The position
The job advertised by this vacancy is for the position of Gender and Rural Development Expert, for each of the duty stations mentioned above. You will function within a team of experts with complementary expertise in integrated seed sector development. You will be mainly working on strengthening informal seed system. You will also play an important role in mainstreaming gender in the project by coaching other team members in gender sensitive and responsive activity planning.
Informal seed system activities of ISSD are aimed at helping farmers to improve seed access and use of farmer preferred varieties for the most important food and nutrition rich crops, including traditional and neglected crops. A specific aim of these activities is to focus on understanding and responding to the seed demand of the above mentioned crops, with special attention to women and vulnerable farmers. You will support participatory variety selection processes with germplasm from formal and informal sources and promote local seed quality control mechanisms. You will play an important role in gender analysis of ISSD approaches, activities, and processes along with other regional experts, identify capacity gaps in relation to gender and facilitate necessary capacity development.
You will be supervised by the regional scientific coordinator, who will be assisted by a project manager. The project manager will supervise you on a day to day basis. Expertise, guidance, and support on project strategy and implementation, monitoring and evaluation (M&E) and data management will be provided by the Addis Ababa based ISSD Ethiopia project management unit (PMU) and team of experts from Wageningen University & Research (WUR), the Netherlands will support PMU. Regional activity planning will be conducted with the participation of PMU and often in collaboration with other projects united by the BENEFIT partnership, which is explained briefly below. You will be an active participant in knowledge sharing and learning events with the teams based at other duty stations.
Key Responsibilities
The goal of ISSD Ethiopia is to improve female and male smallholder farmer access to and use of quality seed of new, improved and/or farmer preferred varieties to sustainably increase agricultural productivity. The project builds upon more than four years existing experience in supporting the development of a vibrant, pluralistic and market oriented seed sector in Ethiopia. In its current phase (2016 – 2019), ISSD Ethiopia will strengthen seed producers in informal, intermediary and formal seed systems; enhance the performance of seed value chains within different seed systems; and contribute to the improvement of an enabling environment for seed value chains in the different seed systems. In addition, the project will strengthen the professional capacities for implementing the ISSD approach.
ISSD Ethiopia is implemented in four regions of Ethiopia through multiple partnerships
The ISSD Ethiopia project is one of four projects united under the BENEFIT partnership in Ethiopia. BENEFIT stands for Bilateral Ethiopia-Netherlands Effort for Food, Income and Trade. It is a partnership among four projects in the country, including ISSD Ethiopia, and with the Ethiopian agricultural sector itself, funded by the Dutch Government. ISSD Ethiopia is implemented by five regional ISSD units hosted at four universities and one seed enterprise in four regions of the country, supported by the PMU and BENEFIT partnership coordination unit (PCU), both located in Addis Ababa, and by Wageningen UR, the Netherlands. Regional implementing partners are: Bahir Dar University; Haramaya University and Oromia Seed Enterprise; Hawassa University; and Mekelle University, operating in Amhara, Oromia, Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Region (SNNPR) and Tigray, in corresponding order of mention.
Report to: Regional scientific coordinator and project manager; and technically to ISSD Ethiopia Project Management Unit (PMU) in Addis Ababa.
Note: Those who previously applied for gender and nutrition expert as announced by ISSD can reapply for this post.
The kind of person we are looking for:
Applicants must satisfy at least all of the following minimum requirements:
Experience, knowledge, and skills required
Experience and knowledge in gender and rural development and how food security and nutrition can be improved through gender sensitive and gender responsive rural development is necessary. Having an existing professional network in the seed sector is a great asset in your favour. Demonstrated understanding and experience with the ISSD Ethiopia project approach will be an advantage for candidates applying for this position.
The Gender and Rural Development Expert should have knowledge, experience, and skills in:
To perform the function optimally, the candidate should be able to:
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