Vacancy Announcement

ETHIOPIAN AGRICULTURAL TRANSFORMATION AGENCY

Position: Senior Sub-grant Officer

Term of Employment:  One year with possibility of extension

Duty Station(s): Addis Ababa

Required Number: One

Salary & Benefits: Competitive

Application Deadline:  March 5, 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 agency focuses on two primary national approaches to catalyze agricultural transformation. First, we support the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Resources (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 development of high-priority commodity value chains in clearly defined geographic clusters, through the Agricultural Commercialization Clusters (ACC) Initiative.

Our major activities include conducting strategic and analytical studies, providing technical implementation support, coordinating platforms to better integrate partners and projects, and designing and directly leading a number of implementation projects. Our headquarters are in Addis Ababa, and we have regional offices in Amhara, Oromia, SNNP, and Tigray regional offices, allowing us to work closely with a wide range of public, private and development sector partners across the country.

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:

The Senior Sub- grant Officer will be responsible to support the team to ensure ATA, Donors and GoE policies and procedures on grant management are implemented. S/he will maintain grant systems to ensure integrity of grants and deliver timely and coherent grant information and present to all concerned parties in order to support management decisions.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES:

Grant Management System

• Create grant/sub-grant profile on ERP/Agresso grant management module;
• Regularly update and maintain grant/sub-grant files on ERP grant management module; and hardcopy files
• Generate and update donor budget lines on ERP/Agresso;
• Assure that closed grants/sub-grantees are inactive on the ERP/Agresso and no payments are recorded.   
• Work and assist program/project teams on developing cost forecasts for preparing grant budget proposals;
• Ensure that the developed budget proposal is realistic and free from arithmetic inaccuracy before submission of final approval.
• Assist the resource allocation and grant management manager in the allocation of grants (SOF and DBL) to corresponding budget requests of teams and assist in identification and alarming of funding gaps/surplus if any against overall requested budget by ATA teams.
• Assist in incorporating approved grant budget with annual overall organization budget and assist in the follow-up of required budget revision/amendments with Budget holders and finance team.

Grant Implementation

• Attend grants meetings, and complete agreed action points arising from the meeting;
• Support efficient grant management and allocation in accordance with donor and ATA guidelines;
• Calculate grant recharges (salary and non-salary) as required in accordance with donor budgets, ensuring that costs are allocated accurately and are not duplicated.
• Work closely and assist the resource allocation and grant management manager to ensure that all grant balances within ATA systems are accurately reflected, and issues relating to write offs/backs and disallowable expenditures are analyzed;

Grant Reporting

• Review monthly expenditure transaction in the financial system and communicate the finance team for any required adjustments.
• Prepare quarterly, bi-annual and annual financial reports for submission to DPs as per agreed timeline and reporting template with respective donors.
• Prepare interim periodic grants financial report whenever required for providing information used for internal decision making.
• Respond or provide clarification for any quires related to financial matters of any grant reports.

Sub-grant Management

• Participate in proposal evaluation technical committee and play a key role on evaluation of the proposed project cost of potential sub-grantees; 
• Contribute to the Grant making review committee GMRC recommendation from budget availability and resource allocation perspective; 
• Participate on the due diligence assessment to the possible sub-grantee and play a vital role on identifying the potential risk that might face on the project implementation;
• Review the draft sub-grant agreement particularly the section of installment, reporting requirements and budget breakdown;      
• Review financial utilization reports of sub grantees and submit to finance team to be settled.
• Confirm the sub-grantees utilization performance and facilitate the subsequent fund release by closely working with respective budget holder.
• Prepare an overall sub grantees financial status portfolio report on quarterly basis and submit to internal/external stakeholders;
• Review financial utilization reports of sub grantees and submit to finance team to be settled.
• Undertake financial monitoring visits:
• Provide briefing on donor compliance issues and ATA sub grant management procedures.
• Provide on job technical supports and training on budget monitoring, grant management and financial reporting during project implementation.
• Follow-up on reimbursement of unutilized budget and work with finance team to facilitate the hiring of independent auditors to undertake sub-grant audit.
• Provide input to partnership team if there is any outstanding balance and any financial concerns related to specific Sub-grantee before closing out is finalized.

Other Tasks

• Facilitate grant audits as required.
• Providing technical comments and ‘early warnings’ related to donor’s compliance matters during the monthly meeting with finance.
• Provide other ad-hoc Grant management information and analysis from the system for the use of management as required.
• Other duties assigned by the supervisor.

Job Requirements

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS:

• Masters or bachelor’s degree in Accounting/Finance, Business Administration, or other relevant field of study, obtained from a recognized University.
• Minimum of 4 years (for master’s) degree or 6 years (for Bachelor’s) of relevant work experience.
• Flexibility and ability to stay effective and motivated in a fast-changing environment.
• Strong organizational, interpersonal, and communication skills.
• Ability to establish priorities in a time sensitive environment and meet deadlines.
• Fluency in English and Amharic, both verbal and written. knowledge of other Ethiopian languages is a plus.
• Excellent skills in Microsoft Office Suite (Word, Excel, power point etc.).
• Willingness to respect and adhere to ATA values.

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) click here

Please DO NOT submit scans of certificates with your application.

Women are highly encouraged to apply.

Only short-listed candidates will be contacted.