Conservation International (CI) has been protecting nature for the benefit of all for over 30 years. Through science, policy, and partnerships, CI is helping build a healthier, more prosperous, and more productive planet.  

POSITION SUMMARY

Conservation International is working in southern Africa to develop pro-nature enterprises that support community development and restore critical habitats for biodiversity across 5 sites; Mnisi tribal lands (Outside Kruger National Park, South Africa), Habu and Eretsha communal areas (Okavango Delta, Botswana), Simalaha Conservancy (Zambia) and Lower Zambezi (Zambia/Zimbabwe). The work in the first four sites involves working with livestock-keeping communities to restore degraded rangelands, while the fifth site involves working with fishing communities on sustainable fisheries management in the Zambezi River.

Our work in the region aims to spur sustainable enterprise development by identifying and providing technical assistance to community groups to grow local enterprises while cultivating business partnerships with the private sector and other impact investors. It is expected that most of the enterprises will be in livestock, fisheries, sustainable agriculture, ecotourism, natural products, and other related sectors. The overarching goal is that enterprise development will foster sustainability by creating green jobs and careers and long-term behavior change for environmental stewardship.

Conservation International seeks to hire an Enterprise Development Manager to lead these strategies.

The Manager will take leadership of all enterprise development functions including; enterprise identification and scoping, overseeing feasibility studies, providing or facilitating technical assistance, supervising external consultants, and collaborating with CI’s Conservation Finance Team to broker investment into a community enterprise. The manager will ensure quality and execute general workstream management functions under the guidance of the Project Lead. The Manager will oversee grants and technical assistance to implementing partners and ensure timely, administratively compliant, technically rigorous, and collaborative implementation of project interventions.

In addition to the above project-specific responsibilities, the Enterprise Development Manager will also assist/guide project activities elsewhere on the continent that involves Enterprise Development; most notably in Kenya & South Africa; under the guidance of Regional Director: Conservation Finance.

RESPONSIBILITIES

ENTERPRISE DEVELOPMENT:

• -Work closely with partners to ensure coherence and a common understanding of the enterprise development ambitions and interventions of the project.
• -Work closely with project partners to identify and scope enterprises development opportunities and keep an up-to-date database of such prospect opportunities.
• -Develop investment profiles and business cases for opportunities identified, with a clear and actionable plan of intervention.
• -Take overall responsibility in ensuring delivery of all enterprise development interventions with partners through mentorship and close guidance.
• -Oversee and supervise external consultants who will be hired to support certain enterprise development functions from time to time
• -Maintain proper project metrics on all enterprise development-related activities.
• -Support the enterprise functions of other regional projects including the GCF-funded TWENDE project, Rangelands Restoration in Chyulu project (Kenya), among others.

IMPACT INVESTMENTS:

• -Compliment the work of the Conservation Finance team and CI Ventures team through identification and scoping of impact investment opportunities in the target landscapes.
• -Contribute to the overall CI Africa Division Enterprise Development strategy by offering Enterprise Development expertise.

GENERAL PROJECT MANAGEMENT:

• -Coordination: Ensure effective coordination of all enterprise development project components, ensuring component specialists, site implementers, and other stakeholders are aligned to the project goals.
• -Planning and execution: Ensure all site implementers have up-to-date, coherent, and rigorous delivery plans while ensuring that the execution plan is on course.
• -Monitoring and evaluation – timely review of site implementers monitoring activities and data as prescribed in the site monitoring frameworks as pertains to the enterprise development workstream. Consolidate this data and information into coherent project-level monitoring data/info as per the project monitoring framework.
• -Reporting and documentation – ensure site implementers deliver timely and holistic periodic enterprise development-related reports (technical and financial), analyze and consolidate this into project-level reports.
• -Any other duties may be assigned by the supervisor from time to time.