Vacancy Announcement
ETHIOPIAN AGRICULTURAL TRANSFORMATION AGENCY
Position: Project Officer II – Apiculture Expert
Term of Employment: One year, with a possibility of extension
Duty Station(s): Masha town, Sheka Zone - SNNPR
Required Number: One
Salary & Benefits: Competitive
Application Deadline: August 20, 2018
BACKGROUND
The Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA) was established by federal regulation in 2010 to catalyze the transformation of Ethiopia’s agriculture sector. It does so by helping to identify and address systemic bottlenecks to agricultural development and proposing appropriate interventions.
The ATA is governed by the Transformation Council, chaired by the Prime Minister, and works closely with the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Resources as well as a host of other governmental and non-governmental actors. Its supports the execution of a prioritized set of interventions known collectively as the Transformation Agenda, and implements the Agricultural Commercialization Clusters Initiative targeting high-potential geographies and crops.
Its mission is to catalyze the transformation of the agriculture sector by addressing systemic constraints and developing sustainable value chains. The ATA envisions that, by 2025, smallholder farmers are commercialized with greater incomes, inclusiveness, resilience and sustainability, contributing to Ethiopia’s achievement of middle-income country status.
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:
Agriculture oriented enterprises that are essential to make value chains competitive are largely missing in Ethiopia, 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, chief among them 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 of 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 EAAP has admitted a local honey and beeswax processing company as one of the participants in the Platform. The Platform plans to support the company in diversifying and strengthening its supply chain through the hiring of an Apiculture Expert that will be responsible for overseeing a sustainable and scalable contract farming scheme. A well designed and mutually beneficial contract farming arrangement between the company, on one hand, and small holder beekeepers and aggregators, on the other hand, will be beneficial to all parties. The company will access a sustainable supply of required volumes and quality of honey and beeswax, while small holder beekeepers and aggregators will have access to a reliable market, modern beekeeping inputs and extension services.
The Apiculture Expert position is a secondment position to the local honey and beeswax processing company. The Apiculture Expert will be responsible for the coordination and provision of beekeeping training in selected geographies in the Oromia and SNNP Regions. Specifically, the Apiculture Expert will be providing technical support and guidance based on best practices to the company’s experts at woreda and kebele levels. The Apiculture Expert will closely work with the company’s experts, beekeepers and aggregators and other key stakeholders to ensure an increasing and consistent production of high quality honey and beeswax.
The Apiculture Expert will work closely with different departments within the company and the EAAP project team serving as the focal person for matters related to the technical part of the project. The Apiculture Expert will also work with the Federal and Regional Agricultural Commercialization Clusters Initiative within ATA and with different stakeholders such as Regional Bureaus of Livestock and Fisheries, Zonal, Woreda and Kebele level government bodies, relevant associations, development partners and other private sector market actors to enhance and ensure a mutually beneficial contract farming scheme.
This position will officially report to the Sourcing Manager of the local company.
ESSENTIAL DUTIES
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS