Position: Agricultural Business Development Officer (Premium Job)

Job Description

The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, known by its Spanish acronym, CIMMYT®, is a not-for-profit agricultural research and training organization with partners in over 100 countries. Please refer to our website for more information: www.cimmyt.org.

CIMMYT is seeking an experienced professional to support the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (www.csisa.org) project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the US Agency for International Development. CSISA is CIMMYT’s flagship for sustainable intensification in South Asia and incorporates programming across the innovation to impact continuum in Nepal, Bangladesh, and selected states in India.

Reference No: N20158

Duty station: Dang or Dhangadhi with frequent field travel(subject to mobility restrictions and risk assessment due to COVID-19)

Major duties and responsibilities

• Work with key project personnel to develop and conduct participatory market chain analysis for business opportunities covering rice, maize, and lentil, scale-appropriate mechanization, and agricultural inputs and services.
• Work with key project personnel to map the institutional landscape and identify key actors in the seed, inputs, machinery, and commodities value chains.
• Examine value chains and identify opportunities to increase equity and representation among disadvantaged groups, women, and youth.
• Coordinate efforts to raise awareness about project activities, products, and outcomes among stakeholders, partners, policymakers, and the general public.
• Coordinate with project personnel, governmental partners, agrovets, farmer cooperatives and other relevant stakeholders to identify and develop champion farmers into seed entrepreneurs, with women farmers as key targets.
• Work with seed sector personnel cereal and pulse mills as important actors in seed value chain and providing them and other stakeholders with technical backstopping as appropriate.
• Assist in coordinating and backstopping agricultural machinery service providers, sales agents, importers, manufacturers and other machinery stakeholders as appropriate. 
• Lead capacity building activities in terms of business development skills, including the preparation and effective dissemination of high-quality training materials, recognizing that women farmers form a key and underserved target group.
• Coordinate events aimed at developing entrepreneurship among promising individuals, service providers or enterprises, market networking, establishing linkages, seed producer-trader negotiations, exposure visits and other promotional activities.
• Identify market networks and outlets and innovative approaches to strengthen marketing systems and information networking and to reduce the length of value chains using options including the use of mobile phones/call centers.
• Liaise and coordinating with other relevant projects in the region to increase synergies and complementarities.
• Assisting in monitoring and evaluation and reporting efforts by providing quality input and reports in a timely manner (every 2-3 months as indicated by project lead).
• Following best practices in data collection, and in organizing, managing, storing, and archiving data in accordance with project and CIMMYT norms.

Job Specification

Required academic qualifications, skills, and attitudes:

• Masters’ Degree in agriculture, agricultural economics, business-oriented fields, market-oriented fields. MBAs are also acceptable with experience in agriculture.
• Medium- to advanced level managerial competence in a field project capacity.
• Min. 3 years’ experience - Requires conceptual knowledge of theories, practices, and procedures within a discipline. 

The complexity of thinking needed: Work is complex and technical in scope.

• Regularly requires a combination of mental abilities such as probing, analysis, careful judgment, flexible and original thinking, and creativity. Involves the application of concepts from one discipline. 
• Understand the linkages with other disciplines. Create multi-disciplinary projects and initiatives.
• Ability to identify and finalize solutions to field problems (seeds, soil, and water management, integrated pest management, farm machinery, nutrient management, post-harvest operations).  
• Chooses options / solutions for complex problems.

Interpersonal skills:

• Frequent contact with people other than immediate colleagues and with external entities.
• The ability to communicate and relate effectively, internally, and externally is important.
• The purpose is to share information and secure the cooperation and commitment of individuals, large project teams, or external institutions.
• In addition to effective communication, the jobholder has to motivate and provide leadership.

Competent level of English required:

• Read and respond appropriately to correspondence, orally, and in writing. 
• Ability to prepare regularly-used documents and reports without assistance.

Information Technology needed: 

• Proficiency to use standard software at an advanced level; may include some use of database or research applications; knowledge of common ICTs and their use in agricultural extension systems.

Apply Instruction

Candidates must send their CV and cover letter to [email protected] no later than October 31, 2020.

Please include the position and reference number in the subject of your email.

Incomplete applications (without CV and cover letter) will not be taken into consideration.

Please note that only short-listed candidates will be contacted.