Climate Change Manager, Impact Group, South Africa at British International Investment

Purpose

The Climate Change team is hiring a Manager to work from the South Africa office, working with relevant deal teams on climate financed investments in Africa, with a particular focus on driving innovative financing and investment solutions for decarbonisation of the South Africa energy sector and for increasing climate adaptation and resiliency solutions. The role will lead engagement with domestic and international partners on the mobilisation of private capital for accelerating South Africa’s transition from coal to zero emissions energy in line with the governments 2050 net zero strategy and NDC under the Paris Agreement. The role will require collaborating with several teams across the firm, particularly the Project Finance, Equity and Energy Access and Efficiency teams in the infrastructure and climate (I&C) group, to deliver our contribution towards accelerating the clean energy transition within the RSA JETP.

BII’s title structure is Associate, Executive, Manager, Director, and Managing Director. This role will report to Amal-Lee Amin, Managing Director and Head of Climate Change.

Responsibilities

The Climate Change Manager will:

• Work with Infrastructure and Climate group (I&C) and Africa Coverage teams to support development and execution of investment strategies and pipeline development for climate finance opportunities; support relevant market assessments and the deployment of innovative use of financial products (including use of concessional funding for accelerating commercialisation of key technologies and/or risk-sharing to mobilise private investors);
• Lead for the climate team on engaging RSA stakeholders on the JETP, working closely with I&C Team Heads around opportunities for scaling climate finance to accelerate the transition from coal to zero emissions energy, with a focus on renewable energy, green hydrogen, utility scale storage and resource efficiency, including for climate resilient water investments;
• Work with and support the Financial Services Group (FSG) and the SMART (Services, Manufacturing, Agriculture, Real Estate and Technology) business group on identifying and developing pipeline, and engagement within the portfolio for increasing decarbonisation and A&R solutions, including through carbon markets and/or dedicated transition finance;
• Engage with internal and external collaborators to represent BII on just transition finance and support broader BII coordination around new JETPs (Indonesia, India, Vietnam and Senegal) to ensure sharing of lessons and good practise from RSA reinforces future climate finance investment strategies and partnerships, including for transition finance.

The candidate

Essential skills

Successful candidates will:

• Be experienced in climate and sustainability issues across the corporate, finance and investor sectors within an African context, particularly as relates to the energy transition to zero emissions;
• Have strong quantitative and qualitative analytical expertise and demonstrate ability to apply this to strategic investment decisions and innovative climate financed solutions;
• Demonstrate understanding of the challenges and opportunities for climate financed transactions across relevant sectors, particularly the energy and manufacturing sectors;
• Demonstrate strong understanding of the role of the private sector in delivering net zero emissions development, the importance of a just transition for workers and communities;
• Be familiar with the RSA JETP and emerging financing opportunities and challenges in the energy and manufacturing sectors, and ideally have an existing network within South Africa;
• Be familiar with climate finance methodologies for tracking and reporting on climate finance and emerging approaches towards Paris Alignment;
• Possess strong attention to detail and ability to communicate complex issues in both spoken and written form.

Desirable skills

• Be familiar with the countries and sectors where BII operates;
• Be familiar with interactions between capital deployment and efforts to maximise development impact;
• Understand the investment cycle from origination to exit.
• Candidates should be strongly motivated by BII’s development mission and ideally demonstrate some commitment to development or social goals through previous executive or non-executive activity.