Vacancy Announcement
ETHIOPIAN AGRICULTURAL TRANSFORMATION AGENCY
Position: SPO-Project Manager, Ethiopian Agribusiness Acceleration Platform Project
Term of Employment: Project – initially one year with possible extension
Duty Station(s): Addis Ababa
Required Number: One
Salary & Benefits: Competitive
Application Deadline: March 31, 2018
BACKGROUND:
The Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA) has been established by the Government of Ethiopia (GoE) to identify and address systemic bottlenecks to Ethiopia’s agricultural development. The Agency does this through problem-solving, implementation support, and capacity building of stakeholders involved in implementation of interventions that address the systemic bottlenecks. The Agency reports to the Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources Development and is Secretary to the Transformation Council chaired by the Prime Minister.
The programmatic focus of the Agency responds to a core set of needs identified by the Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources Development and the Transformation Council. Within the Agency, issues are divided into four different pillars: Crops & Natural Resources which includes Inputs and Plant Protection, Livestock, Soil Health & Fertility, Irrigation and Drainage, and Mechanization; Cross Cutting Initiatives, which includes Inclusive Growth, Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation, and Planning and MLE; Livestock, which includes Animal Health and Genetic Improvement and Feed & Feeding; and Agribusiness and Markets including Market Development, Rural Finance, ICT, Private Sector, and Organizational and Human Capacity. In addition, the Agricultural Commercialization Clusters Initiative is another critical focus area for the Agency. Across the programs, the ATA engages public, private and non-governmental stakeholders to support strategic planning, manage and strengthen implementation capacity and test innovative models.
Our Culture
We have an exceptional team of highly competent employees with a proven track record of success in managing complex activities and achieving transformational results. Our culture is one where talented, dedicated and adaptable individuals are committed to doing their best and exhibit great team work to achieve excellent results.
At ATA, we provide an exceptional platform for people who want to achieve their highest potential and make a meaningful contribution in changing the country’s agricultural sector. We offer rewarding work in a young, fast-paced growing organization with passionate, committed, motivated colleagues and excellent career development and training. We recognize our most valuable assets are our staff and are committed to providing our employees with the tools, training and mentorships necessary to achieve their career goals.
POSITION SUMMARY:
The Government of Ethiopia (GoE) has made the transformation and commercialization of the agriculture sector a key tenet of its second Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP II). At the very core of the strategy to achieve this transformation is the transition of smallholder farmers from subsistence orientation to market focused production systems and activities that better integrate them into domestic and global supply chains. The full development and competitiveness of the entire agricultural value chain is thus critical to ensure that smallholder farmers can make the necessary market linkages that allow such supply chain integrations to happen.
Agriculture oriented enterprises that are so essential to make value chains competitive are however largely missing, in particular across the downstream end of the value chain. A number of challenges have contributed to the absence of sufficient number of agriculture enterprises in Ethiopia, chief among them an under-developed business ecosystem “building blocks” such as access to appropriate and timely financial products and services, talent, support businesses, and under-developed downstream processing/manufacturing capabilities. There is thus a need for targeted support to spur the growth of agriculture oriented enterprises that can address this gap.
In many other countries, well-designed and well-financed Agribusiness Accelerators have shown the ability to fill such gaps through comprehensive business development services and funding for start-ups and growth agro-enterprises. The Ethiopian Agribusiness Acceleration Platform (EAAP) project will test and validate the accelerator concept for Ethiopia. The EAAP, in its initial years, will have both value chain focus as well as product and service offerings to demonstrate its impact. It will anchor its activities around identification and operational capacity building of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) for investment readiness and scale up, and provision of matching seed grants to the most promising SMEs. The value chain focus for testing the accelerator model will be on Honey given its agro-ecological strengths, strong existing demand sinks, high degree of investment attractiveness, strong government support, and other parallel investments that create opportunities for significant leverage.
The SPO-Agribusiness Acceleration Platform Project Manager will be responsible for the overall management of the Project and effective day-to-day management of team members, providing best practice project management, analytical, technical, operational and problem solving support on a range of areas that include, but not limited to: development of detailed implementation plans, value chain analysis, coordinating the design and implementation of contract farming schemes, facilitating financing of enterprises admitted to the platform, directing market and investment research, undertaking business opportunity identification and market linkages, identifying operational capacity building programs, identifying and coordinating service providers and mentors, and training module development.
The Project Manager will work closely with Program Teams within ATA’s Agribusiness & Markets Vertical as well as across other ATA Program Teams, and with external stakeholders such as the Ministry of Trade, Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries, Federal and Regional level government bodies, relevant associations, and other private sector market actors to further develop the Honey value chain and expand the domestic and international market position of Ethiopian Honey.
This position will officially report to the Managing Director of the Ethiopian Agribusiness Acceleration Platform (EAAP).
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