WASH Blended Finance Manager

With 75 years of experience, our focus is on helping the most vulnerable children overcome poverty and experience fullness of life. We help children of all backgrounds, even in the most dangerous places, inspired by our Christian faith.
Employee Contract Type:Local - Fixed Term Employee (Fixed Term)

Job Description

MAJOR RESPONSIBILITIES

Blended-finance strategy and program leadership (40%)

• Lead implementation and periodic refinement of the Tanzania rural water blended-finance strategy, which strengthens CBWSO sustainability through a combination of technical assistance and financing. Translate the full design into annual operating plans, budgets, milestones and measurable financing targets; maintain alignment between program objectives, Tanzania's rural water institutional framework and CBWSO professionalization priorities; and ensure that blended finance remains a means of improving sustainable service delivery rather than an end in itself.
• Provide technical leadership in the planning, design, implementation of blended financing support to rural water operators, supporting their improved business operations and financial sustainability through capacity-building and upgrades that improve the sustainable management of rural water supply systems.
• Manage the complete CBWSO investment pipeline from preliminary screening through detailed assessment in coordination with financial service partners.
• Represent the organization/program in WASH sector working groups, investment forums, government meetings, donor meetings, and relevant conferences.
• Support the establishment of sustainable preventive maintenance and asset-management systems
• Develop and operationalize blended-finance models for rural water supply, combining grants with public financing, commercial finance, concessional finance, guarantees, results-based financing, and private investment where appropriate.
• Maintain categories such as finance-ready, blended-finance candidate, investment-preparation candidate and not-yet-ready, and periodically reassess CBWSOs as their performance improves.
• Work with CBWSOs and engineers to identify specific investments such as source development, rehabilitation, network expansion, household connections, storage, solarization, metering, NRW reduction and digital systems.

Ensure each investment has a credible technical scope, cost estimate, implementation plan, demand case, projected revenues, incremental O&M requirements and development outcomes.

• Facilitate public-private partnerships where they offer appropriate and sustainable solutions for rural water services.
• Build relationships with technology suppliers, contractors, operators, and other private-sector organizations.
• Assess the capacity of CBWSO to repay loans while maintaining affordable services for rural communities.
• Support CBWSO providers to become investment-ready and creditworthy.
• Maintain a program and transaction-level risk register covering credit, technical, construction, demand, governance, water-resource, climate, tariff, regulatory, environmental/social and implementation risks. Ensure risks are allocated to the party best positioned to manage them rather than simply transferred to donors or guarantees.

• Support development of partnership agreements, financing arrangements, MoUs, and implementation frameworks.

Monitoring, evaluation and learning (20%)

• Establish a blended-finance performance dashboard tracking both financial and service-delivery results.
• Use standardized CBWSO and investment indicators to monitor performance before and after financing.
• Ensure lessons from initial transactions inform subsequent financing structures.

Government, RUWASA engagement and CBWSO professionalization (20%)

• Maintain strategic relationships with RUWASA at central, regional and district levels, and the Ministry of Water.
• Strengthen monitoring of water-system functionality, service levels, water production, consumption, non-revenue water, operating costs, revenue, and overall system performance.
• Ensure financing arrangements are legally permissible, institutionally supported and consistent with sector policy.
• Strengthen governance structures to improve accountability, transparency, and commercial discipline.
• Promote appropriate use of digital technologies for water-system monitoring, customer management, billing, revenue collection, and operational decision-making.
• Facilitate clarification of asset ownership, borrowing authority, tariff approval, performance monitoring and government responsibilities.
• Develop technical-assistance packages addressing financial management, billing and collection, accounting, governance, procurement, asset management, preventive maintenance, business planning, digital systems, customer service and performance reporting.

Institutional capacity building (10%)