Company Profile

Established in 2012, Star Shea Ltd. is a social business dedicated to commercialize shea nuts and butter directly supplied by the Star Shea Network, a federation of rural Ghanaian women involved in informal shea processing. Its mission is to empower these informal shea women producers and provide them with access to the formal economy.

To accomplish this mission, StarShea Ltd. has the following objectives:

• Reinforce and expand the Star Shea Network (SSN), a national association of shea producers established as part of the “Shea Value Chain Reinforcement Project”, a project implemented by PlaNet Finance and supported by SAP, the European Union and the French Development Agency, to achieve economies of scale
• Facilitate the production of premium quality shea nuts and butter through the SSN by providing the necessary quality control and training
• Develop sustainable market outlets and a market strategy to sustain the business and thus the livelihoods of SSN members
• Diversify and help stabilize the women’s sources of revenue by including shea nuts and shea butter to their income stream.
• StarShea Ltd. is positioned as a “reliable and sustainable supplier of economic quantities of consistently high quality, traceable and ethically sourced shea kernels and natural butter”.

StarShea Ltd target is to reach 35 000 women within 2018 to reach breakeven.

StarShea Ltd is a social business, ie the management is evaluated on:

• the capacity to increase women’s revenue on a long term perspective
• the number of women benefiting from the service provided

Job Description

• Location: Field
• Office: Tamale, Ghana
• Mission Start: January 4th  2016
• Contract duration: 1 year local contract (renewable)

Job summary

The shea coordinator is attached to a determined sector, he is managing the women groups in this sector and make sure women sell the targeted volumes of nuts and butter to StarShea

His target is to build/gather women groups who could be suppliers of StarShea Ltd for nuts and butter. Benefitting from StarShea access to market and increasing their revenue.

He is their coordinator and main contact for all relations with StarShea Ltd: commercial transactions, logistic issues, pre-financing.

Organize Shea processors into groups, clusters, associations & a network, provide technical & group & business management training to strengthen the Shea network, and provide other business advisory services that will enable groups sell to StarShea or other buyers.

Organizes buying of nuts and aggregation in order to maximize the number of bags brought per women

Organizes the production of butter in order to achieve target of volumes, optimize costs of productions and of buying.

A. Organize Shea processors into groups, clusters, associations & a network.

• Identify & assess communities suitable for shea production;
• Assess & select shea processors who meet the requirements for participation to the network;
• Form groups of shea processors in the selected communities from the qualified producers;
• Facilitate the formation, selection of leaders & functioning of associations & the network of shea processors in each  district,, develop and document bye-laws for the groups;
• Asses existing shea groups in communities, check group functionality and dynamic, provide them with additional group management training of necessary.
• Train groups of shea processors on group dynamics & management;
• Strengthen the ability of the leaders of the shea network to function effectively to enable the network meet the requirements of buyers;

B. Capacity building and certification of shea processors & the shea network

• Train the women on business management & how to process quality nuts & butter;
• Monitor, coach and mentor the groups and their secretaries throughout the year in their processing and business activities;
• Work with the women to optimize their cost of production with any adequate action.
• Train the selected groups on organic and fair trade certification issues, put in place the required supervision and violation processes, records and all paper documentation needed

C. Provide other services to enable women sell qualitative and optimized products.

• Facilitate access to credit from other sources (MFI’s, ..)
• Facilitate the shea processors & their groups to acquire any necessary tools for their business activities: protective clothing, mobile phones, stoves, roasters, …
• Implement the shea quality assurance system of the network at the field level to ensure high & consistent quality of products;
• Implement the Internal Control System for targeted groups for certification.
• Identify the women in need of a cash advance, determine the level of pre-finance needed. Gather all demands and formalizes the disbursement demand to StarShea Ltd.
• Receive the money to disburse and proceed to individual disbursement. Supervises the reimbursement in products or collection in community warehouses.

D. Organize and Supervise the production of nuts, aggregation and loading 

• Control the capacity of the women and check the pre-financing figures / delivered bags
• Organize the local warehouses and their equipment with a target of minimizing operational costs
• Organize any pre-financing of nuts if necessary, controls the balances and cash level at each time.
• Plan the nut collection sites with the constraints of the buyer and the women executives, help on organizing the loading and give suggestions to minimize all internal transport.
• Organize the payment of the women at all time, ensures that premiums are identified, and CVs and secretary paid by Team leader

E. Organize and supervise the production of butter 

• Provides reliable capacity & forecast figures and proper reporting
• Organize any pre-financing of nuts or operational costs if necessary, supervise the disbursement.
• Select the communities / groups who will process for an order and determines the targets and the time line with the Team Leader. In charge of implementing the right procedures : LPO’s, receptions, cleaning procedures, for organic…
• Organize the transport of the packaging material, the nuts if necessary with the Supply Chain Manager and Team leader
• Make sure that the target will be reached, take any necessary measure with the Team Leader to re-distribute the volumes assigned to different groups/communities if needed
• Check randomly the quality process and empowers the women executive in their quality management role. Collect the quality samples, and recommends actions for improvement if need be.
• Organize the pick up from the communities with the Team Leader and Supply Chain Manager and organize the supervision of the container loading wherever it takes place
• Organize the payment of the women and collect the evidence of payment for office control

Reporting line

• Reports to Team Leader

Transversal lines

• For all administrative stuff: per diem, technical support, administrative questions he refers directly to the Finance Team / Supply Chain Manager
• He collaborates with the staff of all StarShea partners: NGO’s, MFI’s, .. to organize and smoothen the field work

The compensation will be in three parts

• Fixed amount monthly
• Variable amount, every month on KPI’s (to be determined yearly and agreed upon with the management)
  • Number of new women recruited
  • Number of collected bag per women
  • Number of kg of butter processed by women
  • Quality of the products delivered to Star Shea
  • Optimized costs: number of women trained per day/ trip cost
  • Quality of reporting
• Variable amount, yearly:
  • Cost optimization of women: checking the process and helping them find economic ways to transform butter
  • Increase of revenue of the women: nuts opportunities, butter opportunities, increase yield, increased part of the nuts/butter sold through SS Ltd, 

Required Skills or Experience

• Level of studies: HND or BSc
• 1 or 2 years of experience
• Languages :  local northern languages
• Driving license
• Capacity to provide a guarantor liable for 20 000 GHS
• Skills:
  • Organizational strength
  • Thoroughness in handling money, handling documentation, reporting, monetary transactions
  • Communication and training capacity
  • Excell and computer skills