View Vacancy – Deputy Country Director and Business Engagement Lead, C5 (06/21 ACC)

Overview

The Department for International Trade (DIT) is the Trade Promotion and Negotiation organisation for the UK. We promote UK businesses overseas and attract foreign investment to our shores. We have 3,000 staff across the globe in over 100 countries. Our aspiration is to address some of the challenges facing the UK, by helping British businesses to internationalise and grow overseas.

DIT Africa is one of the nine DIT global networks and is led by Emma Wade-Smith, HM Trade Commissioner (HMTC) for Africa, based in Johannesburg. Emma is supported by two Deputy Trade Commissioners.

The Africa Region is exciting and energising and UK firms have a strong presence here, making the UK the second largest investor on the continent. With some of the strongest growing economies in the world and booming population growth, there are numerous more opportunities for UK firms; from tech start-ups in the West to infrastructure in the East. The Network’s role is to promote these opportunities and position the UK as the continent’s number one trading partner and investor.

DIT in Ghana

DIT in Ghana is based in Accra, and forms a core part of the British High Commission. On a daily basis, you will report to the Country Director for Ghana, with additional strategic direction provided by the Department’s sector directors. You will be a key part of the wider British High Commission team in Ghana, all working to improve economic development, investment and trade between the UK and Ghana.

Roles and responsibilities:

The Role

The UK government has committed to radically expand its presence in Africa. The primary objective of your role as Deputy Country Director and Business Engagement Lead is to encourage private sector led growth, by protecting and promoting investment and leveraging the strengths of businesses in order to support the poverty reduction, investment and broader economic objectives of Ghana, as well as supporting the UK’s investment ambitions in Africa.

Your role will be split between Deputy Country Director and Business Engagement Lead. You will:

• Develop and maintain a network of high value trade and investment relationships in Ghana,  including in the Government of Ghana and the local British and Ghanaian business community.
•  As part of the DIT Leadership Team, help to shape DIT and wider UK prosperity activity in Ghana, identifying and regularly reviewing priorities for trade, outward investment, trade policy and market access work streams, ensuring that these are fully aligned to the DIT Africa Regional Trade Plan and British High Commission (BHC) Country Plan.
• You will work with the BHC’s Prosperity Strategy to develop a deep understanding of their suite of programmes and ensure full DIT support and collaboration on the relevant programmes, balancing resources and priorities to best effect. As part of this you will work closely with colleagues across FCO, DFID and Other Government Departments (OGDs) at post to identify synergies and opportunities for collaboration on areas of mutual interest that will deliver the BHC’s Prosperity Strategy.
• You will support the delivery of the twice annual UK-Ghana Business Council, our highest level bilateral forum in Ghana.
• Provide leadership to the DIT Ghana team by providing oversight of:

1. Our sector specific export campaigns, ensuring they have clear objectives, and a clear pipeline of deals and activities in place to achieve those objectives. You will also have overall ownership of DIT Ghana’s deals pipeline.
2. Our delivery of high quality chargeable services, which includes undertaking market research and organising visit programmes and events on behalf of UK companies (working closely with the Trade Services Unit based in Lagos)
3. The organisation of visits and trade missions, including by trade ministers, the Trade Commissioner and the Prime Minister’s Trade Envoy. You will also manage an events schedule in support of the DIT Ghana Country Plan, leveraging the HMTC, Deputy Trade Commissioners, Heads of Mission and Trade Envoys.

• Deputise for the Country Director where required, ensuring that senior stakeholders including Her Majesty’s High Commissioner and Her Majesty’s Trade Commissioner (HMTC) for Africa based in Johannesburg are fully briefed on and active in support of DIT’s objectives in Ghana.
• Represent DIT Africa and HMG at events to promote Ghana to new UK businesses. You will need to be a confident public speaker, networker and relationship builder.
• You will manage the relationship with The Prime Minister’s Trade Envoy’s office, ensuring that they remain fully briefed on our priorities and leading on their visits.
• Work with the Regional UK Export Finance (UKEF) lead – based in Accra – to promote, where relevant, the financing products offered by UKEF (the British government’s Export Credit Agency), to support companies win contracts.

Business Engagement Lead

• Coordinate the team’s exports campaign, developing a clear pipeline of deals and managing strategic relationships with industry and driving a strategy to secure export wins for UK companies. You will work closely with our team of trade advisors in order to achieve this.
• You will act as first point of contact for all UK businesses seeking to enter Ghana, triaging queries and redirecting them as appropriate, and providing advice to UK business either exporting to or seeking to do business in Ghana.
• You will use the above relationships to help HMG in Ghana to lobby for key reforms to the Ghanaian business environment by identifying ‘high value market access barriers’ and working with colleagues across the BHC to tackle this. You will line manage DIT Ghana’s Market Access Lead.

All of this makes for an exciting, busy and varied job. There may also be some travel opportunities. As the successful candidate, you will be a dynamic leader with good communication skills, able to motivate the trade and investment team and prosperity colleagues, and engage credibly with senior people. You will be good at thinking strategically and planning for the future. You will be able to demonstrate the management capability to support a high performing, flexible and agile team; and have a proven ability to build good relationships with stakeholders and clients. You will also be comfortable drilling down into the detail to manage the performance of the team against its targets. You will also be an exceptional team player, able to work closely with colleagues across the High Commission to ensure strategic activity is joined up and well represented across the One-HMG platform, and have the confidence to represent interests of the Ghanaian trade team and its people.

Resources managed:

1 x C4L but with general management support for a further 3 x C4L staff.

• Experience of the following: business development, understanding issues and pursuing strategies together, investment appraisal, deal pipeline preparation, deal brokering, advisory
• At least five years professional work experience
• Commercial experience, including building deal pipelines
• Experience in managing budgets
• Experience of supporting (ideally UK) businesses in Africa
• Experience of working in organisations with a matrix management structure
• Fluent spoken and written English
• Minimum qualification, relevant undergraduate degree.