Access to Finance Lead

About the role

The Access to Finance Lead will drive financial inclusion initiatives for Heifer Ethiopia’s signature program, supporting smallholder farmers, producer groups, cooperatives, youth and women. Reporting to the Signature Program Technical Lead, the role works closely with the project’s Deputy Chief of Party and partners under the USDA Ethiopia Partnership for Productivity (P4P) Project.

Key responsibilities

• Provide overall leadership, technical oversight and coordination of the project’s financial inclusion agenda.
• Strengthen the capacity of livestock producers, producer groups, traders and cooperatives to access and manage finance for improved practices.
• Design and manage a flexible Catalytic Fund to incentivize market actors to invest in project activities.
• Engage with commercial banks, micro‑finance institutions, insurance providers, public and private sector actors to develop sustainable financing mechanisms.
• Integrate financial literacy, business development, savings mobilization, enterprise financing and risk mitigation across project implementation.
• Offer technical guidance and supervision to staff working on finance‑related components.

Required profile

• Proven experience leading financial inclusion or access‑to‑finance programs in agricultural or development contexts.
• Strong understanding of smallholder finance, cooperative structures and market‑based approaches.
• Excellent stakeholder management skills with banks, micro‑finance institutions and development partners.
• Ability to design and oversee catalytic funding mechanisms.

Required skills

• Financial inclusion strategy development
• Design of catalytic funding instruments
• Stakeholder engagement with financial institutions
• Capacity building for producer groups and cooperatives