Overview

Pharo Foundation (“the Foundation”) is a pioneering, mission-driven organisation working to build a vibrant, productive, and self-reliant Africa. Founded and fully funded by Pharo Management, an emerging markets hedge fund, the Foundation represents a new model of philanthropic capitalism: a private endowment using its own capital to design, fund, and operate development programmes with private-sector discipline and long-term commitment.

Over the next decade, the Foundation’s ambition is to deliver lasting impact across three interdependent missions:

• Empowering the next generation through affordable, high-quality education.
• Solving water scarcity by building and operating sustainable water infrastructure.
• Driving economic productivity by unlocking jobs, investment, and innovation through both non-profit and for-profit ventures.

The Foundation operates in Ethiopia, Somaliland, Kenya, and Rwanda, employing more than 750 people. It combines a not-for-profit engine: Pharo Development, with a for-profit engine, Pharo Ventures, which builds and operates sustainable businesses to create jobs and advance economic self-reliance.

Pharo Ventures is now launching The Pharo Ventures Studio Kigali – a founder-led venture creation platform for reliably converting ideas into prototypes, and into investable companies, leveraging talent, Pharo Foundation’s operational strength and a comprehensive set of pillars of support. We will build companies from the ground up – we ideate, validate, and launch ventures with external founders/ entrepreneurial talent.

The vision is to unlock Africa’s potential by launching a series of ventures that unlock local value chains and bridge critical production-to-market failures through ventures focussing on real assets and real markets, the reality being that Africa lacks integration, more than it lacks technology. We set our focus on creating value, jobs, and resilience.

Opportunity

As a Venture Builder, you will be a hands-on operator responsible for turning ideas into companies. You will work across multiple ventures at different stages – from ideation to early scale – while mentoring founders and venture teams, who will be recruited into the Studio as external entrepreneurial talent. This is not an advisory role – you are expected to work closely with founders to build, test, and execute.

Key Relationships

Role: Ventures Studio Builder

Location: Kigali, Rwanda

Report to: Country Director

Contract Type: Full time

Functional relationships: Ventures Studio Coordinator, Venture teams/ founders

Key Relationships

Role: Ventures Studio Coordinator

Location: Kigali, Rwanda

Report to: Country Director

Contract Type: Full time

Functional relationships: All Rwanda SLT and Venture Builders

Duties and Responsibilities

Venture Creation and Execution in support of venture founders and teams

• Ideation, validation, and launch of new ventures in support of founders
• Support on translating concepts into MVPs, pilots, and early revenue
• Design and test business models suited to the Rwandan market within agriculture and agribusiness

Founder Mentorship

• Coach founders on execution, not just strategy
• Instill an innovation mindset and strong operating discipline
• Support team formation, and culture building
• Guide founders through ambiguity and early-stage challenges

Operational Build-Out support for founders

• Support the setup of core functions: Operations, supply-chains, go-to-market
• Develop partnerships with local and international stakeholders, including establishing a pool of experts to provide technical assistance to founders and venture teams

Experimentation & Learning

• Run rapid experiments to validate assumptions
• Data-driven iterations on product, pricing and distribution
• Document learnings across ventures to improve the studio model

Capital Deployment Support

• Help structure tranche-based (milestones) capital deployment to ventures
• Ensure milestone-driven growth of ventures
• Support ventures in investor readiness

Experience

• 5-10+ years in startups, venture building, consulting or operations
• Proven experience building or scaling a business
• Experience in Rwanda strongly preferred
• Experience in agriculture and/or agribusiness sector strongly preferred

Skills & Attributes

• Strong execution mindset
• Excellent problem-solving and structured thinking
• People leadership and coaching ability
• Entrepreneurial, resilient, and highly adaptable
• Comfortable with uncertainty and failure as part of the process
• Passion for building in Africa and creating real economic impact

What success looks like in this role

• Multiple ventures successfully launched from scratch with external founders/ entrepreneurial talent
• Founders mentored into capable CEOs/ operators
• Clear validation (or rejection) of business ideas within short cycles
• Clear milestones achieved for launched ventures (problem-solution validation, MVP, early revenue, team)

Why join

• Build companies from day zero – not just invest in them
• Shape a new model for venture creation in Rwanda
• Work across sectors with high real-economy impact

• Ideation, validation, and launch of new ventures in support of founders
• Support on translating concepts into MVPs, pilots, and early revenue
• Design and test business models suited to the Rwandan market within agriculture and agribusiness
• Coach founders on execution, not just strategy
• Instill an innovation mindset and strong operating discipline
• Support team formation, and culture building
• Guide founders through ambiguity and early-stage challenges
• Support the setup of core functions: Operations, supply-chains, go-to-market
• Develop partnerships with local and international stakeholders, including establishing a pool of experts to provide technical assistance to founders and venture teams
• Run rapid experiments to validate assumptions
• Data-driven iterations on product, pricing and distribution
• Document learnings across ventures to improve the studio model
• Help structure tranche-based (milestones) capital deployment to ventures
• Ensure milestone-driven growth of ventures
• Support ventures in investor readiness

• Strong execution mindset
• Excellent problem-solving and structured thinking
• People leadership and coaching ability
• Entrepreneurial, resilient, and highly adaptable
• Comfortable with uncertainty and failure as part of the process
• Passion for building in Africa and creating real economic impact

• 5-10+ years in startups, venture building, consulting or operations
• Proven experience building or scaling a business
• Experience in Rwanda strongly preferred
• Experience in agriculture and/or agribusiness sector strongly preferred