Vacancy Announcement
ETHIOPIAN AGRICULTURAL TRANSFORMATION AGENCY
Position: Director, Horticulture Value Chain
Term of Employment: Project
Duty Station(s): Addis Ababa
Required Number: One
Salary & Benefits: Competitive
Application Deadline: September 3, 2017
BACKGROUND:
The Ethiopian 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 and is Secretary to the Transformation Council chaired by the Prime Minister..
The Agricultural Commercialization Clusters (ACC) initiative has been introduced in Ethiopia to apply a geographically-focused approach for rapidly enhancing priority commodity agricultural value chains throughout the country. The implementation of this initiative will support agricultural sector transformation by enhancing and supporting existing structures of government, private-sector and other non-governmental partners, to address systemic as well as commodity- and geography-specific bottlenecks in agricultural value chains.
ACCs are defined as geographically concentrated networks of producers, agro-industries, traders and other private and public actors engaged in the same industry and that are inter-connected and building value networks, either formally or informally, when addressing common challenges and pursuing common opportunities. This concept builds on previous federal and regional efforts for value chain development, including part of the government’s focus on Economic Growth Corridors and crop production and productivity Initiatives in priority woredas. The current approach advocates for a more focused and market-driven solution with significant coordination and support between federal and regional bodies.
POSITION SUMMARY:
The Federal ACC Horticulture Value Chains Director will lead and oversee all operations of the ACC horticulture production and Value Chain wing of the ACC and report to the Senior director .The Horticulture value chain director is responsible to manage senior technical experts and ensure all deliverables are executed within the specified amount of time and budget. The horticulture value chain director is responsible to develop and execute interventions that render the Value chain of focus commodities more efficient. Ultimately, the Horticulture value chain director is responsible to ensure production, productivity as well as commercialization activities are increasing according to target in the cluster woredas.
ESSENTIAL DUTIES:
Leadership
Support the Senior Director of ACC in leading ATA’s Federal ACC engagement with the Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources in the implementation of ACC deliverables
Support the senior director in the engagement with the Regional Presidents and Regional Transformation Councils as well as with the Bureaus of Agriculture and other relevant Regional stakeholders
Support the Senior director in aligning national and regional strategies and programs to deliver increased results in effectively impact cluster level VC concept
Support the senior director of ACC in co-coordinating public-private stakeholders' alignment on ACC strategies and deliverables
Support the senior director in timely and effectively designing and delivering higher level reporting on achieved results, planning and execution strategies
Ensure effective regular communication and reporting with the various government offices, and key public, private and development partner stakeholders
Technical
Supervise and performance manage horticultural crops technical experts of the ACC initiatives across the followings domain : Regular field visits ; disease monitoring / diagnostics; Soil moisture status monitoring, Irrigation scheduling; Ag chemical, fertilizer & seed recommendations, Crop rotation planning and hybrid/variety selection recommendations, farmer demonstrations planning and monitoring
Provide direction, guidance and support to the regional directors to ensure technical knowledge is transferred to regional bureaus and high quality deliverables and outputs are created within each region , in line with the ACC focus commodities
Actively participate in diagnostic activities, solution design and development and implementation of horticulture interventions in cluster woredas
Support, enable and facilitate close and collaborative relationships between ATA Program Directors and key stakeholders/partners across problem solving and implementation support areas
Critically assess capacity gaps that may hinder effective implementation of activities and develop solutions as required and develop corrective action for implementation
Coordinate and harmonize the design, implementation and monitoring and evaluation of programs and projects within the ACC Value Chains enhancement programs
Assist in building capacity of key government, private and informal actors in the education, research, extension and production continuum associated with the system sub sector.
Work closely with the irrigation team for effective and efficient use of water in irrigation agriculture, participate on new crop package preparation and revision
Support the RBoANR in promoting high-value crops and scaling up of best practices
Assist the regional counterparts to link farmer, farmers group and private actors to market
Support in organizing national platforms on horticulture commodities
Project Management
Ensure stakeholder coordination, planning, reporting, problem solving and implementation support activities is conducted by federal ACC technical experts
Design actionable programs to be implemented by the ACC team and key stakeholders for effective results
Lead the technical component of the agronomy wing, production to post harvest of the ACC
Manage budget and timely (monthly, quarterly and yearly)
Reporting ( weekly , monthly, quarterly and yearly) of performance and provide insight on reason why variation exist to plan for corrective action
Resource Mobilization
· Support the mobilization of domestic and external resources for the ACC Initiative, including development of project proposals as required
· Support the facilitation of private sector investments and provide on-going problem-solving support by closely working with the concerned stakeholders
· Master's degree or above in Agricultural sciences, Agribusiness, or other relevant fields and At least (15) years professional experience supporting areas in crop commodity planning and implementation of activities at national/regional level
· At least (5) five years of leadership and/or managerial experience.
· Good experience of working at Federal, regional and civil society or private sector sectors.
· Excellent stakeholder management skills including thorough knowledge and understanding of various regional level and federal level institutions; extensive experience in facilitating dialogue with relevant public and private stakeholders
· Fluency in English and Amharic required; fluency in regional language(s) advantageous.
· Excellent oral and written communication skills, with highly collaborative working style.
· Experience in working with multi-cultural teams preferred.
· Excellent analytical, problem-solving and reporting skills.
· Strong set of personal values including integrity, honesty and desire to be of service.
· Ability and willingness to shoulder responsibilities under hectic conditions (in terms of overlapping assignments that may happen occasionally).
· Ability to thrive in a fast-moving environment, with an emphasis on high performance, teamwork, accountability and results