Vacancy title:
Technical Manager for Agriculture

Jobs at:
Farm Africa

Deadline of this Job:
2nd January 2018 by 9:00am

Duty Station:
Flexible: Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania or Uganda, with frequent travel

Job details:
Salary: £39,000 - £41,000

Farm Africa is an international non-governmental organization working to end hunger and bring prosperity to rural Africa. We work to increase the incomes and improve food security of smallholder farmers, pastoralists, agro-pastoralists, and forest dwellers in East Africa. A core part of our strategy is to ensure that our interventions are both economically sustainable and scalable. The systematic integration of market linkages in implementing programmes is crucial to our ability to scale our interventions cost-effectively.

Job Summary: The Technical Manager for Agriculture will produce knowledge that will help to shape both Farm Africa’s and our partners programme of work, this knowledge will also support technical excellence within our work through the development of our approach, people, tools and learning.

Key Duties and Responsibilities:
Co-ordinate a central knowledge base and tools development across key identified target crops:

• To strengthen the technical capacity and knowledge base of Farm Africa, develop the following information and tool enablers for Farm Africa (FA)
  o Tools: Develop and implement a set of tools that enable projects to use the areas of the agriculture approach (land & water management, technology, climate smart agriculture)
  o Approaches: embed FA Approaches in practice
• Knowledge repository: Information and insight. Design and manage a system that provides expert recommendations to maximize production. This will include for (estimated 15 crops)
  o Soil recommendations for crop types
  o Soil analysis of project areas
  o Input recommendations for crop types : seed, fertilizer, pesticide (and a set of recommended suppliers)
• Production: systems, crop rotation, density.
•  Harvesting and storage
• Decision support. Ensure that project teams and senior staff are kept abreast of key developments within the agricultural technology.
•  Provide input into external technical and knowledge management.
• Developing agricultural assessment tools to be used in assessments/baselines
  Develop Farm Africa’s Agriculture thematic area and embed technical excellence within Farm Africa’s market intervention delivery
• Support high quality programme design and implementation, by providing expert input and quality assurance at key, defined points in the project plan:
• Ensuring that central knowledge base is being used across field teams to inform best practice
•  Approve key project design deliverables at proposal stage (e.g. Theory of Change, Log-frame etc.) with an agriculture element in the design process.
• Work with the Quality and Impact team in the design of Agriculture specific indicators within the monitoring framework.
• Work with the Quality and Impact Team to coordinate sharing of evidence-based learning of effective agriculture interventions.
• In line with Farm Africa’s growth in the thematic area, lead in the recruitment and management of expert Agriculture staff and recruitment of consultants to build the deployable technical capacity of Farm Africa.
• Develop and mentor agriculture community of practice to share expertise across the portfolio.
• Support the preparation of capacity building plans of local institutions and actors in relation to Farm Africa’s ongoing and emerging project initiatives.
• Deliver discrete products with project teams on agricultural production and identify products for external publication in coordination with the Director of External Relations.
• Work with other technical teams and personnel to ensure cross-dissemination of learning and future design initiatives between agriculture, market engagement and natural resource management.
• Coordinate with other technical leaders in the organisation to support the overall development of Farm Africa’s technical capacity.
•  At a portfolio level (i.e. all FA’s projects), take an overview of the effectiveness of FarmAfrica’s work on small-holder agriculture and raising incomes, also work with the Technical Manager (Markets and Value Chains) on linking small-holders to markets and sources of finance, identifying opportunities for cross project learning and sharing of good practice.
  Building partnerships with the private sector and other not-for-profit actors in the agriculture sector
•  Work in close coordination with the Country Management Teams and External Relations UK, identify and engage with key agriculture sector players to improve Farm Africa’s network of African and international agri-businesses and service providers.
•  Identify and develop key partnerships with potential partners, including private sector companies(international input providers) to support agricultural production and advance the delivery of the Farm Africa
• With the Markets Technical Manager, the jobholder will identify and develop opportunities for partnerships between Farm Africa and local, national and international agri-businesses and for-profit organisations within agricultural value chains to coordinate into Farm Africa’s existing or prospective value chains.

Qualifications, Skills and Experience:

• The applicant must hold a post graduate qualification in agriculture or related field;
• Have detailed and in depth knowledge of global best practice and cutting edge development thinking in agriculture;
•  Previous experience in a commercial organisation in an agricultural capacity preferably in Africa;
•  In-depth knowledge of key staple and cash crop production systems in East Africa

Job application procedure
All suitably qualified candidates are encouraged to send an updated CV and a cover letter that explains how your experience fits this role to recruitment@farmafrica.org