Solar Village designs, manufactures, distributes and finances solar solutions for small-scale farmers. Our products are tailored to farmers’ needs, and are sold at a price they can afford. Our "home market" is Zambia where we run our own Business-to-Customer sales operations. In addition, we currently have Business-to-Business (B2B) customers in 6 other African markets and are run pilots with potenial B2B in several others.
Vertical Divider
Our main product is the Battery Stick™, which provides electricity in the field and in the home. In the field, it powers an ultra-low volume sprayer that helps farmers increase their productivity and improve their yields. In the home, the Battery Stick charges phones, provides lighting and even powers a TV. Thanks to our Pay-As-You-Go payment plans, farmers are able to purchase the Battery Stick™ at a low price, and immediately start to see the benefits. In Zambia, we sell the Battery Stick™ through a network of sales agents living in rural communities. We work closely with the cotton industry since their farmers see the value of the sprayer to increase their income and we recruit lead cotton farmers to become Solar Village agents.
Our company is now at the beginning of a phase of strong growth and is looking for talent for key positions. While we are a for-profit organization, we take a triple bottom line approach to evaluating our performance. Profitability is an important metric and it will determine how quickly we can scale, but we are also here for the satisfaction of building something sustainable and meaningful. Working for a fast growing organization gives us the ability to influence outcomes and brings us the gratification of seeing a direct impact where we work.
CONTEXT
We recently secured significant growth funding to expand our operations in Zambia. We intend to reach 160,000 farmers in the next 4 years - 50,000 of which in Zambia. Many highly scalable agribusiness partnerships are "lined up", and we now need to make sure that these come to fruition.
OUR PHILOSOPHY
We are an innovation-seeking company that tries to find and implement new solutions to existing problems of our customers - African smallholder farmers. To be able to do that, we need to listen to our customers, and we also need the commitment, the competence and ideas of all our staff members. So all our staff members are involved at various levels to shape our company. On the one hand, they are given responsibilities and space to fulfill these. At the same time, we hold each other accountable for delivering on these.
We build our company with talented individuals who believe in Solar Village’s mission and who can help us build a culture of excellence, growth and inclusivity. We keep an open mind and we invest in each other because we know we all have a lot to learn. We believe that when the players on a team are happy, focused on their strengths and fully engaged, customers are well served, goals are exceeded and the company grows.
If you decide to work with us, and have the right mindset, you can expect high impact and personal growth. Are you up for the challenge?
ESSENTIAL CHARACTER TRAITS
Open-mindedness & humility We are pioneering solar solutions for rural farmers in Africa. There is no roadmap on how to succeed with this. Therefore, we need to dare to experiment, learn from our mistakes and adapt. We believe it takes multiple perspectives to understand a problem and to find the best solution. A collaborative and open-minded approach is therefore essential. For that reason, it always the best ideas that should "win" in our conversations.
Adaptability Plan A often does not work where we work. So we need to be flexible and ready change course whenever it shows that things are not working as expected.
A desire to invest in yourself Whether it is a skill, knowledge or even attitude gap, we are all a “work in progress” and we need to be intentional in our personal growth if we want to grow and succeed as a team.
A desire to invest in others It doesn’t matter which “position” you apply for, you will end up leading or being part of a team. We will invest in you to become the best team member you can be and we expect that you will do the same with the people around you. We believe that building staff capacity is what responsible businesses should do and that’s what we expect from all our leaders and staff members to contribute to.
Resilience In our journey to where we are today, we have experienced great progress but also faced many - sometimes very heavy -setbacks. We expect setbacks to occur, and whenever they do, we remain focused on the solutions that help us overcome whatever challenges.
NEW ROLE
Finance Manager Location: Kabwe, Zambia Type: Full-time Start date: 15th August 2023 or earlier
