2 Senior Business Analysts

SHONA is currently implementing a portfolio of projects under our AgriFood Founders Program, supporting entrepreneurs who are building Agroecological Enterprises or Regenerative Agriculture businesses or Circular Agribusinesses that are contributing to a sustainable food system in East Africa.

We are looking to strengthen our team with Senior Business Analysts whose role will range from leading the identification of the right enterprises and leading our support to these enterprises to help them grow.

We are looking to add up to two Senior Business Analysts to our team.

• Recruitment and Selection: Support the identification of the right businesses to partner with
• Business Diagnostics: Lead the review of business models and other data sets of the selected businesses including market segmentation, positioning, competitor analysis, industry trends, practice of agroecology, regenerative agriculture or circular agribusiness etc to assess business health and identify operational and strategic gaps and growth opportunities and draft reports with recommendations for improvement
• Financial Analysis: Analyze business financials, strategies and operational systems and design excel dashboards and scorecards that provide visibility into KPIs, effectiveness of current strategies and key business trends or drivers
• Financial Modeling: Build financial models and analyze pricing models, unit economics and capitalization tables to support the decision analysis on potential participants in the program and future investments into SMEs
• Industry Research and Analysis: Research and conduct sectoral and industry analysis, and develop insights to support acceptance of businesses into our programs and investment decisions into businesses. This will also involve validating our selection criteria to ensure relevant data points are tracked from the beginning of the program
• Reporting and Analysis: Collect and analyze financial and operational data sets from program SMEs to develop and deliver/present reports identifying positive and negative trends, notable risks, opportunities for revenue growth and propose actionable recommendations for improvement to management teams
• Business Planning: Support management teams to develop and implement strong business plans by scrutinizing strategic directions, including market segmentation, positioning, competitor analysis, industry trends, etc
• Curriculum Quality Assurance: Ensuring the design and execution of the curriculum is aligned with and meeting the needs of the businesses in their respective market contexts
• Account Management and entrepreneur engagement: Lead account management, working closely with assigned businesses and entrepreneurs to ensure key deliverables are met and the businesses benefit from the initiative. This may include travel to the location of the businesses
• Impact Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning: Maintain an up to date project impact data dashboard. Update it regularly to support project performance as per the results’ framework by regularly gathering and accurately analysing entrepreneur data (qualitative and quantitative) related to revenue, profitability, investment, value chain activities and their transition to Agroecology. Entrepreneurial stories of change are an integral part of this data
• Entrepreneur database maintenance: Coordinate and maintain the entrepreneur information on a shared drive to ensure the smooth running of the project, and SHONA’s business development activities
• Doing whatever it takes to support project teams and the businesses we work with: At times, you'll be expected to work outside of just your role to contribute to the team's overall efforts

• Bachelor's degree majoring in business, finance, accounting or economics preferred
• At least 5 years experience in banking, accounting, management consulting and investment advisory
• Experience working with Agribusinesses
• Highly numerical and analytical and able to analyze large sets of qualitative and quantitative data
• Highly proficient with excel, MS Word and MS Powerpoint. Proficiency with Power PBI is an added advantage
• Experience stepping into ambiguous and disorganized situations and bringing structure
• Experience building financial models, cap tables and conducting quantitative and qualitative financial analysis
• Experience in developing business plans, building and managing dashboards and analyzing data from diverse sources
• Strong communication skills with ability to write and present investment memoranda in both written and oral communication
• Experience working on teams with diverse cultures
• Ability to quickly build rapport and maintain strong relationships with teams, entrepreneurs, partners and investors
• Ability to coach and support entrepreneurs to finding their own solutions to challenges
• Ability to strategically think and interact with management teams to prepare, understand and present analytical reports
• Independence / Self Starter
• Business Acumen
• Proven at accomplishing results
• Team collaborator
• Life-long learner
• Intellectual curiosity
• Resilience and perseverance
• High emotional intelligence
• Relationship building
• Analytical skills
• Project management
• Technology Savvy