Program / Department Summary

The $41 million USAID Food for Peace Activity (Apolou) and the $5 million USAID Resilience Challenge Fund (RCF) Activity support agriculturalists, agro-pastoralists, and pastoralist households living across the districts of Amudat, Kotido, Kaabong, Karenga, and Moroto in Karamoja. Apolou is implemented by a consortium of actors led by Mercy Corps, including Save the Children, Whave Solutions, four local partners (KAPDA, NARWOA and Riam Riam) and Tufts University’s Feinstein International Centre (FIC). Apolou’s goal is to “improve the overall food and nutrition security of vulnerable households in Kaabong, Kotido, Moroto and Amudat districts within the Karamoja region,” and has major 4 objectives as follows:

1. Inclusive and effective governance contributes to food and nutrition security
2. Adolescent girls, Pregnant and Lactating Women, and Children under 5 are nutritionally secure
3. Reduced incidences of WASH related diseases
4. Improved livelihoods and income support household food security

The RCF program works in the districts of Kaabong and Amudat, with the goal to “Improve the veterinary governance and increase public and private investment in disease prevention, surveillance, control and response systems to strengthen productive assets for improved resilience in Karamoja.” RCF has the following objectives:

1. Increased domestic resource allocation into animal health services in Karamoja
2. Central and local government develop animal health services capacity-strengthening plan for the Karamoja region
3. Disease control plan for economically prioritized diseases (PPR and FMD) developed and implemented
4. Private sector animal health development strategy developed and rolled out

 General Position Summary

The Senior Financial Inclusion Officer (SFIO) will be responsible for the coordination of a Market Systems based pro-poor economic initiatives program that is primarily focusing on strengthening service and product delivery across all the Purpose 4 sectors of financial inclusion, business enabling environment, livestock inputs and marketing, and ag-input and commodity marketing. The Senior Financial Inclusion Officer will coordinate and technically support financial access (SILC) layering and related activities while ensuring that the programs are on time, on scope and on budget. The SFIO promotes a culture of constant program improvement, mentor the program team, integrate monitoring and evaluation into program activities and ensure the delivery of high-quality program that delivers impact. She/he also identifies opportunities to operationalize recommendations from ongoing context market analyses.

Essential Job Responsibilities

STRATEGY & VISION

• Develop the strategy for and subsequently implement innovative actions for market systems development, both in building the capacity of local business actors, crowding in additional actors, and ensuring an enabling environment for pro-poor business growth in Karamoja
• Actively advance Mercy Corp’s connections to financial market actors at local and regional level, seeking avenues for partnership, collaboration and coordination of activities.
• Provide strategic and technical guidance for the program leadership, team members and partners on implementation of the financial inclusion related intervention strategies;

 PROGRAM MANAGEMENT

• Identify and analyze systemic constraints and opportunities within and between the value chains, and propose appropriate market driven interventions to address the gaps and barriers in financial inclusion.
• Participate in designing and conducting market awareness-raising campaigns and undertake market assessments and research that will inform the scale-up strategy in Karamoja.
• Use an adaptive management approach to continuously reflect on financial inclusion progress and integration with overall consortium, ensuring active learning and course correction where strategies and coordination are falling short.
• Support in establishing and overseeing the effective monitoring and evaluation of Financial Inclusion activities, compiling weekly, monthly, quarterly reports and any other required reports and contributing to required indicator tracking
• Ensure Financial Inclusion activities are gender and youth sensitive with a focus on building resilience in vulnerable populations
• Scanning the market environment to tap financial inclusion opportunities that may benefit the active grouped participants
• Provide technical input and participate in PREP and DIP preparation, regular ATT updating and during proposal writing.

 Gender and Youth Integration

• Ensure that program activities apply gender equity and youth empowerment principles, and meet the varying needs of men and boys; women and girls; and other vulnerable groups

 Team Management

• Directly supervise team of financial inclusion Officers, mentoring the team in order to build technical capacity and ensure best practice in implementation as well as adherence to Mercy Corps’ internal policies and procedures.
• Promote accountability, communicate expectations and provide constructive feedback informally and formally via regular one on ones and performance reviews.
• Create and sustain a work environment of mutual respect where team members strive to achieve excellence
• Support capacity development initiatives for project team members through trainings, mentoring and coaching to ensure there is a cohesive understanding of Financial Inclusion and market facilitation implementation approaches
• Liaise with Managers, Team Leaders and Senior Officers to ensure consortium is integrated in approach, on-scope, on-time and on-budget.
• Ensure that the team handles the assigned assets properly

Monitoring and Evaluation

• Guide program team and work with M&E staff to develop, document and implement adaptive management practices that lead to improved quality and responsive implementation
• Work with program and M&E staff to ensure high quality measurement on key performance indicators for Financial Inclusion.
• Update the sector activity trackers ( ATT) and WBS as required by the Apolou reporting timelines

 Finance and compliance  

• Ensure compliance with donor and Mercy Corps regulations related to Financial Inclusion Activities
• Develop FI team budgets, ensure adherence to MC Uganda Field Finance Manual and Field Procurement Manual for all FI activities, and oversee implementation of key budget lines
• Timely submission of monthly sector financial projections
• Review all the SoW for accuracy before submission for approval
• Review and approve timesheets for Financial Inclusion Officers under your supervision.

Influence and Representation  

• Represent Mercy Corps’ approach at key government, coordination and advocacy platforms.
• Identify and engage with technical, private and public sector partnerships needed to execute program strategies and support the growth and formalization of partnership arrangements as necessary
• Conduct himself/herself both professionally and personally in such a manner as to bring credit to Mercy Corps and to not jeopardize its humanitarian mission
• Collaborate with all potential financial inclusion partners towards enhancing sustainability and self-reliance of participants through linkages.

Coordination with District Implementation Team

• Build the capacity of the members of the implementation team on their particular sector through orientations, one on one discussions and demonstrating in the field.
• The district implementation team after conducting a needs assessment will decide an intervention to be layered. The district implementation team will require support in developing a sector specific plan for a particular community. The member of the technical team will support the district team to plan the intervention that is related to the particular sector and purpose.
• The district implementation team member will mobilize the extension service agents which will go on to mobilize the community groups to provide the services to conduct the activity in the field. The member of the technical team will coordinate with the district implementation team to conduct the activities in the field.
• The technical team member will monitor the activities conducted in the field and provide feedback to the technical extension service agents to improve the quality of implementation of activities.
• The technical team member will meet quarterly with the district implementation team to review the activities conducted in the field and reflect with the team to understand how the quality of implementation of activities would be improved.
• Collaborate with the MEL team on the design and implementation of the Apolou CLA/Learning Agenda

 Ethics and Integrity

All Mercy Corps staff are expected to behave ethically and demonstrate highest integrity in their professional and personal life. Mercy Corps has zero tolerance to any form of fraud, corruption, abuse, harassment or exploitation. Any breach of our policies or misconduct will lead to disciplinary action or may lead to termination

Security

• Ensure data protection policies are adhered to, establishing security controls for software, hardware and archive beneficiary databases
• Ensure compliance with security procedures and policies as determined by country leadership.
• Proactively ensure that team members operate in a secure environment and are aware of policies.

ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING 

As part of our commitment to organizational learning and in support of our understanding that learning organizations are more effective, efficient and relevant to the communities they serve, we expect all team members to commit 5% of their time to learning activities that benefit Mercy Corps as well as themselves.

 ACCOUNTABILITY TO PROGRAM PARTICIPANTS.

• Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically
  to our beneficiaries and to international standards guiding international relief and development work, while actively engaging beneficiary communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects.
• Sensitize communities on Apolou’s CARM system and encourage them to share feedback through the promoted channels

Other:

• Conduct himself/herself both professionally and personally in such a manner as to bring credit to Mercy Corps and to not jeopardize its humanitarian mission
• Other duties assigned

 Supervisory Responsibility

The Senior Financial Inclusion Officer is responsible for supervision of the Financial Inclusion Officers

 Accountability

Reports Directly To: Economic and Financial Services Team Leader

Works Directly With:  District Implementation Team, Technical Team, Gender and Youth Team, MEL and other Mercy Corps program, finance and operations staff

Knowledge and Experience

• At least 3 years of practical field experience implementing Financial Inclusion related projects; preferably in Uganda
• Bachelor’s Degree in Arts, Business Administration, Commerce or equivalent in economics, agri-business, rural development and a relevant field; an advanced degree is preferred
• Demonstrated strong theoretical and applied knowledge of livelihood, Financial Inclusion and market systems development programming
• Previous experience of working in insecure environments and applying market based approaches in fragile contexts (ideally including experience in an emergency response).
• Strong writing and report development skills
• Experience coordinating and leading partners and stakeholders
• Prior experience in developing partnership with both private and public actors as part of program implementation in achieving projects desired goals
• Experience in working with financial inclusion institutions like SACCOs and banks
• Experience supervising staff and ability to work with a consortium programming staff
• Must be able to work independently while being a strong team player
• History of working effectively with private sectors, INGO and NGO partners;
• Demonstrated ability to work in complex programming and volatile environments;
• Oral and written English skills required.

 Success Factors

•      The success of the Senior Financial Inclusion Officer will be measured on the degree to which he/she shall promote pro-poor private sector growth in Karamoja using a light touch approach designed to encourage sustainability and reduce dependency, both of business partners and community beneficiaries.
• The second success factor will be the degree to which the Senior Financial Inclusion Officer is able to effectively integrate with other sectors in order to maximize impact.
• The number of financial institutions partnering with Apolou to serve communities and number of active PSPs at the exit of Apolou and the successful digitalization of financial services in Karamoja.