Vacancy Announcement

ETHIOPIAN AGRICULTURAL TRANSFORMATION AGENCY

Position: Delivery Unit Analyst, Amhara BoA Delivery Unit

Term of Employment:  One year with the possibility of extension

Duty Station(s): Amhara Bureau of Agriculture, Bahir Dar

Required Number: Two

Salary & Benefits:  Competitive

Application Deadline:  January 31, 2021

BACKGROUND:

The Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA) is a strategy and delivery-oriented government agency created to help accelerate the growth and transformation of the country’s agriculture sector. 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.

The ATA focuses on two primary national approaches to catalyze agricultural transformation. First, we support the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), its affiliate institutions, and other partners to identify and address systemic bottlenecks within an Agricultural Transformation Agenda. Second, we support Regional Governments to accelerate the development of high-priority commodity value chains in clearly defined geographic clusters, through the Agricultural Commercialization Clusters (ACC) Initiative and other programs.

The ATA is currently in the process of launching a Delivery Unit in the Amhara Bureau of Agriculture to ensure the bureau delivers on its priority initiatives. The Delivery Unit will be responsible for providing intensive guidance and support to leadership and implementers in prioritizing, planning, managing performance, problem-solving, and capacity-building. The Delivery Unit will be embedded in the Amhara Bureau of Agriculture and overseen jointly by the Amhara BoA Head and ATA senior management.

POSITION SUMMARY:

The Delivery Unit Analyst, reporting to the Delivery Unit Head, is responsible for supporting prioritization, planning, problem-solving, and performance management. He/she will mainly be responsible for conducting a rigorous analysis of priority area performance data and generating insights to enable evidence-based decision-making by RBoA senior management. The Delivery Unit Analyst will work closely with priority area implementers to proactively identify the root causes of challenges and co-develop solutions. He/she will also focus on enhancing performance management to maintain focus on goals, ensure visibility on progress, and enable regular problem-solve for implementation challenges, which can be achieved by conducting routines as well as embedding enhanced planning, data collection, and reporting tools & process.

The Delivery Unit Analyst will work with other Member(s), implementation owners, and the Technical Support Unit within the Amhara Bureau of Agriculture to ensure meaningful planning and target & trajectory setting, accurate reporting, and rigorous and practical problem-solving. The person in this role will also work to strengthen the project management and analytical capacity of the Implementation owners.

Candidates for these roles must therefore bring a can-do attitude and enjoy working in a fast-paced organization that is mission and results-driven. They will have expertise with data collection and analysis to generate relevant insights for decision-making and be able to conduct rigorous on-the-ground problem-solving to unblock implementation challenges. In addition, they should have experience in the development and roll-out of improved performance management tools, processes, and systems, preferably in a large organization and working with senior leaders. The ideal individuals will also demonstrate strong attention to detail, and excellent written and verbal communication, problem-solving, and project management skills, and the ability to exercise good judgment in a variety of situations, multitask and work under pressure and competing priorities.

    ESSENTIAL DUTIES

• Support priority area identification, goal setting, and detailed implementation planning by owners to ensure clear definition and alignment on focus and how to measure success.
• Work with the DU Head and the RBoA leadership to identify priority focus areas.
• Drive the development of clear, practical plans and the setting of meaningful, measurable targets and trajectories for the prioritized areas. 
• Work together with other DU members, senior staff at ATA (regional and head office), and others to design and roll-out enhanced planning, performance management, and reporting process and tools. 
• Conduct progress tracking, analysis, and reporting to aid decision-making by RBoA senior leadership through improved visibility of progress against targets and insights on implementation effectiveness.
• Support in the identification of clear indicators and data points for tracking progress against targets to ensure there is a clear, continuous picture of delivery progress.
• Compile relevant data and conduct a comprehensive analysis of priority area performance against targets and generate insights for decision-making.
• Produce value-added reports to enable informed decision-making by RBoA senior leadership.
• Maintain regular performance monitoring and management routines with senior leadership, initiative owners, and relevant stakeholders to maintain focus on goals, ensure visibility on progress, and regularly problem-solve for implementation challenges.
• Proactively identify implementation challenges and problem-solve with implementation owners to ensure progress is on track. 
• Use routines to regularly review progress with implementers, understand causes behind delayed progress, and co-develop solutions. 
• Deep dive into more complex issues to examine root causes to the barriers and recommend sustainable solutions, working closely with implementers and stakeholders.
• Conduct field visits to gain clarity on what is happening on the ground, to ensure there is an accurate understanding of issues, or to validate the applicability of recommended solutions.

Other areas

• Support the development of training materials and facilitate training on planning, activity management/execution, reporting, and problem-solving for high priority areas in collaboration with other Delivery Unit Analysts to ensure capacity building. 
• Support completion of high-quality presentations and/or written documents to increase the quality of written outputs of the Amhara RBOA.
• Support the DU Head in ensuring there is a strong and visible backing for the Delivery Unit from the RBoA Head and senior leadership to ensure successful implementation of delivery.
• Execute any additional roles as assigned by the DU Head to accelerate delivery.

Job Requirements

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor’s or master’s degree in any field with a minimum GPA of 3.0 and above.
• At least 2 years of experience with bachelor’s or 0 years of professional experience with master’s on Project Management, Strategy, Business Analysis, Business Development, Management Consulting, Project Design or data collection, management, analysis, and reporting activities in a large international NGO, public or private company setting.
• Experience with design, development, and roll-out of enhanced planning, project management, and reporting templates, tools, processes, and systems.
• Experience working with multiple types of data sources systems, tools, and formats to extract, structure, analyze and synthesize data.
• Ideally, experience preparing dashboards, performance reports, and documents for senior leaders.
• Excellent critical thinking and analytical skills.
• Strong knowledge and skills in Microsoft Office Suite and various program/project management and data and reporting systems, experience with database systems preferable.
• Self-starter with strong motivation, ownership, and commitment to drive transformation.
• Exhibits an innovative and high-performance mindset and culture and can perform at a high level under pressure and in challenging environments.
• Can act as a champion for change and can effectively support change management efforts.
• Strong team player with excellent relationship building and management skill, ability to promote dialogue and communicate clearly and confidently, and a network of professional contacts.
• Proactively seeks and acts on feedback to drive their development and contributes to others’ development through active coaching and sharing knowledge and best practices.
• A strong set of personal values including integrity, honesty, and desire to be of service.
• Fluency in English and Amharic languages required. 

How to Apply

APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS

We invite all candidates meeting the required qualifications to submit (i) a cover letter and (ii) CV (maximum 3 pages) to https://apply.ata.gov.et by mentioning the position title on the subject line.

Please DO NOT submit scans of certificates with your application.

Women are highly encouraged to apply.

Only short-listed candidates will be contacted.