Program Officer – Internal/External

Job Vacancies at The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) – ILRI

Position: Program Officer – Internal/External

Salary: Birr 150,522 per month

Application Deadline: June, 10/2024

The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) seeks to recruit a Program Officer who will be responsible for supporting the implementation of country strategy through grant-making and stakeholder convening, relevant country government relations and policy development, and relevant country business development and resource mobilization.

AGRA is an African-led institution that actively supports the drive towards inclusive agricultural transformation and sustainable food systems. We do this by empowering the continent’s 33 million smallholder farming households to transform their agriculture from a struggle to survive to profitable businesses. The continent’s farmers regularly face challenges, and we aspire to provide uniquely African solutions that respond to their agricultural and environmental challenges, leading to increased harvests for reduced hunger and more income.

Working in alignment with the development priorities of our focus countries, we enable farmers to access improved and high-yielding seeds, gain knowledge on sustainable farming, and linkages to profitable markets.

In our work, we aspire to build the alliances, partnerships, and networks required to drive an inclusive agricultural transformation. We work with our partners to create an equitable youth-friendly environment that harnesses the youth dividend on the continent to drive growth and facilitate open employment opportunities for young women and men. We achieve our key objectives through a focus on the following four areas of intervention:

1. Policy and state capability – We support governments in creating an enabling environment for private sector involvement in agricultural transformation.
2. Seed systems – We trigger higher productivity by increasing the availability and access to improved seeds by farmers allowing them to increase their harvests for food security and better incomes.
3. Sustainable farming – We support farmers in building resilient farming systems for sustained high yields through interventions such as mechanization and irrigation.
4. Inclusive markets and trade – We work to increase the linkages between farmers, and other market actors for a positive, sustained cycle of commercialization and reinvestment.

Implementing Our New Strategy Through People

People are the heart of our organization and remain the true drivers of our delivery and our impact. We work with incredible people and partners who have roots in farming communities across the continent combined with an inclusive and diverse workforce from over 24 nationalities. Our commitment to a call to action goes beyond ourselves as we arise to catalyze African Food Systems’ transformation by being Deeply collaborative, Executing Excellently, Sincerely Constructive and Increasingly Entrepreneurial aligned with our values of (I-RISE; Integrity, Respect, Innovation, Stewardship and Equity).

We are, therefore, looking for people who are passionate about Africa to join our innovative, growing, and multidisciplinary team. Together, we can grow Africa’s food systems improving the livelihoods of smallholder farmers. Want to join us?

Key Responsibilities:

• Support AGRA’s engagement with national government and donors for the design and implementation of appropriate policies and interventions to create an enabling environment for investment by smallholder farmers and agribusinesses;
• Identifies, develops, and maintains strong relationships with other partners who are working to improve food and agricultural policies;
• Supports the team in identifying Clusters in key agricultural production areas;
• Identifies, supports, and guides efforts that enable smallholder farmers to sell their products and capture value from downstream activities;
• Leads efforts to facilitate economic transactions between value chain players and smallholder farmers in Africa;
• Facilitate data and information pipeline to monitor programs across themes – contributing to dashboard development, program standardization, and quality control in collaboration with the country team;
• Promotes the agricultural transformation agenda. with AGRA technical experts to develop appropriate partnerships;
• Collaborates across AGRA to identify and overcome policy-related constraints on technology development, dissemination, and uptake;
• Represent the country office at grantees fora and liaise with project focal staff for areas where special attention is needed by other program officers;
• Engages the Country Programs Lead and Program Officers to assess and advise on capacity needs and gaps in grantees’ ability to implement projects;
• Networks with broad stakeholders: financial institutions, grantees, universities, other funders, international organizations, and beneficiaries;
• Builds and maintains a wide network of stakeholders and contributors to the work;
• Negotiates to bring diverse collaborators together and advocates for their work;
• Identify potential grantees and work with them to develop impactful interventions;
• Oversees and supervises consortiums;
• Devises ways to strengthen national capacities for policy design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation;
• Work with cross-functional teams in making critical decisions during challenging situations;
• Review grant portfolio to ensure grantees are implementing programs by the contractual agreement;
• Oversees the grantee’s actual implementation process and provides relevant backstopping as may be required;
• Creates regular periodic reports as may be required by the Country Director/ Programs Lead;
• Implements the specified program activities by approved annual work plans jointly formulated with the beneficiaries;
• Assess projects to help identify and resolve program issues, thus ensuring the programs stay on schedule and within budget.

Academic and professional qualifications:

Education:

• Master’s degree or Bachelor’s degree in Agriculture, Agricultural Economics, Public Finance, Public Administration, Business Administration, Law, or related disciplines
• Relevant professional certification
• In-depth knowledge in a technical or specialized field

Experience:

• Master’s degree with seven years of relevant experience or Bachelor’s degree with ten years of relevant experience

Skills:

• Experience in grant-making and in leading policy-related development initiatives primarily in Africa.
• Experience managing complex initiatives with a proven ability to develop high-impact partnerships.
• Senior-level experience designing and implementing policy and regulatory reform in the public sector.

Duty Station: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Grade: HG 17

Minimum Base Salary: Birr 150,522 per month (negotiable depending on the salary history of the candidate)

Terms of appointment: This is a National Staff (NS) position, initial appointment is for three years with the possibility of renewal, contingent upon individual performance and the availability of funding. The ILRI remuneration package for nationally recruited staff in Ethiopia includes a very competitive salary and benefits such as life and medical insurance, an offshore pension plan, etc.

How to apply

Applicants should provide a cover letter and curriculum vitae; names and addresses (including telephone and email) of three referees who are knowledgeable about the candidate’s professional qualifications and work experience to be included in the curriculum vitae.

The position and reference number: PO/AGRA/17/24 should be indicated in the subject line of the cover letter.

All applications are to be submitted online on our recruitment portal using the below apply button on or before 10 June 2024.

AGRA/ILRI does not charge a fee at any stage of the recruitment process (application, interview meeting, processing, or training).

To find out more about working at ILRI visit our website at https://www.ilri.org/

Suitably qualified women are particularly encouraged to apply.