Business Manager

Farm Africa focuses on transforming agriculture. We help farmers to increase their harvests, protect the environment and sell their produce in thriving markets. By providing support, training in effective farming methods and links to markets, we help to build more profitable farming businesses so that whole communities can lift themselves out of poverty. F…

Business Manager

PURPOSE OF THE ROLE

• The Business Manager operates as Farm Africa’s central technical authority on business development services. Centrally employed by Farm Africa, the postholder is tasked with providing cross-cutting technical expertise, project design inputs, and implementation backstopping to all existing and upcoming projects within the Farm Africa Kenya portfolio on matters of BDS. The role focuses on embedding standardized BDS frameworks into diverse project interventions, driving the growth of MSMEs/SMEs, managing catalytic funds, and optimizing enterprise data structures.

KEY TASKS AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Centralized Cross-Project BDS Support

• Serve as the primary, organizational-wide focal point providing technical expertise on business development across the entire Farm Africa Kenya project portfolio.

• Develop and drive implementation of Farm Africa Agribusiness strategy.

• Actively collaborate with external implementing partners and internal Farm Africa Project Managers to troubleshoot, refine, and advance their specific BDS project components.

• Ensure organization-wide consistency and quality control by overseeing all decentralized BDS activities, making sure they align with international best practices and institutional frameworks.

• Coordinate internal resource sharing, ensuring that competent technical staff and short-term consultants are efficiently sourced and deployed to support BDS components across various active assignments.

Project Design & Resource Mobilization

• Lead the technical conceptualization and design of Business Development Services (BDS) interventions for all new grants, active projects, and upcoming consultancies.

• Actively contribute to resource mobilization and proposal writing to ensure relevant Farm Africa pipeline submissions feature strong, competitive, and actionable enterprise engagement opportunities.

• Explore blended finance opportunities and ensure integration within programmes to enhance financial leveraging.

Curriculum Development & Institutional Capacity Building

• Design, standardize, and maintain a centralized repository of viable BDS models, training curriculum’s, tools, and templates for use across all applicable Farm Africa interventions.

• Provide continuous coaching, mentorship, and capacity-building support to implementing partners and project teams on enterprise development and market access.

• Support project-level Business Support Advisors in diagnosing technical, managerial, governance, and financial capacity gaps within targeted small and medium enterprises.

Catalyst & Catalytic Fund Management

• Facilitate, direct, and oversee the implementation of centralized and project-specific Catalytic Funds (including revolving funds and challenge funds).

• Develop financial disbursement systems, selection criteria, due diligence policies, and risk-mitigation reporting processes to optimize fund deployment for SME/MSME growth.

SME/MSME Support & Business Performance Monitoring

• Support project teams in supervising enterprise establishment, growth strategies, and market integrations for targeted MSMEs and SMEs.

• Oversee periodic organizational “health checks”, diagnostic reviews, and annual Organizational Capacity Assessment Tools (OCAT) across portfolio enterprises to systematically evaluate growth and correct underperformance.

• Develop, review Enterprise Capacity Assessment Tools (ECAT) and take lead in conducting enterprise and market assessments to identify gaps, emerging trends and opportunities.

Data Collection, Monitoring & Learning

• Design and deploy standardized data collection tools to identify operational delivery gaps and harmonize information gathering across all active project sites.

• Partner with the Head of MEL to finalize business performance indicators, compile comprehensive quarterly reports featuring data visualizations (graphs/charts), and extract cross-project evidence-based learning.

Networking, Representation & Compliance

• Represent Farm Africa, its partner networks, and central BDS interests at high-level industry networking events, government coordination forums, and donor meetings.

Line Management & team management

• Provide leadership, mentorship and inspiration to BDS teams. Build a values-based working environment and support project staff skills development.

• Set objectives for BDS teams, hold in-person supervision sessions to discuss progress against their personal development objectives and work targets and carry out in-person annual appraisals in line with Farm Africa policies and procedures.

• Actively recognise and encourage strong performance from team members, deal with any poor performance effectively and promptly in line with Farm Africa policies and procedures,

• Actively seek feedback on own performance and effectiveness from BDS team members, project staff and country and project teams.

Reporting and Compliance Requirements