Associate, Product

Aceli Africa is a donor-funded, data-driven agribusiness market incentive facility with a mandate to mobilize $1.5 billion in private sector lending for agricultural SMEs in Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia by 2029. To achieve this goal, Aceli offers financial incentives to increase the risk appetite of 40+ global and local financial institutions to make loans ranging from USD $15K-$1.75M to inclusive agricultural SMEs. Financial incentives (Portfolio First Loss Cover and Origination Incentives) have been designed based on an original dataset that Aceli gathered and analyzed in collaboration with Dalberg Advisors. Aceli also facilitates technical assistance to expand the ability of high-potential SMEs to qualify for and manage financing as well as capacity building for lenders to serve this market. Aceli’s vision is to catalyze a more competitive lending market for agri-SMEs and demonstrate a model that can be scaled across Africa. 

Since launching in September 2020, Aceli has supported its financial institution partners in making 2,800+ loans to SMEs creating market linkages for over 1Million smallholder farmers. Leading bilateral and philanthropic donors, including Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Global Affairs Canada, IKEA Foundation, Norwegian Agency for Development, Swiss Development Corporation, UK FCDO, and USAID, have committed over $93 million to Aceli for 2020-29.

The role will report to the Manager, Product and is a full-time position with Aceli Kenya, a Company Limited by Guarantee registered under Kenyan law, and affiliated with Aceli Africa, a US nonprofit entity.

Incentives are Aceli’s primary “product” offering and are used to unlock increased private sector lending to agricultural SMEs. The Product team plays a critical role within the organization and consists of two functions: a product design function, which is responsible for market research and incentive adjustment calibration; and a product operations function, which oversees loan reviews, incentive payments, and data. Across these two functions, the team: oversees information-gathering to help Aceli assess if its product is well calibrated to the market; provides input into the design of the incentive program, alongside other senior leaders within the organization; manages the rollout of adjustments to the program; ensures that loans submitted by lenders are aligned with Aceli’s guidelines; and manages incentive payouts to lenders.

The role holder will support the product design function. Specifically, the role holder will support the Manager, Product across various workstreams: our annual benchmarking exercise, which is an extensive, data-heavy market research piece conducted with Aceli’s lending partners; as well as our annual audit, incentive budget modeling, incentive adjustment design, roll-out, and monitoring. This individual will also be involved in developing web-based dashboards for internal and external use.

Key responsibilities:

• Support in multi-month process for Aceli’s annual benchmarking and annual audit: data collection with lenders, data cleaning and data analysis
• (Related to the above) Support in the internal synthesis / distillation of the findings from the annual benchmarking exercise. This may include PowerPoint design, drafting of memos, etc. intended for public-facing audiences
• Support the incentives product design / adjustment process – from helping with putting the evidence together, modeling/estimating the impact of potential changes, and working with multiple teams within Aceli and with lenders to implement these
• Support and ultimately manage ad-hoc data / analysis projects with lenders – for example, investigating the performance of one aspect of our incentive program with a subset of lenders
• Support in the annual incentive budgeting process – collating and doing the first cut of the analysis, providing input and helping to sense-check the assumptions and outputs of the model
• Develop and maintain data dashboards built on PowerBI for internal and external use.
• Support the CEO, MD, and Executive Office in running special analyses for internal and external communications – including for periodic reports to the Board, Steering Committee, as well as current and prospective funders.

• Minimum of four years of work experience, with at least two years in a management/strategy consulting firm, with demonstrated upward mobility during your tenure
• Excellent PowerPoint development skills
• Excellent Excel analysis skills. Bonus for data visualization skills in PowerBI
• Familiarity with the agri-SME sector in East Africa. Beneficial if this knowledge extends to agri-SME lending
• Bonus for previous work experience in finance or investing
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, as demonstrated by experience developing senior-level and external-client communications
• Other attributes: strong attention to detail, curious and entrepreneurial mindset, excellent time management, and openness to feedback
• Personal commitment to having a positive impact on farmer livelihoods and economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa
• A bachelor’s degree in a data or finance related field

Aceli is an equal opportunity employer. We encourage all qualified applicants to apply.

Interested candidates should submit a one-page cover letter, expressing their interest and qualifications for the role, along with an updated CV by Friday, January 31st, 2025. Applications will be considered on a rolling basis.