The UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) makes public and private finance work for the poor in the world’s 46 least developed countries (LDCs). With its capital mandate and instruments, UNCDF offers “last mile” finance models that unlock public and private resources, especially at the domestic level, to reduce poverty and support local economic development.

UNCDF’s expertise is in three primary areas of work: (1) development and financing of inclusive digital economies through a market development approach, largely driven by digital finance and innovation; (2) local development finance through fiscal decentralization (including local climate adaptation finance), municipal finance and structured project finance, to drive market transformation in local economic development; and (3) investment finance, to drive capital accumulation and market transformation in financially under-served areas, including investment sourcing, due diligence, de-risking, deployment of loans and guarantees, and crowding in of investment capital from domestic and international investors. Women and youth economic empowerment are specifically articulated across all UNCDF work in terms of objectives, approaches, theory of change, targets, and indicators.

The Least Developed Countries Investment Platform (LDC/IP) serves as UNCDF’s center of excellence on development finance by creating the conditions for investment viability in the “missing middle” or in riskier market segments. The aim of LDC/IP is to be part of a system that (a) demonstrates to domestic and international investors that LDC markets can and do generate returns, provide opportunities for successful investment, and merit the attention of a wider range of investors and that (b) uses those demonstration effects to support policy and regulatory improvements and scale up by other actors of what works.

UNCDF and World Food Programme (WFP) recently entered into and signed a partnership framework agreement aimed at strengthening cooperation in the areas of food systems and to drive action against hunger through innovative financing.  WFP country office in Rwanda (WFP Rwanda) is currently operating under its 2019-2024 Country Strategy Programme (CSP). Strategic Outcome 4 of the CSP relates to support of smallholder farmers in Rwanda: ‘Smallholder farmers have increased marketable surplus and access agriculture markets through efficient supply chains by 2030’ and its execution is led by WFP Smallholder Agricultural Market Support (SAMS) Unit. As part of a recently signed global partnership agreement between Mastercard Foundation (MCF)[1] and WFP, WFP Rwanda will lead a five-year project, ‘Shora Neza’[2], which aims to create new and improved existing employment opportunities for youth, through strengthened, interlinked, and efficient agricultural value chains. The partnership will build on WFP’s existing initiatives and align with MCF’s ‘Young Africa Works Strategy’.

In view of supporting youth and women owned/led investments in agriculture in Rwanda under the “Shora Neza” project with seed funding provided by MCF, WFP will leverage on UNCDF BRIDGE[3] Facility a catalytic financing mechanism offering on-balance sheet financing specifically designed to fill the missing middle gap for SMEs, local infrastructure projects, and financial service providers. By targeting ticket sizes between USD 100,000 and USD 1 million, the BRIDGE Facility can provide financing that enables projects to be viable for commercial lenders, resulting in the opportunity to scale. The BRIDGE Facility is among the few instruments that provide concessional revolving capital bridging the development finance gap, helping build track record and targeting companies in frontier markets & LDCs. WFP will leverage UNCDF BRIDGE Facility to establish WFP Financing Window (“WFP BRIDGE”), to support agriculture enterprises focused primarily on SDG 2 and SDG 17, while linking up with other related SDGs.[4] WFP BRIDGE will have a unified, scalable architecture balancing emphasis on standardization and coordination for easy replicability across WFP and programmatic customization to incorporate various impact and investment theses. As such, WFP BRIDGE will allow the establishment of Project Facilities (or sub-windows) with specific programmatic objectives.

One of such Project Facilities (or sub-windows) is the inaugural WFP Rwanda BRIDGE with primary focus on (1) investments in agriculture value chains (including the introduction of pre-harvest technologies, reducing post-harvest losses, and increasing access of small-holder farmers to reliable and remunerative market opportunities for a range of different crops to strengthen the performance of those actors and improve the overall efficiency of the targeted value chains), (2) access to finance (introducing innovative finance solutions to the benefit of key value chain actors and smallholder farmers), and (3) market development.

The Rwanda Project Facility will be part of the ‘agri-preneurial development continuum’ which has been designed to connect initiatives across the Rwanda CO portfolio on innovative finance for agricultural value chains development, and an investment continuum that moves SMEs from grants to concessional funding and ultimately, commercial capital. While WFP Rwanda BRIDGE aims to serve agri-businesses in the ‘missing middle’ with access to affordable capital, other initiatives such as investment technical assistance will address earlier stage enterprises with smaller financing needs to enhance their “investment-readiness” through financial and capacity building support.

Based in Kigali, Rwanda the selected Project Investment Coordinator will lead the investment process for WFP Rwanda BRIDGE which includes but is not limited to screening/pre-assessment, due-diligence (including credit appraisal), approval from credit committee, implementation, loan monitoring and termination of investees. 

Under the supervision of the UNCDF LDCIP Investment Specialist based in Kigali and in close collaboration with other colleagues in the LDCIP team, the Project Investment Coordinator will contribute to the deployment of capital from UNCDF’s suite of financing solutions in Rwanda, and in particular from the WFP Rwanda BRIDGE facility.

The Project Investment Coordinator will be responsible for leading and executing the following tasks and deliverables:

1.Screening/Pre-assessment of potential investees 

Conduct initial interviews of prospects for investments originated and sourced from WFP Rwanda by gathering introductory information to determine whether the prospects meet the investment criteria for WFP Rwanda BRIDGE. The objective of such screening/pre-assessment work is to perform an initial appraisal of the prospect and select prospects for further due diligence by completion of a set of tools and deliverables.

2. Conduct due diligence of potential investees and presentation to credit committee for approval

Upon completion of screening/pre-assessment and initial selection of potential investees, he/she will carry out a full evaluation of the prospect (i.e., underwriting) and define prospective terms and conditions for the provision of investment finance. This will also include a completion of a set of tools and deliverables; and also a referral (or not) of the prospect to UNCDF Impact Investment Credit (IIC) committee for approval.

3. Capital deployment, loan & guarantee monitoring, termination and evaluation 

The Project Investment Coordinator will be responsible for building a portfolio of investable financial service providers and/or agri-businesses/SMEs/MSMEs under the project facility (i.e., WFP Rwanda BRIDGE) via deployment of concessional loans and/or guarantees to selected and approved investees by IIC. Furthermore, the Project Investment Coordinator will be expected to work closely with UNCDF LDCIP Portfolio Management (PM) team in HQ to provide regular updates and reports on the financial & impact performance of individual investees and the overall portfolio of the WFP Rwanda BRIDGE facility. During the tenor of the investment, the Project Investment Coordinator will conduct regular monitoring visits to the investees in order to collect information and data while ensuring that the investee complies with its financial obligation towards UNCDF. At maturity of the provided facilities, the Project Investment Coordinator will work with the PM team in HQ to communicate with the borrower or guaranteed party to inform and close-out/terminate the loan or guarantee.

4. Matchmaking with additional private sector capital

In view of increasing leverage ratio by using the seed funding provided by MCF to attract additional private sector capital, the Project Investment Coordinator during the investment process will be responsible for identifying opportunities to either co-finance or match-make investees with interested risk-tolerant investors as a mean to attract additional private sector capital to WFP Rwanda BRIDGE.

5. Provision and needs assessments of Investment Technical Assistance (TA)

The Project Investment Coordinator works with selected investees to support them with basic business advisory services meant to improve the investment readiness and bankability of the companies. This could include helping investees in building business plans, financial projections, pitch decks for future investors, etc. Furthermore, the Project Investment Coordinator will work closely with UNCDF LDCIP TA Facility Manager to identify prospects who received financing from WFP Rwanda BRIDGE and may need or benefit from further pre-investment TA (“investment readiness”) or post-investment TA (“core business advisory support”) inclusive of any need for impact and ESG management support.

The TOR gives a general outline of the main tasks and responsibilities and is not exhaustive.

Institutional Arrangement

The incumbent will report to the UNCDF LDCIP Investment Specialist based in Kigali, Rwanda and as needed to other LDCIP colleagues in the regional office/HQ based, country and across the region. This position is office-based in Kigali, Rwanda.

SDG Integration: SDG Monitoring and Reporting, responsive investment, and impact measurement.

Finance: Development Finance

• Ability to develop and work with innovative financing mechanisms and instruments, e.g. social/development impact bonds, guarantees, climate finance, etc.

Project & Programme Management

• Time-bound goal with internal & external collaborators  Ability to plan, organize, prioritize and control resources, procedures and protocols to achieve specific goals

Partnership Management: Relationship Management

• Ability to engage with a wide range of public and private partners, build, sustain and/or strengthen working relations, trust, and mutual understanding.

Ethics: Ethics Advice & Guidance

• Ability to quickly analyze complex fact patterns and provide comprehensive, sensitive, and confidential ethics advice and guidance

Business Management: Monitoring

• Ability to provide managers and key stakeholders with regular feedback on the consistency or discrepancy between planned and actual activities and programme performance and results.