Vacancy title:
Manager, Clean Energy Access - Venture Building

[Type: FULL_TIME, Industry: Agriculture, Food, and Natural Resources, Category: Management]

Jobs at:
CLASP

Deadline of this Job:
Saturday, July 26 2025

Duty Station:
Nairobi | Nairobi | Kenya

Summary
Date Posted: Thursday, July 17 2025, Base Salary: Not Disclosed

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JOB DETAILS:

Responsibilities Include

• Program execution: Lead the venture building workstream under the MECS program, ensuring successful delivery of technical assistance to early-stage and scaling enterprises. Oversee workplans, deliverables, and internal systems that track progress and ensure alignment with broader program goals.
• Pipeline building & support: Source, assess, and support a pipeline of companies - both early-stage innovators and established businesses entering the eCooking space. Provide guidance on business strategy, product-market fit, customer segmentation, and go-to-market strategies.
• Investor readiness & market linkages: Support companies in preparing for investment, including refining business models, impact metrics, and investor materials. Facilitate connections between promising ventures and capital providers, RBF programs, and carbon finance opportunities.
• Collaboration with venture studios: Engage with venture studios and incubators to support new company creation, contributing technical and market expertise, and facilitating field testing, design validation, and consumer feedback loops.
• Team development: Manage and mentor a growing venture building team. Set a strong team culture focused on rigor, collaboration, learning, and accountability.
• Stakeholder engagement: Cultivate and manage relationships with investors, companies, technical partners, donors, and government stakeholders to advance a healthy, inclusive eCooking market ecosystem.
• Impact tracking, learning & strategy: Contribute to CLASP’s evolving venture building strategy, documenting learning, identifying gaps in the market, and adapting approaches based on evidence and feedback from partners and the field. Monitor and evaluate the progress of project activities, identify opportunities for improvement, and communicate progress.
• Communication and advocacy: Work with CLASP’s communications team to design and disseminate compelling stories of program success, research outcomes, lessons learned, etc. Work with colleagues around the world to share plans and strategies. Be a leading strategic voice within and outside of the organization, and bolster CLASP’s brand equity and reputation through both internal and external engagements, e.g. speaking engagements, thought pieces.
• Contribute to business development: Support development of proposals, investor education resources, and co-investment models. Engage with funders to ensure alignment between CLASP’s venture support work and donor priorities.

Who You Are

• Entrepreneurial and Strategic. You’ve built or supported the growth of early-stage ventures and understand what it takes to go from idea to scale especially in low-income or emerging markets.
• Grounded in Market Realities. You have direct experience working with SMEs or consumer-facing companies in Africa and can translate big-picture strategies into practical, on-the-ground support that helps businesses thrive.
• Ecosystem Builder. You are energized by partnerships with investors, funders, product designers, and last-mile distributors and can bring people together to support a shared vision for change.
• Adept Communicator. You are clear, persuasive, and confident in writing and in person. You can frame complex concepts simply and adapt your message to different audiences.
• Flexible and Decisive. You’re comfortable navigating uncertainty and shifting priorities. You’re resourceful, proactive, and know how to make smart decisions with imperfect information.
• Team Leader. You enjoy mentoring others, building team culture, and helping colleagues succeed in cross-functional teams.

Qualifications

• A minimum of 8–10 years of experience in business development, venture support, or program implementation in the energy access, clean tech, or innovation space.
• Experience working directly with early-stage businesses or supporting scale-up of companies in emerging markets. Venture studio, incubator/accelerator, or impact investing experience a strong plus.
• Bachelor’s degree required. Graduate degree in business, economics, public policy, engineering, or a related field preferred.
• Demonstrated understanding of business model design, user research, and market development in low-income contexts. Experience with energy access, clean cooking, or consumer appliances preferred.
• Familiarity with investor needs and experience helping companies become investment ready. Exposure to carbon finance, RBF programs, or blended finance models is beneficial.
• Strong stakeholder management and partnership development skills. Able to operate effectively across public and private sectors.
• Outstanding written and verbal communication skills in English. Swahili or French proficiency is a bonus.

Work Hours: 8

Experience in Months: 96

Level of Education: bachelor degree

Job application procedure

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