Regional Manager at Off.Grid:Electric - Tanzania

Currently, more than 80% of Tanzanians lack access to electricity. The Regional Manager will play a key role in addressing this critical challenge by helping scale OGE’s solar energy business across Tanzania.

In this position you expected to take Offgrid-Electric business model and implement it in the new region with contextual innovation, building a network of sales agents and local distribution system. To succeed in this role you should be able to function as a mini-CEO : provide leadership and alignment with OGE goals, culture and values, manage your regional staff including hiring and promotions, oversee finances and all other aspects of regional operations.

The company will provide RMs with initial training in Arusha, logistical support during the initial stages of expansion, and ongoing feedback and mentorship.

Key Responsibilities:

• Build and lead a team of professionals, while creating a fun, hard-working, and results-oriented environment
• Design, implement, evaluate, and continuously adapt customer and agent acquisition strategies
• Develop and put into practice cost-effective distribution and inventory management processes
• Manage regional budget and lead staff to achieve regional performance targets
• Provide coaching and mentoring to staff via formal and informal feedback sessions to accelerate their professional development and improve their leadership potential
• Communicate effectively with regional and national team members to improve performance and share best practices across different geographies
• Analyze and leverage data to develop and implement strategies to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of regional operations

Desired Skills and Experience

Required Skills & Experiences:

• Commitment to live and work in Tanzania (different regions)
• 4-6 years overall work experience
• 2+ years of direct management experience, including people and operations
• Prior work experience in East Africa or another emerging market
• Bachelors degree in a relevant field with a record of strong academic performance
• Demonstrated interest in entrepreneurship, including the ability to flourish in dynamic, ambiguous environments and to drive work independently
• Experience working in a high-pressure work setting
• Desire to coach and mentor others
• Willingness to work a variety of hours as business demands, including late nights, weekends, and holidays

Highly Desired Skills & Experiences:

• Masters level degree preferred
• Bilingual English and Swahili
• Education and/or work experience in renewable energy or energy access programs
• Interest in long-term career development through possible assignments in multiple countries
• Ambition to build the most successful solar company in East Africa

Tanzanian nationals prefered.

Please submit CV and cover letter to james.sawabini@offgrid-electric.com

In the cover letter, please write a short essay (300 words or less) answering the following questions.

1.   Why you want to work with Off.Grid:Electric.

2.  What was your biggest professional challenge and how did you overcome it?

Only candidates selected for an interview will be contacted.

Please note:

--Experience in energy is not a prerequisite

--Expertise in engineering is not relevant to this position

Finance Officer (Global Partnership for Education) - The World Bank

Established in 2002, the Global Partnership for Education ("Global Partnership" or GPE), formerly the Education for All Fast Track Initiative, has grown and evolved to become the premier partnership focused on basic education in developing countries. Its members include 59 of the world's poorest developing countries, over 30 bilateral, regional, and multilateral agencies; development banks; the private sector; civil society groups; and teachers organizations. The Board of Directors is the Global Partnership's governing body, sets its policies and strategies and approves all funding.

The mission of the Global Partnership is to galvanize and coordinate a global effort to deliver a good quality education to all children, prioritizing the poorest and most vulnerable. To that end, the Global Partnership helps its member countries to build and implement sound education sector plans and has allocated approximately $4.1 billion in education grants to date. The Global Partnership mobilizes international financing and promotes/ efficient use of international and national resources to support developing countries' education goals and sector strategies.

With about 78 staff, the GPE Secretariat is hosted by the World Bank in Washington, D.C. As a consequence of the partnership taking a greater leadership role in achieving international development goals in education, the Secretariat is developing its capacity to support country-level processes and to meet expectations from the partnership’s stakeholders to achieve concrete results and education outcomes for children in developing countries.

 

Duties and Accountabilities:

The position reports to the Senior Financial Officer within the Operations group of the secretariat.  The position has the following responsibilities:

1. Support the quality assurance process for GPE grants with particular emphasis on the fiduciary aspects of the process. More specifically:

• Reviews grant proposal documentation and under the guidance of the Sr. Financial Management Specialist;
• Engages with relevant partners to ensure that fiduciary risk has been appropriately addressed; and
• Ensures that the grant budget is consistent with the grant targets, that the budget is reasonable, and implementable in the time frame proposed.

2. Responsible for monitoring financial performance and compliance of GPE funded programs. More specifically:

• Ensures that financial reporting requirements related to GPE grants are complied with;
• Reviews relevant reports (implementation status reports, audit reports, annual reports etc.) for overall portfolio monitoring and analysis;
• Analyzes progress on grants and identify at risk grants; and
• Engages with relevant stakeholders under the guidance of the Sr. Financial Management Specialist and in coordination with relevant Secretariat teams, to diagnose the issues and support corrective action.

3. Conducts financial analysis of GPE funded programs. More specifically:

• Develops a database on unit costs of common GPE activities and identifies and explains trends and discrepancies;
• Works with other internal and external stakeholders as appropriate to benchmark costs of GPE funded programs (particularly overhead costs); and
• Performs ad hoc analysis of GPE grants and portfolio to support internal and external stakeholder queries.

4. The Finance Officer will also support the meetings and work of other team members, and participate in Secretariat-wide activities in support of other teams as necessary.

 

Desired skills and experience

• Master's degree in a relevant finance discipline, or professional accounting qualification combined with a bachelor’s degree in a relevant finance discipline is acceptable 
• At least 5 years’ prior relevant experience working in the field of financial management (public financial management, auditing, consulting etc.).
• Experience in the education sector is preferable
• At least 3 years relevant work experience in international development
• Experience in budget review and financial analysis of grants essential
• Knowledge and experience of working with multi-lateral and bilateral agencies, International NGOs, and developing country partner governments is highly desired
• Familiarity with cross-cultural dynamics, and good negotiation skills
• Willingness to work in a complex environment and travel occasionally
• Ability to work under pressure
• Ability to function in a flexible manner, where persuasion and facilitation skills are strongly valued
• Excellent communication skills in English and French, both written and verbal
• Strong knowledge of and commitment to the principles of the Global Partnership for Education

For further details and to apply, please go to www.worldbank.org/careers and under “current job openings” seek vacancy number 150062. Deadline for applications is February 13, 2015

Finance Officer - The World Bank

The Chief Risk Officer (CRO) Vice Presidency of the World Bank is the core unit responsible for institutional risk oversight, including establishment and monitoring adherence to risk policies and guidelines and risk assessment and reporting to the Board and executive management.

The Market & Counterparty Risk Directorate focuses on oversight of risk in two areas:

I. Market Risk, which covers ALM, interest rate, spread (funding and investments) and FX risk, and the availability/cost of or access to ready liquidity and long-term funding, and

II. Commercial (i.e. not sovereign lending) Credit Risk, which includes risks to IBRD resulting from changes in creditworthiness of IBRD’s commercial counterparties.

Responsibilities for both areas focus on three sub-functions:

1. Risk Control Guidelines: Establishing and maintaining robust risk control guidelines (including setting limits) governing IBRD’s investment management, borrowings and derivatives, consistent with the institution’s financial policies and risk tolerances;

2. Risk Monitoring and Compliance: Identifying and measuring IBRD’s market and counterparty risks; Assessing risk associated with new strategies, initiatives and transactions; Ensuring compliance with financial policies and risk control guidelines; Managing the process of resolving exceptions where required

3. Reporting: Providing executive management and the Board with regular risk oversight reports. Providing the enterprise’s thought leadership on risk issues and relevant industry, regulatory and legal developments.

Duties and Accountabilities:

The position of Finance Officer will be part of the quantitative analytics team and will report to the Manager – Market Risk unit under the Market & Counterparty Risk Directorate in Washington DC. Specific accountabilities will include the following:

• Lead all maintenance, design and development for the risk database.

• Oversee running and of key data-driven analytics as well diagnostic activities to troubleshoot and explain results.

• Act as group expert regarding internal position and pricing data as well as external market data.

• Develop data analysis processes and capabilities to support high level quarterly and monthly management reporting on risk and risk attribution, including sensitivity analyses.

• Develop complex program models to extract data and use databases to provide statistical and financial modeling. Perform project work on automation and data capture initiatives.

• Perform daily/monthly/quarterly market risk reporting, limits monitoring, trend analysis. Research and report on key changes.

• Research and follow up on queries regarding portfolio risk and risk factors including portfolio composition, market changes and changes to analytical method

Desired Skills and Experience

• 5 years’ work experience in Market Risk or trading/capital markets quantitative analysis environment.

• Advanced degree in financial engineering or other equivalent technical specialty

• Knowledge of fixed income products and markets, including derivatives.

• Knowledge of Greeks, risk measures, sensitivities and VAR.

• Strong quantitative, analytic and reasoning skills.

• Strong (minimum 3 years’ experience) object oriented design and programming skills in C#, Java or C++.

• Strong knowledge and hands-on experience with relational databases as well as the SQL Language.

• Solid MS Excel skills and knowledge of a statistical programing language like R or Matlab.

• Experience with data mining and MIS reporting.

• Strong communications skills.

For further details and to apply, please go to www.worldbank.org/careers and under “current job openings” seek vacancy number 150070. Deadline for applications is February 8, 2015.