Business Development Officer UK Aid Project Jobs – Farm Africa
Job Title: Business Development Officer
Organization: Farm Africa
Project Name: Livestock for Livelihoods (L4L) programme
Funding Source: UK Aid
Duty Station: Uganda
Reports to: Project Coordinator
About US:
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. Farm Africa has the ambition to be the leading European NGO specialising in Agriculture, Natural Resource Management and Market Engagement.
About UK Aid Project:
Farm Africa was recently awarded a £5m grant for a Livestock for Livelihoods (L4L) programme operating in Uganda’s Karamoja sub-region and Ethiopia’s South Omo zone funded by the UK government (UK Aid).The project will be implemented across four districts of Karamoja sub-region (Moroto, Napak, Kotido & Nakapiripirit). During this four year programme Farm Africa will work with local civil society, SMEs, cooperatives and farmer organisations to develop market systems that support livestock services and enterprises for 21,000 women, contributing to women’s economic empowerment, reduced poverty and improved nutrition of women and children. The project will address market failures in animal health and breeding services to improve livestock productivity, build capacity and assets of herders, establish trade and enterprise opportunities and improve household nutrition practices through behavioural change. It will demonstrate how nutrition interventions can build on women’s economic empowerment to contribute to both increased income and improved household nutrition.
Job Summary: The Business Development Officer is responsible for building the business and commercial capacity of a wide range of stakeholders engaged in the L4L project. These stakeholders will include, amongst others, agrovets, community animal health workers (CAHWs), goat breeding associations, marketing associations and VSLAs. The Business Development Officer will also be responsible for capacity building the wider field team on market-based approaches to development and business development, as well as ensuring best practices in these areas are integrated into all field activities. In addition, the Business Development Officer will contribute to Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning (MEL) activities, particularly with regards to developing and disseminating record keeping tools for the different stakeholders engaged in business-focused activities. The Business Development Officer will be based in our field office in Moroto, Karamoja, and will report to the Project Coordinator.
Key Duties and Responsibilities:
Delivery of markets and business-focused activities to a wider range of stakeholders in line with L4L project implementation plan:
- Ensure that business development-related project activities are implemented and outputs achieved as planned and within the agreed budget including:
- Facilitating business development training to agrovets and vets through Farm Africa’s Sidai Academy
- Training agrovets to deliver training on private veterinary service provision and supporting dissemination to CAHWs
- Delivery of BDS and logistics training to agrovets
- Providing BDS training to buck keepers and supporting the establishment of private sector buck breeding services
- Supporting the establishment of district-level community-led commercial goat breeding associations and delivery of business development training to them
- Delivery of business development training to Goat Breeders Associations (GBA)
- Supporting the establishment of marketing associations and delivery of business development training to them
- Delivery of business development and good governance training to VSLAs
- Ensure that Farm Africa Approaches to business development, access to finance and trade facilitation are used to guide high-quality delivery
- Ensure that business development and markets focused activities are aligned with, and mutually supportive of other interventions in the same areas
- Work with the Project Coordinator (PC) and the Project Accountant and Administrator (PA&A) to ensure all activities are planned and conducted according to the organization and the donor financial and procurement requirements and procedures.
Support project management and coordination
- Support the PC & PA&A with activity planning and budgeting as requested
- Keep abreast of business development activities being implemented by other partners operating in a similar intervention area and sharing this information with the PC and wider team as appropriate
- Proactively identify and monitor any risks to non-delivery and, where required, develop and implement action plans to address issues identified.
- Support the PC to identify and analyze the causes of spend variances to the budget and make recommendations on actions to be taken as required
Monitoring, evaluation and reporting
- Contribute to internal and external reporting, with a particular focus on collecting and collating information from enterprises and VSLAs supported by the project
- Regularly report on implementation learnings, and make recommendations on areas for improvement or changes in delivery strategy to the PC
- Contribute to the development and implementation of the Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning Plan (MLP) – and in particular support with developing data collection tools that will gather relevant data from the different enterprises engaged in the project.
- Contribute to quarterly internal progress reviews and annual project performance reviews and workshops
- Collect information for stories, case studies and lessons learnt on market linkages and business development
Play a key role in delivering the wider objectives of both the L4L programme, and Farm Africa’s work in Uganda.
- Participate in project team meetings as requested by the Project Coordinator.
- Work with AFRII (implementing partner) to ensure collaboration between delivery of nutrition-focused and business development activities
- Support the wider L4L Uganda project delivery team to integrate market approaches within work plans and stakeholder engagements.
- Work in close collaboration with the BDO L4L Ethiopia Team – ensuring that knowledge, learnings and tools are shared across the two project locations
- Maintain regular and effective communications with the wider project team, Uganda Country Office and implementing partners.
- Work in close consultation with the PC, act as an ambassador, promoting the project and the work of Farm Africa, including hosting visitors, speaking at workshops, conferences and meeting donors and other officials as and when required.
- Contribute to the development of relevant Farm Africa policies and strategies.
Qualifications, Skills and Experience:
- The ideal candidate for the Farm Africa Business Development Officer job placement must hold a Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent in a relevant field, such as agricultural economics, rural development, business or economics
- Knowledge of the pastoralist, livestock and veterinary services sectors in Uganda
- Further relevant academic qualification
- in the area of agricultural economics, rural development, business or economics
- Detailed understanding of participatory community-based project approaches, gender mainstreaming in development and economic opportunities.
- At least three years’ experience working for an INGO or agri-business
- Experience of working within the livestock value chain and/or with veterinary service providers
- Experience of conducting market assessments
- Experience of supporting the growth of businesses within the agriculture or livestock sectors
- Experience of planning and delivering project activities and reporting on their impact
- Experience of designing or delivering interventions that specifically encourage or maximise the participation of women
- Experience working with pastoralist communities
- Experience of working in Karamoja
- Experience of conducting market assessments focusing on the livestock value chain and/or veterinary drugs and services
- Experience in designing and conducting business development trainings for micro-enterprises or SMEs
- Experience of developing record keeping tools for micro/small enterprises
- Experience of delivering activities focusing on the economic empowerment of rural women
- Experience of supporting the development and growth of VSLAs
- Ability to build strong relationships with stakeholders and communities based on trust and collaboration
- Ability to communicate and share knowledge with a broad range of stakeholders with differing backgrounds and abilities.
- Problem identification, analysis and solving of complex issues
- Desirable
- Multi stakeholder facilitation skills
- Ability to influence others in order to drive change
- Fluent written and spoken English
- Ability and willingness to travel widely and frequently both within and outside the Karamoja sub-region
- Confident user of Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint
- Willingness to ride a motorcycle in the field, with a valid riding permit (Class A)
- Fluency in Karamojong is desirable
How to Apply:
All suitably qualified and interested candidates should send an updated CV, salary history, and a two-page supporting statement detailing how you meet the person specification to ugandarecruitment@farmafrica.org including ‘Business Development Officer – L4L’ in the subject line.
NB: Please DO NOT send additional documents such as certificates and references with your application. Shortlisted candidates ONLY will be required to provide these documents during the interview process. Interviews are expected to take place w/c 7th May 2018 in Moroto (or via Skype). Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.
Deadline: 2nd May 2018 by 5.00pm EAT
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