Lead for Technology Solutions to Poverty Lab

TechnoServe’s mission is to use business solutions to take individuals around the world out of poverty. Across the 30 countries where we operate, our 1,300 staff delivers market-based solutions to farming enterprises and entrepreneurs. In 2017 we generated $189 million in financial benefits for our clients, improving the lives of 2.5M people. We want to combine our approach with cutting edge technological advances to scale this impact, starting with the 40M businesses and 200M people working across our focus sectors. 

Our approach delivers business and technical knowledge to farming businesses and entrepreneurs. We have extensive data that proves this work delivers meaningful impact and that it delivers compelling ROI, with most projects across our focus sectors delivering $2-3 of incremental income to supported businesses for every $1 invested. But cost per participant limits direct scaling. In focus sectors, given current delivery cost, we would need $5B per year over the next 10 years to reach all potential beneficiaries. 

Introducing technological innovation into our model will reduce cost and open up new modes of operation to deliver scale, and as such we have begun exploring such models. Through the Connected Farmer Alliance partnership, we designed, developed and launched a cloud-based solution that reduces the cost of doing business with smallholder farmers by improving data management and transaction efficiency. We helped to scale two mobile financial services among smallholder farmers: M-Pawa (mobile savings and credit) in Tanzania with Vodacom, and Linda Jamii (mobile health insurance) in Kenya with Safaricom. We developed an SMS-based risk-monitoring platform across the Rwandan coffee sector, which facilitates coffee mills’ access to finance by enabling lenders to have real-time access to the mills’ financial information. In partnership with the Gates Foundation in Uganda we have piloted drone monitoring and early detection of pest infestations to achieve a dramatic reduction in crop losses.

We need to accelerate the development and incorporation of technological innovation into our business model. There are myriad further ways we think technology will help drive this transformation, starting with just two examples:

• Coffee: Our proprietary agronomy model has been shown to deliver productivity benefits as much as 50% to smallholder farming businesses. The potential to increase impact and reduce cost with distance learning approaches via video and 2-way SMS is substantial. To date we have already supported 600,000 of the world’s 10M coffee farming businesses - technology will enable us to go to the next level

• Entrepreneurship: Our proprietary model has been shown to double revenues of supported businesses. We are packaging this support to high potential sectors. To take one example, in the micro-retail sector, we are working with multinational corporations to embed the model in their supply chains to reach millions of retailers. Such scale-up will require technological models that can deliver proven impact. An app that uses gamification to incentivize retailers to participate, record their transaction, and engage with training materials could generate real-time financial data with huge potential

To scale our work with technology, TechnoServe wants to develop a dedicated team called TechnoServe Labs tasked with developing, testing and iterating promising new technology-based solutions across our work. The Labs would work with our leaders to identify the greatest opportunity for technology to scale our work. The team would bring together the right skills and talent to design solutions. Testing would be carried out in our existing programs around the world. It would be set up to learn and fail fast, share learnings between sectors, try different platforms, and most importantly identify the approaches that have the greatest success in changing the cost paradigm. It would leverage TechnoServe’s fifty years of experience on market dynamics in emerging markets, focusing on solutions that are relevant to the realities and constraints in local contexts

Success will be contingent on partnering with leading technology companies. A notable area where TechnoServe has had success has been in leveraging the scale of large companies. Building inclusive supply chains for multinationals in emerging markets (e.g., The Coca Cola Company, Nespresso, Kellogg’s, Unilever) has been our fastest growing sector and now accounts for a significant share of revenue. Our model with Partners in Food Solutions has leveraged the food expertise of firms like Cargill, DSM, and General Mills to improve the food-processing sector across Africa to improve the lives of 800,000 smallholder farmers. Similarly, we believe the success of TechnoServe Labs will be contingent on leveraging the scale of leading technology players.

Success will also be contingent on elevating TechnoServe’s operating model, impact, and brand in the Bay Area. To deliver on the stated ambition, TechnoServe Labs will need resources to i) scale its own operations, ii) test innovations in the field, and iii) embed them across the organisation. Fundraising will be critical to achieving this, both for providing resources for the Labs itself, but also for funding initiatives in the field to test new solutions alongside existing programs. Accessing such investment will be contingent on building the relevant networks that establishes TechnoServe’s brand at the intersection of business and poverty and the organization’s plans to scale by introducing a focus on technological innovation. 

TechnoServe Labs has the potential to elevate TechnoServe’s brand among an important and growing sector of the philanthropic community. Even as it serves as a catalyst for  technological innovation in approaches to poverty reduction, TechnoServe Labs can serve as a focal point for expanding TechnoServe’s reach into the growing number of philanthropists (individual and organizations) with backgrounds in the technology sectors. While this sector will naturally be cultivated to invest in the growth and development of the Labs, it also can be tapped to support TechnoServe more broadly. 

TechnoServe Labs will make a unique and powerful contribution to poverty reduction. Three years from now, there will be a team of individuals with expertise across both technology and development who have identified the most promising technologies for scale; developed strategic partnerships with the relevant tech players to tailor their offerings to our space and access volunteer technical support; and is providing ongoing support to our program managers and technical leaders to scale promising solutions. It will have developed a strong business model with strategic funders and donor networks in place across the technology and philanthropic communities. Taken together, this would position TechnoServe as the leading catalyst of market based solutions to poverty enabled by digital technology.

Having secured seed investment, we are looking for an individual to turn TechnoServe Labs into a reality. This individual would be responsible for building out the strategy and scale-up plan for Labs, identifying the technologies to test, the resource model required to deliver, and securing the funding to deliver. Internally, they would identify pilot initiatives to test in the field to confirm the value and impact of the new entity. Externally, they would network to identify potential partnerships with individuals and companies in the technology sector, both for the provision of technology and to fundraise. Through this process, they would become thought leaders for solutions at the nexus of poverty, business and technology and, more generally build TechnoServe’s brand in the technology community. They would drive broader fundraising efforts for the Labs and its initiatives in the field to test innovations and support fundraising for TechnoServe more broadly.

To be successful, this individual will have a unique combination of professional experience and attributes. They will be committed to TechnoServe’s mission of poverty reduction and excited at the potential of technology to scale our work. They will have an entrepreneurial mindset, bringing the necessary passion and energy to design and fundraise for a new initiative from scratch. They will have at least twelve years of professional experience, primarily in commercial roles within the technology sector, preferably including experience managing product launches. They will be based in the Bay Area and be well placed to make the connections to existing Silicon Valley players that will drive success of the initiative both in terms of developing technical and funding partnerships. They will have had experience in roles requiring external engagement which will be critical to building the brand reputation of both the Labs specifically and TechnoServe generally. Finally, they will preferably have some prior experience in development in Africa, India or Latin America, providing a starting understanding of some of the challenges of the contexts in which we operate.

Interested applicants should submit their materials on our webpage. Applications are due by 11:59 p.m. Eastern time on October 19th. 

You will have:

• A bachelor’s degree with 12 years of professional experience or a master’s degree with 10 years’ professional experience with at least 10 years of experience at the intersection of business/commercial roles and technology
• Demonstrated expertise in developing, implementing or scaling innovative technologies 
• Proven entrepreneurial capabilities including ability to thrive in a start-up environment
• Demonstrated ability to attract capital to new ventures, particularly in Silicon Valley 
• Strong networking and relationship building skills, ability to tap into existing networks and build new ones in order to identify and recruit funding and implementation partners 
• Experience working independently to start and build a new initiative or to manage product launches/pilots preferred 
• Strong interest in development and commitment to TechnoServe’s mission to reduce poverty through business solutions
• Willingness for periodic travel to countries in Africa and Latin America 
• Position will be based in the Bay Area of California