Overview
The Senior School Meals Finance & Innovative Capital Officer provides leadership in public finance and innovative capital mobilization to strengthen national school meals systems, ensuring countries can establish sustainable financing architectures aligned with national priorities.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead the development and implementation of fiscal strategy for school meals, including macro-fiscal analysis and cost projections.
- Drive public expenditure and Public Financial Management (PFM) strengthening through reviews and budget analysis.
- Shape fiscal dialogue and long-term financing pathways by producing evidence-based trade-offs and ROI cases.
- Mobilize diverse capital sources from MDBs, DFIs, impact investors, and other partners.
- Advance innovative financing instruments such as Results-Based Financing and Social Impact Bonds.
- Shape investor alignment and enabling environments by negotiating terms and risk-mitigation structures.
- Guide governments to design or update multisectoral national school meals plans.
- Strengthen the national school meals ecosystem by convening additional actors.
- Enable governments to translate priorities into concrete partnership opportunities.
- Oversee technical assistance with partners, ensuring agreements align with government priorities.
- Establish and reinforce national and subnational coordination platforms.
- Champion systems-leadership capacity by strengthening government and country-team skills.
- Oversee multisectoral ecosystem performance and partner coordination.
- Foster cohesive ways of working across country teams, SFI, ministries, and financing partners.
- Model SMA’s systemic leadership culture by building trust and promoting collaboration.
- Institutionalize financial learning by generating benchmarks and sustainability indicators.
- Drive continuous improvement by refining financial models and sharing lessons on blended and innovative finance.
Required Experience
- At least eight years of progressively senior experience in public finance, development finance, blended-finance structuring, investment analysis, or sovereign/public-sector financing in government or international development settings.
- Extensive experience engaging ministries of finance and sectoral ministries on fiscal strategy, budget planning, expenditure reviews, and medium-term fiscal analysis.
- Demonstrated track record mobilizing capital with Multilateral Development Banks, Development Finance Institutions, impact investors, philanthropic actors, private financial institutions, and other global partners.
- Demonstrated international experience collaborating with diverse partners across regions and organizational levels.
- Substantial experience translating complex macro-fiscal and financial analysis into decision-ready strategies, investment cases, and policy recommendations.
Qualifications
Advanced university degree in Finance, Economics, Development Finance, Public Policy, Public Administration, Development Economics, or another relevant field; or a first university degree with additional years of relevant professional experience and/or advanced training.
