About Palladium:

Palladium is a global company working to design, develop and deliver positive impact on the lives and livelihoods of people around the globe; broaden access to health, water, power, and infrastructure; build enduring, sustainable, and transformative institutions and market systems to address global challenges; and conserve the natural world. We operate in over 90 countries and have a workforce of 4,000 talented, motivated, and diverse staff of all religions, races, languages, and gender identities. 

Project Background

This Opportunity:

Palladium International, LLC is implementing the $250 Million, 5-year USAID CATALYZE contract which offers a facilitated partnership model that will craft solutions to crowd in $2 Billion in blended finance (i.e., blended concessional and commercial finance) to USAID partner countries; it can work in any development sector or region. Launched in October 2019, CATALYZE is a buy-in mechanism that allows USAID Bureaus and Missions to efficiently deploy investment facilitation solutions that respond to the needs of specific sectors, issues, and geographies.

USAID CATALYZE Market Systems for Growth (MS4G) focuses on creating transformative outcomes in the food security and WASH sectors to benefit all Ethiopian people. To achieve these goals, the activity engages youth, mobilizes capital, increases access to finance, connects enterprises to markets, and supports stakeholders to self-advocate towards policy change which will promote opportunities for the private sector community. The project supports activities in Addis Ababa and secondary cities.

To strengthen the private sector in the food security and WASH sectors, MS4G uses a market-based approach to enhance enterprises’ performance, product/service delivery, and inclusion. The activities are designed to build institutional capacity, enhance knowledge and skill transfers through workforce development initiatives, advance the business enabling environment, accelerate digital transformations and scale best practices to increase productivity and quality.

Reporting and Supervision:

The Enterprise Growth Advisor will report to the CATALYZE: MS4G Enterprise Growth Manager. S/he will be responsible for supporting SMEs growth mainly in sales, revenue and export and subsequently be able to access capital both from banks as well as equity providers. As such the program will avail business advisory service providers.

Primary duties and Responsibilities:

Four main areas are (1) Design, development and management of SME business advisory service program (BASP); (2) design and develop and manage capacity building program for business advisory service providers (BASPs); (3) Manage third party development of assessment and research reports; (4) Manage pipeline development of SMEs from the demand side to ensure the type of SMEs targeted actually received the service business advisory service, among others.

Specific responsibilities of MS4G’s Enterprise Growth Advisor include, but are not limited to:

• Review project documents including plans, assessments reports and other related information;

• Review current donor funded BASP programs in the market;

• Review and align current plan;

• Align Review and technically enrich the current plan;

• Conduct assessment of demand-side market and systems to identify constraints and opportunities for businesses improvement of women and youth.

• Undertake market opportunity for enterprise development advisory and technical viability assessment and shortlisting business advisory service providers.

• Design programs to enhance the capacity and capability of SMEs to increase their  performance and meet program objectives;

• Design and develop capacity building program to deliver governance, strategic planning, financial management, operational management and human resource management training.

• Participate in identifications, assessments and selections of the potential implementing BASPs for enterprise development

• Lead the work plans development, implementation and ongoing monitoring within the enterprise development.

• Evaluate training facilities manuals and training curriculum to determine its capacity to train local BASPs

• Assess training programs and facilities within the country for BASP capacity development;

• Monitor and track program performance on monthly basis in accordance program KPIs;

• Provide monthly update of program performance of program objectives and plans.

• Quarterly review the BASP, their services and progress or performance

• Monitor and provide periodical recommendation of appropriate training topics for BASPs business training.

• Evaluate and recommend and business training modules and programs.

• Developing terms of references/scope of works and request for proposals that contribute to enterprise growth and development.

• Manage partner business advisory service providers (BASPs) that support enterprises.

• Ensuring that BASPs are delivering proper services to their clients and MS4G contractual requirements are met.

• Review deliverables on time and make the necessary communication with BASPs.

• Identify potential issues in relation to BASPs service delivery and provide advice on how to resolve them.

• Provide technical support to specialists and officers of MS4G working around enterprise development.

• Develop and regularly submit biweekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual reports.

• Provide technical support to ensure the activities of Enterprise Growth are aligned with overall project KPIs. 

• Closely work with regional coordinators, Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning and Communications team to develop lessons learnt, success stories, insights, trend analysis and other related information.

• Provide technical and professional advice on how MS4G would strongly collaborate with enterprise/entrepreneurial ecosystem actors in Ethiopia.

• Collaborate with other technical teams of MS4G in reviewing technical proposals, draft assessments, and reports.

• Perform other duties as assigned

Job Requirements

Professional Expertise Required:

• At least a Master’s degree in Business Administration, Economics, Marketing, Entrepreneurship and other related fields.

• Minimum of 10 years professional experience in SME/enterprise development

• Three years of experience in SME business advisory

• At least 5 five years of enterprise development experience.

• Experience implementing donor-funded program.

• Experience implementing in USAID funded program is a plus

 Key Competencies Required:

• Excellent communication skills, both oral and written

• Expertise in all phases of sales and business development lifecycle

• Strong analytic and quantitative skills; ability to determine trends and propose solutions

• A self-motivated achiever with demonstrated ability to work with minimum supervision

• Strong in report writing skills and understanding of local economic development status.

• Good in resource management, organizational skills, M & E/ data handling and/or knowledge development.

• In a position to demonstrate knowledge of relevant Networks and networking skills.

• Track record in building strong client and stakeholder relationships

• Excellent business presentation skills

How to Apply

Equity, Diversity & Inclusion:

Palladium is committed to embedding equity, diversity, and inclusion into everything we do. We welcome applications from all sections of society and actively encourage diversity to drive innovation, creativity, success, and good practice. We positively welcome and seek to ensure we achieve diversity in our workforce; and that all job applicants and employees receive equal and fair treatment regardless of their background or personal characteristics. These include: (but are not limited to) socio-economic background, age, race, gender identity and expression, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, nationality, veteran, marital or Indigenous status.

Should you require any adjustments or accommodations to be made due to a disability or you are a neurodivergent individual or for any other circumstance, please email our team at accessibility@thepalladiumgroup.com and we will be in touch to discuss.

Safeguarding - We define Safeguarding as “the preventative action taken by Palladium to protect our people, clients and the communities we work with from harm”. We are committed to ensuring that all children and adults who come into contact with Palladium are treated with respect and are free from abuse.  All successful candidates will be subject to an enhanced selection process including safeguarding-focused interviews and a rigorous due diligence process.

We invite all candidates meeting the required qualifications to submit their resume/CV to below link:

CLICK HERE