Senior Technical Advisor-Strategy and Market Growth (Renewable Energy)

The AECF is a leading development finance organization that supports businesses to innovate, create jobs and leverage investments to build resilience and sustainable incomes for rural and marginalized communities in Africa.

The AECF’ s goal is to bridge the investment gap between early-stage enterprise and business maturity for entrepreneurs serving the poorest communities. We provide patient capital to new and innovative business models in the agribusiness and renewable energy sectors across Sub-Saharan Africa through various financing instruments. To supplement finance, we also offer advisory services, investment support, and knowledge and insights.

The AECF has successfully implemented programs across 26 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, supporting over 343 enterprises, raising US$ 392 million in funding for programs, that have created 25,000 jobs and impacted 28 million lives.

The Renewable Energy and Adaptation to Climate Technologies (REACT) window supports the private sector in bringing clean energy technologies to Africa’s rural communities.

Through support to 132 investees so far, it has contributed to providing over 6.5 million people with access to low cost, clean energy from solar home systems, minigrids and clean cooking solutions. The support focuses on reducing risk, stimulating advances in technology, testing alternative business models and financial services, and addressing other constraints that inhibit market development with products and services that specifically target the rural poor in East, West and Southern Africa.

The AECF, through its Advisory Studio, provides business advisory to 100+ early-stage private sector companies in Africa, with the aim to improve their business performance and impact generation.

The AECF is looking for a strategy and market growth Senior Technical Advisor (STA) who will be responsible for:

Supporting AECF’s investees in the Renewable Energy sector to improve their sales and overall competitiveness through provision of blended advisory services (coaching, consulting, training, linkage facilitation) in strategy, sales, marketing, and distribution.

Being a reference for all strategy and market growth needs of the companies and offering solutions aligned with the company strategies, positioning, brand, and value propositions.

This position will be under an independent Consultancy contract (1 year period with possibility of renewal).

Key Responsibilities:

• Coach and train the businesses through execution of
• Support the fine-tuning of business strategies at the proposal/business planning stage (pre-AECF investment) and make recommendations on marketing tactics proposed by SMEs.
• Work with the investee businesses to develop and continuously pivot the business models and strategies to increase their competitiveness and customer- centricity.
• Develop winning go-to-market strategies and develop sales and distribution plans that will ensure that investees meet their sales targets, their business strategies.
• Train the staff of investees in marketing, sales and distribution, while advising on appropriate branding and marketing collateral.
• Develop sales performance management frameworks and dashboards that investees will use to monitor their sales and overall business performance.
• Continuously monitor sales and recommend strategies to ramp them up so that the set targets are achieved within the set periods.
• Build marketing strategies and campaigns to support achievement of specific marketing objectives and sales targets for the businesses across different channels and segments.
• Collect and analyze marketing needs and opportunities in the ecosystem and channel them to the businesses to continuously reinvent themselves to become first movers and increase their market share.
• ·Conduct higher-level industry trend analysis and marketing research to generate consumer insights in support of improved product development, marketing strategies and communications for various cohorts/sub-sectors of the businesses.
• Support the REACT Sector Team Lead to produce regular analyses, reports (metric & narrative) and dashboards.

Suitable Candidates should:

• Hold at a master’s degree in a relevant field (MBA, Economics, Strategy, Marketing).
• Hold a professional certification in strategy and/or marketing.
• Have a minimum of ten (10) years experience, five (5) of which should be in supporting off-grid companies with business strategy development, marketing, sales and distribution. Experience in digital marketing is an added advantage
• Have experience in coaching and “hands-on” consulting in strategy development, customer-centric project management and customer or brand experience generation for renewable energy/off-grid and clean cooking companies.
• Have a strong understanding of Africa’s off-grid energy dynamics and experience in providing business and technical support to SMEs to scale up their operations. Be fluent in English or French, with a working knowledge of the other.
• Demonstrate knowledge of working strategies for SMEs in emerging markets, especially in the renewable energy and clean cooking sectors.
• Demonstrate knowledge of growth marketing funnels, lead acquisition, engagement, and conversion. Demonstrate ability to transfer successful solutions from other sectors to the renewable energy sector. Possess strong project management and diagnostics skills.
• Be an Innovative and proactive problem-solver led by metrics-driven thinking.
• Have strong communication and interpersonal skills. Be an excellent multi-tasker that can support multiple companies at the same time.
• Possess self-sufficiency and ownership.