Ghana Investment Support Programme (GhISP) – Background

British International Investment (BII) is the UK’s development finance institution. BII invests with the aim of solving the biggest global development challenges by investing patient, flexible capital to support private sector growth and innovation. BII has over 70 years of experience successfully supporting the sustainable, long-term growth of businesses in Africa and Asia, and have recently expanded to invest in the Indo-Pacific and the Caribbean.

BII invests to achieve impact and a financial return. Over the past five years, BII have committed almost £7 billion of new investments, with net assets growing in value to approximately £7.5 billion. BII have now invested in 1,200 businesses which directly employ over 900,000 workers and support many more. Over the next five years, BII plans to grow further, and aims to commit around £9 billion of new investments over the period. BII has a longstanding commitment to Financial Services (with a portfolio of over $2bn invested in financial services across more than 150 investees, which represents about one third of BII’s total portfolio by value).

As part of this commitment, BII have launched The Ghana Investment Support Programme (GhISP). GhISP is a technical assistance programme, delivered by DAI, that aims to increase investment flows to underserved SMEs in Ghana, with a particular focus on BII’s investment themes (Gender, BOLD, Climate, Target Populations) by employing a dual portfolio support and market shaping approach. Anchored around Growth Investment Partners (GIP), BII's local currency debt investment vehicle for SMEs in Ghana, GhISP provides 1) pre and post investment support to GIP and other BII portfolio companies in Ghana, and 2) shapes the broader investment ecosystem to unlock investment through market-level pipeline development and field building.

In virtue of creating a more embedded, responsive, and cohesive team, GhISP is looking to welcome to the team a Portfolio Manager based in Ghana who will provide end-to-end support through all stages of project design and delivery and will serve as a bridge between the Project Coordinator, the Senior Advisor, and Technical Assistance Providers, fostering centralised relationships, clear points of contact, and avoiding attrition in the management of stakeholder relationship.

Tasks and Responsibilities

·       Serve as a bridge between the Project Coordinator, Senior Advisor and Technical Assistance Providers (TAPs), fostering centralised relationships, providing a clear point of contact, and avoiding attrition in the management of stakeholder relationships.

·       Contribute to end-to-end support through all stages of project design and delivery by acting as a reliable point of contact for GhISP partners and avoiding duplication of efforts across team members, with variable LoE depending on project need.

·       Responsible for the day-to-day management of the relationship with TAPs, monitoring milestone attainment, providing risk management support and escalation, and communicating and addressing bottlenecks, and leverage opportunities under the programme, as they arise.

·       Providing back office and administrative support to GhISP, leading procurement processes, contracting, financial support, invoicing, forecasting, budgeting, and monitoring and risk escalation, ensuring lessons learned from GhISP are pollinated across other BII projects. The GhISP Portfolio Manager will act as a centralised point of contact for GhISP, and will be responsible for stakeholder management, risk management, milestone verification, financial support, contracting support, and procurement.

·       Support the DAI Head Office to monitor overall progress, identify challenges, track progress against KPIs, manage TAPs, and support quality assurance.

·       Represent a continuous point of support for GhISP and provide backstopping support for other GhISP Core Team members in their absence, providing visible and reliable management support, as well as being able to rapidly identify and escalate any issues.

·       Supported by the MEL Lead and Project Coordinator, ensure strong MEL and communications of programme activities.

·       Ability and flexibility to support GhISP throughout the whole programme lifecycle, from design to implementation.

·       Lead on work planning, forecasting, and budgeting for the portfolio of interventions and cross-cutting areas and generally support operations plans.

·       Quality assure GhISP's workstreams and continually review portfolio activities and interventions to prioritise effectively.

·       Manage and quality assure short-term technical consultants’ contributions, preparing work orders with the right focus, clear on technical requirements of the role and consultant skills, clear outputs linked to the activity outputs, and the right balance of inputs to demonstrate value for money.

·       Contribute to progress and performance reporting for the programme and key stakeholders, including semi-annual and annual reviews, and against the logframe.

 

Specific Requirements

 

·       5-7 years of professional experience relevant to the role.

·       Good understanding of the SME landscape in Ghana.

·       Demonstrating excellent understanding of the local investment ecosystem in Ghana.

·       Experienced in monitoring and understanding trends from major capital providers in Ghana.

·       Understanding about recent development in impact investing.

 

Level of Effort, Deliverables and Timeline

The GhISP Portfolio Manager will be full-time, starting immediately until July 2026.

In virtue of promoting an embedded, collaborative, and responsive approach to stakeholder management and contribute towards building strong relationships, this position will be required to work at least two days a week from BII’s offices in Accra, Ghana. 

Closing date 20th February 2025

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