCDF’s two thematic practices (Inclusive Digital Economies and Local Transformative Finance) as well as agencies from the wider UN system on issues related to investment finance and innovative SDG financing.
The LDCIP team in New York now consists of eight people. Three investment specialists are focused on transactional work. One team member manages the Technical Assistance provided to prospects and investees in the form of pre- and post-investment business advisory services. The New York team is completed by one person responsible for Portfolio Management, a Programme Associate, a Deputy Director and a Director leading the work.
LDCIP has also established a country-based network of four investment specialists to identify opportunities for financial intermediation in left behind areas, and to respond to immediate and latent demand for support within the UN Country Teams (UNCTs). UNCDF aims to ensure that its investment and finance capacities contribute to development efforts of the wider UN Development System (UNDS) and contribute to strengthening overall enabling environments that make countries more attractive to private investors. Investment Specialists will provide the needed support at country level to innovate finance solutions in support of the full range of SDGs by assisting interested UN Country Team members to identify viable entry points to support impactful public/private coalitions, particularly where other actors may lack the knowledge and capacity to “cross-walk” to the private sector, particularly the investment community.
II. Scope of Work Under the supervision of the Deputy Director of the LDC Investment Platform Team, and in close collaboration with other colleagues in the LDCIP Team, the Southern Africa Investment Specialist will contribute to the deployment of capital from UNCDF’s suite of financing solutions in the region, while supporting interested UN Country Teams on issues related to SDG Investment Finance.
Summary of key functions:
- Sourcing and Screening of Investment Opportunities.
- Due diligence and capital deployment.
- Matchmaking with commercial capital and structuring.
- Support to RCs/UNCTs and UNDS member entities.
- Advocacy and knowledge management
Detailed Description of Job Roles and Responsibilities
- Sourcing and Screening of investment opportunities
- Work with a range of UN agencies (including UNCDF) and other development partners in different countries of the Southern Africa region to identify innovative revenue-generating projects across their programmatic operations that require additional investment to grow and have a greater impact.
- If and where needed, initiate new specific sourcing activities such as requests for proposals, challenge funds, market scans, etc..
- Due Diligence and Capital Deployment
- Ensure capital deployment in the Southern Africa region from the following financing vehicles (by order of priority): BUILD Malawi, BUILD Global, BRIDGE Facility
- Assess company financial statements and projections (balance sheet, income statement and cash flow analysis) of the prospective investee
- Conduct onsite and virtual due diligence of the investment opportunity, including company, industry and country analysis, and prepare the required documentation.
- Draft investment notes and memorandums during the various stages of the investment process.
- Matchmaking with commercial capital and Structuring
- Develop a network of potential financiers, beyond the traditional financiers, to increase the fundraising potential of different UN agencies for revenue generating investment opportunities.
- Support selected prospects to access additional commercial funds by matchmaking them with a variety of financiers, such as domestic investors, local commercial banks, international impact investors, and Development Finance Institutions (DFIs
- Help structuring innovative transactions to enable investees to access adequate volume and quality of capital.
- If and when needed, provide selected pre-investment business advisory support to prospects that show strong commercial and impact promise but are still not considered “investment ready” by investors. This may include support in drafting business plans, support the building of financial models, helping initiate feasibility assessments, etc.
- Support to RCs/UNCTs and UNDS member entities
- Promote UNCDF’s investment mandate and services to RCs/UNCTs in the Southern Africa region by providing training, informational sessions and ad’hoc support.
- Work with interested UNDS member entitities to craft, design, and implement innovative SDG finance initiatives that leverage blended finance and UNCDF’s investment capacity to attract additional private capital
- Advocacy and knowledge management
- Contribute to adopting approaches to ensure that the lessons learned from the transactional work are captured and disseminated. Document and share lessons learned from the transactional work to inform investors, government officials, DFIs, and development partners.
- Support UN Country Team members, in convenings, events, advocacy, communication, planning, and analysis related to strategic financing and investment for the SDGs
IV. Institutional Arrangement
The Southern Africa Investment Specialist will be directly reporting to the Deputy Director of the LDCIP Unit and the Programme Manager of the InvestmentAdvisory Initiative.
Core competencies
Achieve Results: LEVEL 3: Set and align challenging, achievable objectives for multiple projects, have lasting impact.
Think Innovatively: LEVEL 3: Proactively mitigate potential risks, develop new ideas to solve complex problems.
Learn continuously: LEVEL 3: Create and act on opportunities to expand horizons, diversify experiences.
Adapt with Agility: LEVEL 3: Proactively initiate and champion change, manage multiple competing demands
Act with determination: LEVEL 3: Think beyond immediate task/barriers and take action to achieve greater results.
Engage and Partner: LEVEL 3: Political savvy, navigate complex landscape, champion inter-agency collaboration.
Enable Diversity and Inclusion: LEVEL 3: Appreciate benefits of diverse workforce and champion inclusivity.
Cross-functional and Technical competencies
Thematic Area Name Definition
Business Direction & Strategy – Business Acumen
- Ability to understand and deal with a business situation in a manner that is likely to lead to a good outcome. Knowledge and understanding of the operational frameworks in the organization and ability to make good judgments and quick decisions within such frameworks.
Business Direction & Strategy – Effective Decision Making
- Ability to take decisions in a timely and efficient manner in line with one’s authority, area of expertise and resources.
Business Direction & Strategy – Negotiation and Influence
- Ability to reach an understanding, persuade others, resolve points of difference, gain advantage in the outcome of dialogue, negotiates mutually acceptable solutions through compromise and creates “win-win” situations.
Business Development Knowledge Generation
- Ability to research and turn information into useful knowledge, relevant for context, or responsive to a stated need.
Business management – Project Management
- Ability to plan, organize, prioritize and control resources, procedures and protocols to achieve specific goals.
Business Management – Partnerships Management
- Ability to build and maintain partnerships with wide networks of stakeholders, Governments, civil society and private sector partners, experts and others in line with UNDP strategy and policies.
Business Management – Risk Management
- Ability to identify and organize action around mitigating and proactively managing risks.
Business Management – Monitoring
- Ability to provide managers and key stakeholders with regular feedback on the consistency or discrepancy between planned and actual activities and programme performance and results
Business Management – Customer Satisfaction/Client Management
- Ability to respond timely and appropriately with a sense of urgency, provide consistent solutions, and deliver timely and quality results and/or solutions to fulfil and understand the real customers’ needs. Provide inputs to the development of customer service strategy. Look for ways to add value beyond clients’ immediate requests. Ability to anticipate client’s upcoming needs and concerns.
Design thinking – Design thinking
- Solving problems by putting people at the centre, visualising ideas and making them tangible in order to improve them through and iterative process of developing and testing.
- Strong empathy skills, being able to put yourself “in someone else’s shoes”, understand needs, abilities, preferences, motivations, (everyday) experiences from different perspectives as well as their cultural, social, economical and political contexts. Ability to identify and challenge assumptions, (cognitive and social) biases and dominant mental models by generating new perspectives and frames that help redefine the problem, solution and opportunity space.
- Being able to work with incomplete information, ambiguity and opposing views, needs and constraints and synthesise them into solutions that are viable, technically feasible and useful.
Partnership Management – Relationship Management
- Ability to engage with a wide range of public and private partners, build, sustain and/or strengthen working relations, trust and mutual understanding.
2030 Agenda: Partnership – SDG Finance
- Impact Investment, incl. SDG Impact Finance
2030 Agenda: Engagement & Effectiveness – SDG Integration
- SDG Monitoring and Reporting.
- Responsive investment and impact measurement.
- Master’s Degree in Economics, Finance, or Business Administration or Bachelor’s degree in the relevant field with 2 additional years of relevant experience in lieu of Master’s Degree will be taken in to consideration.
- Minimum 7 years (Master’s degree) or 9 years (Bachelor’s degree) relevant work experience in either the financial sector or the private sector or a mix, preferably with investment and/or business management expertise.
- Experience working in venture capital and/or banking within an international financial environment, preferably in development finance institution, impact investor or similar, is highly preferable.
- Experience in private credit and/or equity for investments with a social mission in emerging/frontier markets, is highly preferable.
- Experience in project preparation and/or in development of investment opportunities, especially for investment projects with social objective in developing countries.
- Experience from fund management, preferably a fund with both financial and impact targets.
Additional/Substantive Work-Experience in any one or more of the below-mentioned investment/operational work-areas is considered highly preferable.
- SME finance, preferably in the agribusiness and/or clean energy and/or the digital space.
- Project finance, especially for projects structured as Public Private Partnership.
- Managing Guarantee instruments and their application to different types of financial structures and to different financial institutions.
- Investment in financial institutions, preferably in frontier markets
- Advocacy work, promoting business environments
Required skills
- Communication and relationship management (Ability to listen, adapt, persuade and transform): synthesizes information to communicate independent analysis.
- Report Writing: Ability to prepare quality reports.
Desired skills in addition to the competencies covered in the Competencies section
Further, the interested applicants should be to demonstrate:
- Active interest in investing in developing countries and understanding of emerging market environments, opportunities and barriers to investing
- Strong knowledge of financial markets and financing for sustainable development, with ability to apply it to strategic and/or practical situations.
- Full familiarity with a range of debt and equity instruments.
- Competency with financial modeling and analysis in Microsoft excel.
- Ability to work in a multicultural environment, with a willingness to travel
- Computer literacy, including proficient use of research and applied software.
Required Language(s)
- Full working proficiency in English is required;
- Working proficiency in French will be considered a distinct advantage.
- Knowledge of any other local/regional languages knowledge will be considered an asset.
Professional Certificates
- Project Management Professional (PMP) or equivalent is an asset.
VII. The following documents shall be required from the applicants:
- a) Personal CV or P11, indicating all past positions held and their main underlying functions, their durations (month/year), the qualifications, as well as the contact details (email and telephone number) of the Candidate, and at least three (3) the most recent professional references of previous supervisors. References may also include peers.
b) A cover letter (maximum length: 1 page) indicating why the candidate considers him-/herself to be suitable for the position.
c) Managers may ask (ad hoc) for any other materials relevant to pre-assessing the relevance of their experience, such as reports, presentations, publications, campaigns or other materials.
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