AGRIFIN Director

at Mercy Corps
Location Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Date Posted March 3, 2022
Category Management
Job Type Full-time
Currency ETB

Description

About Mercy Corps

  • Mercy Corps is a leading global organization powered by the belief that a better world is possible. In disaster, in hardship, in more than 40 countries around the world, we partner to put bold solutions into action — helping people triumph over adversity and build stronger communities from within now, and for the future.

    Program / Department Summary

  • Mercy Corps AgriFin (MCA) consists of a group of AgriFin programs supported by multiple donors in Africa and Asia applying a unified approach to harness the promise of digital technology to address the inclusion gap for smallholder farmers (SHFs) who lack access to affordable, accessible, demand-driven products and services that drive higher productivity and income for farm families. The ecosystems required to serve smallholders are both complex and fragmented.
  • Mercy Corps launched the original AgriFin Mobile program in 2012 (funded by the Swiss Development Corporation) in Asia and Africa, as well as subsequent iterations of the program, including AgriFin Accelerate (funded by the MasterCard Foundation), and AgriFin Digital Farmer (funded by the Gates Foundation) across East and Southern Africa.

    Three outcomes contribute to the achievement of MCA goals:

  • Outcome 1: Market actors expand, improve and continue to offer high-impact DFS products and services that are tailored to address the expressed needs of SHFs;
  • Outcome 2: Farmers increase capability to access and utilize demand-driven, high impact technology-enabled financial products and services relevant to SHFs;
  • Outcome 3: Ecosystems around both suppliers and farmers emerge supporting provision of digital financial and informational services to SHFs that are used at scale.
  • The program is expanding to new countries and focus areas, while placing a heavy focus on learning and impact generation with its subsequent dissemination to the ecosystem, requiring a great deal of strategic positioning, relationship management and coordination both inside Mercy Corps and across ecosystem stakeholders.

    General Position Summary

  • The Director will set a bold, transformative and global vision for Mercy Corps’ AgriFin programing and skillfully represent programmatic priorities of the agency to donors and regional partners while providing effective leadership to the Mercy Corps AgriFin team.
  • The Program Director will be responsible for overseeing the performance of all MCA programming, as well as ensuring that a strong cross-learning, monitoring and evaluation stream of activities is consistently applied, ensuring staff development to work at international best-practice levels.

    Essential Job Responsibilities

    Strategy & Vision

  • Recognize opportunities for innovative action and create an environment where alternative viewpoints are welcome, heard and acted upon.
  • Set direction by prioritizing and organizing actions & resources to achieve goals and objectives.
  • Evaluate country specific program priorities and contribute to regional and global strategy development and prioritization.

    Leadership & Culture

  • Commit to preserving an organizational culture of trust, transparency, diversity, equity, and inclusion across the team and global organization.
  • Uphold a culture of integrity through ethical decision-making, safeguarding and compliance with the Code of Conduct.
  • Create a culture of accountability for highly effective communication systems and relationships to ensure every voice matters.

    Lead Program Activities

  • Ensure AgriFin programs deliver against donor milestones and farmer outreach targets.
  • Support AgriFin programming to identify key points of learning and to formulate public-facing learning documents through research activities linked to program engagements, including impact studies, case studies, blogs and events.
  • Ensure gender transformational approaches and the MCA Gender strategy are applied across programmatic implementation.
  • Ensure climate smart approaches and the MCA Climate Smart strategy are applied across programmatic implementation.

    Team Management

  • Recruit, manage, motivate, and onboard an informed, skilled and efficient team with an emphasis on high quality impact, inclusion and achievement.
  • Encourage a team culture of growth, learning, creativity and innovation by incorporating a culture of continuous feedback, development and performance management.

    Program Impact, Monitoring and Evaluation and Learning

  • Oversee program quality and impact by ensuring programs are based on sound design principles and utilize Mercy Corps and donor required M&E systems.
  • Gather evidence of program impact through robust agency standard procedures for data gathering, reporting, and evaluating program outputs and outcomes.
  • Fulfill Mercy Corps Program Management Minimum Standards.

    Influence & Representation

  • Maintain productive relationships with internal and external constituents such as private partners, national government, foundations, the private sector, etc.
  • Represent Mercy Corps programs with national and international media.
  • Lead strategic partnerships for MCA, including World Bank, AGRA, CGIAR and CGAP.

    Program Operations and Compliance

  • Coordinate overall program budget; manage budget within approved spending levels and establish an annual cash flow plan to ensure a steady and adequate supply of funds for program activities.
  • Lead engagement on behalf of the program with the AgriFin Complex Board, providing internal Mercy Corps oversight and support to the program in areas of operations and compliance.
  • Build and maintain an environment of collaboration among program, finance, operations and human resource team members resulting in optimal support for program activities.
  • Ensure program implementation is on time, target and budget, using effective M&E systems to reach desired impacts.
  • Create and maintain systems ensuring effective and transparent use of financial resources for timely and informative reporting in line with donor and Mercy Corps policies and procedures.

    Knowledge and Experience

  • Minimum MA/Sc/MBA or equivalent in business administration, information technology, agriculture, finance or related field required;
  • Minimum ten years’ relevant working experience required; preference for experience in both private and public sector and a strong working knowledge of financial services, information technology and agriculture;
  • Demonstrated ability to work at highest international technical levels of international best practice in financial inclusion, including track record of publishing relevant publications and international speaking experience;
  • Demonstrated ability to develop sustainable and socially actionable business models through partnerships including extensive development of products, pricing, marketing strategies, delivery channels, SWOT analyses, financial projections and building value propositions;
  • Demonstrated ability to engage with major banks, mobile networks and private sector players at the highest levels, developing and implementing successful programming related to financial inclusion and technology;
  • Strong experience in developing & maintaining complex donor programs, organizational relationships & partnerships, with experience managing significant multi-country programs for major foundations;
  • Proven track record of ability to lead and manage multi-million dollar grants and related programming, including work plans, budgets, reporting, HR management and commitment to deliverables and timeframes;
  • Proven ability to raise resources to further develop programming;
  • Deep experience with Mercy Corps or similar international non-profit agency preferred;
  • Demonstrated experience with for-profit enterprise and social enterprise, experience managing project development or senior management teams;
  • Internationally recognized qualification in project or program management or a commitment to obtain the qualification in the early months of work.
  • Excellent oral and written English skills required.

 

WARNING: Do not to pay any money to get a job. Please report fraudulent jobs to info@newjobsethiopia.com