Private Sector Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) Advisor, CATALYZE MS4G

Private Sector Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) Advisor, CATALYZE MS4G
Company Overview:
About Palladium – Palladium is a global leader in the design, development and delivery of Positive Impact – the intentional creation of enduring social and economic value. We work with governments, businesses, and investors to solve the world’s most pressing challenges. With a team of more than 3,000 employees operating in 90 plus countries and a global network of over 35,000 experts, we help improve economies, societies and, most importantly, people’s lives.
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Project Overview and Role:
USAID CATALYZE Ethiopia: Market Systems for Growth (MS4G) is a four-year, $34.174 million buy-in designed to benefit the Ethiopian populations, building community resilience and strengthening rural-urban linkages predominantly in the areas of food security, WASH, and COVID-19 economic recovery. MS4G’s objective areas emphasize facilitating enterprise growth and capital mobilization in order to increase incomes, jobs, access to healthy diets and improved water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services, enterprise growth, and sustainable opportunities for women and youth. MS4G works to address systemic challenges, including building business development services capacity, creating a more conducive business environment, building the financial sector infrastructure and capability within private finance providers, and expanding the digital economy. MS4G catalyses private sector growth and resilience by improving access to finance and facilitating transactions through targeted interventions across market systems (demand, supply, and enabling environment).
MS4G’s objectives emphasize facilitating access to jobs, enterprise growth, and sustainable opportunities for women and youth, leading to employment and the downstream stabilizing impacts on income and job security. At the same time, the activity is designed to strengthen the business support ecosystem supporting businesses in Addis Ababa and secondary cities. Overall, MS4G prioritizes activities that optimize the use of USAID resources to achieve the greatest impact in the form of both direct programmatic outcomes and indirect systems impact.
In its second year of implementation, MS4G is expanding its activities focused on the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), with a specific emphasis on mobilizing business development services (BDS) and capital for private WASH enterprises. As such, the Project seeks a full time WASH Advisor to lead and/or contribute to the design and implementation of activities focused on the intersection of WASH and enterprise development, finance, digitalization, and workforce development.

Primary Duties and Responsibilities:

The MS4G WASH Advisor will report to MS4G Country Director and collaborate closely with MS4G Technical Leads across the enterprise support, capital mobilization, skills building and job placement, and digital economy components. The purpose of this assignment is to support the MS4G as it expands it support to businesses and organizations in the WASH sector. Tasks include:
Based on the MS4G Performance Work Statement (PWS), current activities and work plan, work with MS4G staff to brainstorm potential WASH interventions that align with MS4G component areas.
Coordinate with MS4G’s team the creation of work plan activities and initiative design across MS4G technical areas (i.e. enterprise support, workforce development, capital mobilization, business enabling environment, and digitalization) by providing guidance and input.
Participate in strategic WASH program planning discussions with USAID and other USAID programs; Participate in WASH Donor collaboration meetings.
Work with MS4G staff to map and develop a key list of private WASH partners for MS4G staff to meet as part of its WASH programming and partnership activities.
Facilitate and participate to meetings with 1) selected private sector WASH actors and 2) other development programs and donors active in the WASH sector to inform the scoping and design of MS4G WASH activities in the areas of enterprise support, finance, enabling environment and digitalization.
Actively engage WASH sector development trends, for maximum efficiency of the project and effectiveness in program design, management, and implementation.
Lead engagements with the private sector relating to WASH financing, business growth, market assessment, product creation, and commercial and business development.
Coordinate and work with regional MS4G offices in WASH private sector engagement and implementation
Plans, coordinates, and direct WASH activities of the project to ensure that activities are implemented in compliance with the approved targets and objectives.
Monitor and support WASH project with regards to the planned project implementation schedule.
Closely follow up and play a technical leadership role in WASH project planning, monitoring evaluation and implementation

Required Qualifications:
Extensive experience in private sector engagement in relation to water, hygiene and sanitation in Ethiopia,
Understanding of the financial and regulatory constraints facing private sector companies in Ethiopia, particularly in the provision of water and sanitation services,
Ability to research and consult on technical and policy issues related to WASH services, and analyse the challenges to private sector engagement in Ethiopia,
Proven knowledge of Ethiopian finance, private enterprise, investment, and WASH-related issues,
Evidence of strong communication skills, both interpersonal and written with professional fluency in English required,
Ability to develop WASH business and financial models for small/medium-sized
Solid experience on Market based sanitation (MBS) and working with formal and informal financial sectors
Demonstrated organizational skills and a strong track record in meeting deliverable and donor deadlines.
Preferred Qualifications:
Minimum of a bachelor’s degree, Master’s degree preferred, in Public Health with Environmental Health Background, Engineering, or WASH-related, natural resource/development economics, environmental engineering, or other related field of study.
Five or more years of professional experience in international development field as an expert for USAID or donor funded projects related to private sector engagement in the provision WASH services
Previous experience/knowledge of USAID and private sector engagement projects, approaches and policy,
Knowledge on previous WASH-related or similar projects in international development, particularly in African countries.
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