Institutional and Credit Assessment of Agricultural Producer Organizations

Job Description

Institutional and Credit Assessment of Agricultural Producer Organizations

Location of Assignment: Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, with possible travel to Morogoro, Iringa, and/or Mbeya.

Proposed Level of Effort: 25 days

Anticipated Start Date: September 2018

Anticipated End Date: October 2018

Background

This assignment will support a joint-initiative between the Tanzania Enabling Growth through Investment and Enterprise (ENGINE) program and NAFAKA II—both of which are four-year USAID-funded Feed the Future programs operating in Tanzania since 2016.

The ENGINE Program, implemented by the international Executive Service Corps (IESC) —aims to streamline and enhance many of the regulatory, informational and financial channels that encourage domestic and foreign investment in the mainland agricultural regions of Mbeya, Morogoro, and Iringa, as well as in Zanzibar. ENGINE’s activities are divided into three main components: improving the business enabling environment, building the capacity of businesses through business advisors, and improving access to financial services for small businesses.

NAFAKA II, implemented by ACDI/VOCA, is a follow-on to NAFAKA I, a five-year staple value chain program which ended in September 2016. The transition between the two programs focused on shifting from a production-based agricultural program to a market facilitation approach serving over 80,000 rice and/or maize producing households. NAFAKA II interventions are based on the following components: facilitating access to improved agricultural inputs; producer organizations (PO) facilitating business development services; and, improving milling/processing market facilitation.

NAFAKA and ENGINE have developed a joint activity in which a sub-set of ENGINE-trained business development service providers (BDSPs) will conduct credit and institutional capacity assessments of approximately 10 to 15 of NAFAKA’s producer organizations (POs).

As NAFAKA enters the last two years of its ten years of programming, it is undertaking a formalized credit-readiness and leadership assessment to understand how its network of supported producer organizations (POs) have used or leveraged NAFAKA’s resources to provide services to their members. These resources include trainings, extension services to farmers (through grants), executing structured trade engagements, and utilizing an increase in access to markets.

Under ENGINE’s access to credit objective, it trained a cadre of 22 BDSPs earlier in 2018 in a structured credit-readiness process. In this process BDSPs provide guidance and support to small businesses in the areas of financial literacy, credit assessment, and loan origination.

Since the credit assessment process is still relatively new for the ENGINE-trained BDSPs, ENGINE is seeking an experienced expert volunteer to work alongside these BDSPs to support them as they conduct assessments of NAFAKA’s POs.

The objective of this assignment is to support 3-5 BDSPs trained by ENGINE and selected by NAFAKA as they conduct credit and institutional assessments of approximately 10 NAFAKA-supported producer organizations. The expert volunteer will work closely with the selected ENGINE BDSPs —at first as a group, then later individually — and provide mentoring, quality assurance, guidance and ad-hoc training throughout their work to ensure that they are able to successfully accomplish the objectives of their assignment with NAFAKA.

Assignment Tasks

• Meet with selected BDSPs, review the scope of work for their assignment with NAFAKA’s POs, provide guidance and support to help them plan their approach, including finalizing the methodology and data collection tools and procedures, planning activities and organizing resources.
• Maintain close contact with each BDSP, both remotely and in-person, to monitor their progress and identify and troubleshoot any issues that arise.
• Provide quality assurance by reviewing BDSPs’ work and providing constructive feedback.

Deliverables

The expert volunteer will be responsible for the quality and timely delivery of the BDSPs’ deliverables to NAFAKA. These include:

• Credit assessment methodology (including, all relevant forms/tools);
• Institutional capacity assessment methodology (including, all relevant forms/tools);
• Summary report, including the following sections:
  • Summary of activities completed while on assignment;
  • Results and analysis of credit assessments (credit scores);
  • Results and analysis of institutional capacity assessments;
  • Back-up documentation.

In addition, the expert volunteer will be responsible for the following:

• Weekly activity reports to ENGINE management;
• Debriefing of ENGINE management upon the conclusion of the assignment;
• Summary report of activities undertaken and accomplishments achieved (template provided).

• University degree in business administration or relevant field, advanced degree preferred;
• Minimum 8 years in management consulting or similar field;
• Prior experience (3+ years preferred) conducting credit analysis;
• Experience conducting organizational capacity assessments;
• Demonstrated familiarity with agriculture and small enterprise lending;
• Experience working internationally;
• Flexibility and adaptability to cross-cultural environments;

• Self-motivated, proactive, detail-oriented, mature, professional team player, with good inter-personal skills;

• Ability to address issues, challenges, questions and concerns in a professional, respectful, logical and timely manner;
• Clear writing and communication style;

• Good computer skills in MS Office; and

• Fluent written and spoken English; Swahili language ability would be an asset.

About the Organization

The International Executive Service Corps is a Washington, DC based not-for-profit that focuses on private sector growth. We support and catalyze the development of private enterprises, business support organizations, financial institutions, and public institutions around the world. Utilizing skilled consultants and expert volunteers, we’ve implemented over 25,000 short-term projects and 200 programs in 130 countries. True to our mission — Promoting Prosperity and Stability through Private Enterprise — we’re proud to have created over one million jobs across the globe