Financial Inclusion Officer - Moroto

About Mercy Corps

Mercy Corps is a leading global organization powered by the belief that a better world is possible. In disaster, in hardship, in more than 40 countries around the world, we partner to put bold solutions into action — helping people triumph over adversity and build stronger communities from within. Now, and for the future.

We help people overcome poverty and conflict. Working with communities, we leverage local logic to help people transform their lives. To grow more food, earn higher incomes and ultimately advocate for their needs. We see global challenges as an invitation to pioneer innovative, sustainable solutions. During our 34-year history, our work has improved more than 170 million lives in more than 115 countries around the world.

Program / Department Summary

Mercy Corps is currently implementing a five-year $41 million USAID Food for Peace Activity – called “Apolou” - to support agriculturalists, agro-pastoralists, and pastoralist households living across the four districts of Amudat, Kotido, Kaabong and Moroto in Karamoja. Apolou is an integrated food security program. The goal of the Activity is to achieve a food secure future in the Karamoja sub-region of Uganda through community level governance, preventing chronic malnutrition, sanitation and hygiene and sustainable livelihoods.

 Program 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 Financial Inclusion Officer will be responsible for the implementation 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 agro-input and commodity marketing. The Financial Inclusion Officer will implement and support access to improved financial services (SILC) layering while ensuring that the program deliverables are achieved. The Financial Inclusion Officer will work directly with the Economic and Financial Services Team Leader to develop agent input/output and aggregator networks, increasing local partners’ access to market information and financial services. The Officer will ensure that private sector led, project-support development is tailored to the unique needs, opportunities and constraints of women and youth and that activities are integrated with all other consortium supported sectors.

 

Essential Job Responsibilities:

Strategy & Vision

• Support the Financial Inclusion Team Leader to develop and implement team strategy
• Identify new opportunities for innovation and growth among private sector led interventions

 Program Management

• Build the capacity of, and continuously mentor the Field Agents (FAs) and Private Service Providers (PSPs) to continue offering quality financial services to the SILC/community groups
• Support linkages of SILC groups to formal financial institutions (FIs) to access more tailor-made financial products and services.
• Link the PSPs to formal financial institutions so that they (PSPs) can become the agents or outreach points for the FIs
• Support SILC group attain legal status by registering at the district level.
• Support SILC groups in developing their business plans for investment purpose.
• Foster ongoing positive cooperation with relevant stakeholders including FIs and the local government to identify, assess and develop networks for potential linkages between financial market actors and consumers.
• Work closely with the livestock, Agronomy and Economic Empowerment subsectors to advance the goals and objectives of the Livelihoods (purpose four- P4) sectors.
• Support the creation and registration of the private service provider network at the district and field agent certification/ graduation to scale up SILC in the program area as guided by the supervisor
• Respond to queries, when necessary, by ensuring that the community accountability response mechanism (CARM) is functional and individual complaints are addressed.
• Organize and support follow up meetings with key stakeholders in the program intervention areas.
• Ensure Financial Inclusion activities are gender and youth sensitive with a focus on building resilience in vulnerable populations
• Support PSPs and FAs in layering SILC across other Apolou platforms.
• Represent the FI/P4 sector when and as requested in any community events.

Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning

• Provide data in support of the team’s submission of timely monthly and quarterly reports, strategic reviews, annual reports and midterm evaluations that will be indicative of program progress during implementation.
• Collect data about all groups working with the financial inclusion intervention and work with MEL team to update CommCare with up-to-date group data.

Influence & Representation

• Ensure close coordination and sharing of information with relevant stakeholders such as local government authorities, financial service providers and NGOs as and when advised by the line manager.
• Liaise with local government officials, local NGOs and civil society organizations, and other key stakeholders to ensure support for and acceptance of Mercy Corps’ market-based interventions.
• Coordination with District Implementation Team
• Build the capacity of the members of the implementation team on Financial Inclusion (FI) sector through orientations, one on one discussions and demonstrating in the field.
• Support the district implementation team to plan the intervention that is related to the Financial Inclusion.
• 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 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 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 Finance, Compliance AND Operations Management
• Ensure compliance with donor and Mercy Corps regulations related to financial inclusion
• Generate activity scopes of work for review by team leader

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 Mercy Corps Uganda’s 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 the program as well as themselves.

 Supervisory Responsibility: None.

 Accountability to Beneficiaries: Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts towards 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 programs.

 Reports Directly to: Senior Financial Inclusion Officer

Works Directly with: MEL Department, District Implementation team, Gender and Youth, Finance and Operations, FSPs. 

 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.

Knowledge and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Microfinance, social sciences, development studies, Business Administration, Commerce, Economics and Agri business.
• Experience of at least two (2) year working with communities to improve their livelihoods through savings and loan associations, micro enterprise grants, business linkages, market systems development etc is desirable.
• The candidate must possess good mobilization skills, excellent teamwork abilities and interpersonal skills.
• Demonstrated strong theoretical and applied knowledge of livelihood, Financial Inclusion, and market systems development programming
• Experience working with financial institutions such as MFIs and banks is an added advantage.
• Must be able to work independently while being a strong team player
• Experience of working effectively with private and public sectors, INGO, and NGO partners.
• Knowledge of the Nga’karimojong language is an added advantage.
• Computer literacy with knowledge of Microsoft office applications.
• Excellent attention to detail and ability to complete tasks in a timely manner.
• Demonstrated flexibility, creativity, and enthusiasm as well as a willingness to learn and to be continually adaptive within a dynamic and often self-directed working environment mandatory.
• Proactive, problem-solving action orientation is essential.
• Possession of a valid driving permit class A and willingness to ride is a must.

Success Factors

• The success of the Financial Inclusion Officer is measured by the ability to effectively implement a light touch market system strategy,
• The capacity of the officer to positively collaborate across teams, ensuring that financial inclusion interventions are relevant, and gender and youth inclusive.
• The extent to which the FI approaches are layered onto other Apolou interventions that are implementing through group strategies.

Closing for applications: January 28th 2022