Vacancy Announcement
ETHIOPIAN AGRICULTURAL TRANSFORMATION AGENCY
Position: Accounting Mentor - EAAP
Term of Employment: Until 30th June 2020
Duty Station(s): Addis Ababa
Required Number: One
Salary & Benefits: Competitive
Application Deadline: August 6, 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 a Transformation Council chaired by the Prime Minister and whose co-chair is the Minister of Agriculture.
Agriculture oriented enterprises essential to make value chains competitive are largely missing, in particular across the downstream end of the value chain In Ethiopia. A number of challenges have contributed to the absence of sufficient number of agriculture enterprises, chief among them is an under-developed business ecosystem “building blocks” such as access to appropriate and timely financial services, management and sector expertise, 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. This role will also contribute to leveraging the incubator/accelerator model in other value chains through initially providing centralised support to other ATA projects that have touchpoints with a number of SMEs (MSME Project).
POSITION SUMMARY:
The EAAP project has admitted a local private enterprise as one of the participants in the Acceleration Track and 6 more organisations in the incubation track. Access to finance, as one of the targeted core four services of the project, is a critical component to catalyze growth of agribusinesses engaged in honey and wax processing. The project believes that an accounting mentor with deep understanding of the financial situation and needs of the enterprises, and who can suggest and facilitate financing solutions through connecting with financial institutions and/or other innovative means of financing will be of immense value to the enterprise.
As such the project is looking for an individual with significant experience in preparing and appraising financial statements and hands-on-experience in cost accounting techniques acceptable at national and international levels. The Accounting mentor in close consultation with the Management team of the enterprises and EAAP project team is generally expected to provide accounting and mentorship services based on the country’s and internationally accepted accounting principles and practices.
This position will officially report to the Managing Director of the Ethiopian Agribusiness Acceleration Platform. This is a full-time position that requires working from ATA’s office and also includes visits at the supported enterprises’ offices.
ESSENTIAL DUTIES