Cooperative Commercial Manager at Sustainable Harvest Rwanda Ltd :Deadline: 23-10-2020

Sustainable Harvest Rwanda Ltd is a locally registered for-profit social enterprise that does wholesale coffee sales business, runs alongside a retail café, and connects smallholder coffee producers to the broader coffee market. The organization believes in transparency, innovation, inclusion, and most of all, great coffee.

The Question Coffee Center is a project of Sustainable Growers Rwanda. SGR created the Question Coffee Center in 2015, as a place where farmers and cooperative managers can learn to taste coffee in the cupping lab and to see how their product is used by consumers, thereby learning how to meet that consumer demand through quality improvements at the farm and cooperative level.

POSITION: COOPERATIVE COMMERCIAL MANAGER

REPORTS TO: Social Enterprise Director

SUPERVISES: None

LOCATION: Kigali

STATUS: Fixed Term Contract

JOB SUMMARY/PURPOSE

To ensure close linkage with Sustainable Growers Rwanda beneficiaries and the cooperatives/export units we work with in order to enhance and facilitate access to the market. These cooperatives include Nyampinga, Twongerumusaruro wa Kawa, Gisuma Coffee, Gashonga cooperative, Mayogi Coffee, S.CPNCK and a cooperative from Tanzania (TBD)

MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES

The responsibilities are but not limited to

• Merge all five cooperatives into a single entity;
• Support cooperatives to obtain export licenses;
• Collect and consolidate information (prices, quality, availability, supplier and competitor positions, macro-economic factors, producer group needs assessments, etc.);
• Advanced knowledge of coffee quality evaluation (cupping) for grading export coffees;
• Support cooperatives with training, season planning, access to finance applications;
• Support cooperatives on the full array of certification and export requirements;
• Manage and support all cooperatives to find a market for all their products locally and internationally;
• Manage and support all supply chain process up to the export;
• Manage inland logistic to bring coffee to FOB and troubleshoot where any issues exist;
• Manage relationship with key producer groups in the region
• Any other reasonable duty as may be assigned that is consistent with the nature of the job and its level of responsibility;
• Create new and manage existing partnerships with cooperative partners such as hotels buyers, roasters

REQUIREMENTS OF THE ROLE

• University Degree in Agricultural Economics or a Bachelor of Commerce with  relevant experience;
• At least 5 years of experience in the trading industry
• Clear understanding of the coffee value chain in East Africa particularly in Rwanda, DRC, Tanzania;
• Good understanding of product description (coffee profiles);
• Good communication skills (written and oral);
• Good customer relationship management skills;
• Language skill: English and French as a must, Kinyarwanda, and Swahili preferred;
• Proactive approach;
• Ability to work independently and as part of a team;
• Highly Efficient and Organized;
• Previous logistic experience is a plus.

KEY DELIVERABLES

• A strong relationship between SGR & Cooperatives;
• Merging of Cooperatives;
• Export and Logistical support:

KEY INDICATORS

• Cooperation and ease of work between SGR & Cooperatives
• Unified and working Cooperatives
• Amount of green coffee sold to local and international buyers