Vacancy Announcement

ETHIOPIAN AGRICULTURAL TRANSFORMATION AGENCY

Position:  Regional Project Officer II National Market System

Term of Employment: One Year possibility of extension

Duty Station(s): Oromia (Addis Ababa),

Required Number: One

Salary & Benefits: Competitive

Application Deadline:  6 Sep 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 (MoALR), 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 Digital Agriculture program within the ATA has been established to develop and support initiatives related to the use of information communication technologies within the Ethiopian agriculture sector.

National Market Information System /NMIS/ project is designed and implemented to collect and disseminate timely, accurate, and relevant market information to all market actors with available ICT tools to the users make informed marketing decisions related to where, when, and through which channels to sell and buy produce. Currently, the system collects and disseminates market information on five agricultural commodities from 157 markets places in the four regions via 6077 across all over the country and has planned to expand its coverage to 10 commodities and 150 marketplaces. 

The Project Officer will manage the overall collection, encoding, and entering of the weekly market data from all pilot marketplaces in the respective regions; undertake frequent market visits and regularly check the accuracy of the market data entered into the system platform to ensure the quality of the market data. Besides he/she coordinate and manage the engagement of all key regional stakeholders in project monitoring, follow-up, and promotion campaign in the region. He/she will also manage and follow-up on the regional NMIS system promotional campaign.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

Responsibilities of Regional Project Officer for NMIS include, but are not limited to:

Manage the regional NMIS workload to ensure on time completion of deliverables

• Manage and follow-up the overall data collection, encoding and entering activities in region with frequent market visit
• Check and validate the accuracy of the weekly market data entered the system platform by triangulating with data enumerators, traders, and other stakeholders 
• Coordinate and conduct meetings with regional stakeholders to provide update on project progress, identify problems and address issues
• Manage the translation of market information, promotional material, and other market related news into the local language by engaging concerned regional stakeholders
• Coordinate, lead and manage different NMIS promotional activities the region by engaging concerned regional stakeholders
• coordinate and manage the engagement of all key regional stakeholders in project monitoring, follow-up, and promotional activities
• Manage the data enumerates and process their monthly payment based on the number of days they engaged with project activities

Assist the NMIS Team Lead in results-focused stakeholder management to build collaborative relationships with key internal, Federal, and Regional stakeholders

• Coordinate and manage the engagement of all regional project stakeholders in the expansion and implementation of project activities
• Work closely with other ICT projects in the regional production, market linkage, and input programs to achieve the project output KPIs
• Strengthen the engagement of regional project owners via joint implementation, meetings, capacity building, and supporting enhancement activities post-transition

Assist the NMIS Team Lead in the implementation of the projects’ deliverables in order to ensure the intended impact collecting the relevant datasets

• Provide problem solving support during the enhancement of the projects coverage and provide required support from the regional perspective

Coordinate the utilization of resources in the region for all Digital Agriculture work in order to ensure collaboration among the projects

• Understand the requirements of other ICT projects in the regional office, and assign resources as per the requirements across projects in the region
• Prioritize and escalate issues to federal team to get immediate solution as necessary

The Regional Project Officer is responsible for compiling and submitting data and reports in order to ensure alignment on project implementation

• Prepare regular reports on own workstreams
• Support the preparation of all biweekly, quarterly, and annual performance reports
• Share data related to system development, training, and other promotional activities to federal team and other regional officers

Other

• The Project Officer is responsible for additional interventions assigned by the Team Leads to meet Digital Agriculture program functions

Job Requirements

Required qualifications:

The following capabilities are critical to play this role effectively:

• Master’s Degree in Agribusiness, Agriculture, Information Technology, Marketing, Agricultural Economics, Economics, Agricultural Marketing or another relevant field
• At least 4 years of relevant experience in project management, preferably in the agricultural / agribusiness sector,
• Data sourcing, management, analytics, reporting and visualization
• Familiarity with data collection and analytics systems
• Development and management of large datasets and data analysis tools
• Demonstrated familiarity with project development, implementation, management, funding flow tracking and reporting

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 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.