Job Reference: ADC/PR/09/2023.
About AGRA
AGRA and its Work
AGRA is an African-led institution that actively supports the drive towards inclusive agricultural transformation and sustainable food systems. We do this by empowering the continent’s 33 million smallholder farming households to transform their agriculture from a struggle to survive to profitable businesses. The continent’s farmers regularly face challenges, and we aspire to provide uniquely African solutions that respond to their agricultural and environmental challenges, leading to increased harvests for reduced hunger and more income.
Working in alignment with the development priorities of our focus countries, we enable farmers to access improved and high-yielding seeds, gain knowledge on sustainable farming, and linkages to profitable markets.
In our work, we aspire to build the alliances, partnerships, and networks required to drive an inclusive agricultural transformation. We work with our partners to create an equitable youth-friendly environment that harnesses the youth dividend on the continent to drive growth and facilitate open employment opportunities for young women and men. We achieve our key objectives through a focus on the following four areas of intervention:
- Policy and state capability – We support governments in creating an enabling environment for private sector involvement in agricultural transformation.
- Seed systems – We trigger higher productivity by increasing the availability and access to improved seeds by farmers allowing them to increase their harvests for food security and better incomes.
- Sustainable farming – We support farmers in building resilient farming systems for sustained high yields through interventions such as mechanization and irrigation.
- Inclusive markets and trade – We work to increase the linkages between farmers, and other market actors for a positive, sustained cycle of commercialization and reinvestment.
AGRA’s 2030 Strategy
The continent has, in recent years, taken steps towards inclusive agricultural transformation resulting in notable improvements in food security, with clear progress across all AGRA’s focus countries. However, with over 20% of Africans still suffering from hunger, we need to accelerate our progress and mitigate against the growing external pressures of conflict and climate on our food systems.
AGRA 2022-2030 Strategic Framework (SF2030) demonstrates our long-term vision for how we intend to contribute to, and align with, global and continental priorities, applying a food systems lens towards the goals of zero hunger, improved nutrition, an end to poverty, and climate adaptation. We have split our Strategic Framework 2030 into two 5-year strategies so that we have a clear mid-way point to evaluate progress and re-route our strategic focus if necessary. Our 2023-2027 Strategic Plan sets out to catalyze the growth of sustainable food systems across Africa by influencing and leveraging partners to build a robust enabling environment where the private sector thrives, and smallholders are empowered to produce sufficient, healthy food.
AGRA’s Vision
To contribute to a food system-inspired inclusive agricultural transformation across Africa, to reduce hunger, improve nutrition, and adapt to climate.
AGRA’s Mission
To catalyze the growth of sustainable food systems across Africa by influencing and leveraging partners to build a robust enabling environment where private sector thrives, and smallholder farmers are empowered to produce sufficient, healthy food.
AGRA’s Strategy
- Empowering and building the resilience of small holder farmers
- Supporting the development of inclusive markets and finance to strengthen agricultural systems.
- Strengthening state capability to sustain agricultural transformation.
Implementing Our New Strategy Through People
AGRA is at the threshold of a new chapter where we begin implementing our new strategy of catalyzing inclusive, resilient and sustainable agricultural transformation. At AGRA we believe Agriculture is the single greatest opportunity to deliver inclusive economic growth, jobs, and health to the African continent.
People are the heart of our organisation and remain the true drivers of our delivery and our impact.
We are excited about a new fit-for-purpose organizational structure that is largely driven by an ambition to enhance collaboration across teams and drive sustainable growth. We have therefore purposed more focus on delivery of country programs within the new strategy giving even greater attention to optimizing existing talent in addition to upscaling technical and operational resources.
We work with incredible people and partners who have roots in farming communities across the continent combined with an inclusive and diverse workforce from over 24 nationalities. Our values of (I-RISE; Integrity, Respect, Innovation, Stewardship and Equity) espouse our commitment to a call to action to go beyond ourselves as we arise and transform Africa’s Agriculture.
We are looking for people who are passionate about Africa, curious and collaborative to join our innovative, growing, and multidisciplinary team. Together, we can grow Africa’s food systems improving the livelihoods of smallholder farmers. Want to join us?
The Opportunity
Associate, Development Cooperation Officer, Job Reference: ADC/PR/09/2023
Role Purpose
Working closely with the Head – Development Cooperation and the wider Development Cooperation (DC) team, the Associate Development Cooperation Officer (ADCO) will support the growth of AGRA’s funding partnerships by building a strong donor stewardship culture and a healthy funding pipeline to resource AGRA’s new five-year strategic plan.
Role Summary
S/he will collaborate and partner with the Development Cooperation unit, providing donor intelligence and insights in the development sector with a specific focus on agriculture and food systems. S/he will serve as a thought partner by developing fundraising content, supporting business development, and helping the Development Cooperation team ramp up its resource mobilization efforts by playing an active role in supporting the implementation of the Institutional resource mobilization strategy. S/he will also lead on the donor stewardship (Customer Relationship Management database) support the facilitation of negotiations and signing of new funding agreements, while assisting in the implementation of AGRA’s Public-Private Partnership resource mobilization strategy.
Key Measures of Performance
Business Development/Analysis/Communication:
- Number of donor analysis and customized insights for strategic RM positioning, business development leveraging specific experience or knowledge assets (products, tools, data, workshops, frameworks, surveys, and related expertise, etc.) delivered.
- Number of new business development opportunities (funding opportunities, intelligence, updated donor profiles) identified, captured and pursued as a result of scanning the donor funding landscape.
- Number of Go-No-Go and due diligence reports delivered.
- Type and quality of fundraising and marketing material ((e.g. project references, expressions of interest, proposals, updated capacity statements organization and sectoral etc) developed and used to support acquisition of new funding towards AGRA strategy.
Donor Stewardship/Customer Relationship Management:
- Monitor key divisional KPIs and develop management reports on a monthly basis (funding pipeline tracker, reporting and compliance dashboard, team risk register, progress against annual workplan)
- Percentage of staff trained on Customer Relationship Management database.
- Monitor accuracy of data inputs on donor awards and contracts in the CRM database (including capturing financial leverage and cost recovery).
- Monitor utilization of the CRM system.
Team Support (Due Diligence, Internal Reports, Meeting and Briefing Docs)
- Number of briefing documents, talking points developed to support DC Unit.
- Unit’s shared folders are updated and maintained with the most up to date information.
- Curate minutes from DC Team engagement meetings and circulated with key action items followed up upon in a timely manner.
Major Duties and Responsibilities
Purpose – Analyze
- Acquires and analyzes information and intel on donor policies, priorities and trends, and subsequently, develops and/or updates donor strategies, profiles to improve AGRA’s knowledge of donors’ strategies and policies and to better direct its resource mobilization efforts.
- Delivers analysis and customized insights for strategic RM positioning, business development by leveraging specific experience or knowledge assets (products, tools, data, workshops, frameworks, surveys, and related expertise, etc.);
- Identifies prospective donor partners for resource mobilization cultivation and engagement.
- Leads on management report generation to show the results achieved by Development Cooperation Unit against Institutional Goals and Resource Mobilization (RM) Targets. This will include analyzing and preparing Development Cooperation RM reports against Key Performance Indicators (KPIs.
Engagement – Collaborate
- Organizes and participates in internal/external meetings (as requested), including annual review meetings with multi-bilateral donors, thematic meetings and resource mobilization events, governing body committees, programming meetings and missions.
- Liaising closely with the DC Unit to support on bid processes including pre-positioning, partner engagement, research, RFA/Is and tender responses.
- Share insights and experiences from proposal development and coordination process (from after action reviews) into the specific knowledge asset and/or adapting existing DC materials.
Delivery – Manage the Project Cycle
- Supports the delivery of AGRA’s resource mobilization strategy. This includes collaborating with the relevant staff in developing and updating promotional materials and assisting AGRA leadership in donor countries and in the Regions with entering into new Public-Private Partnerships.
- Lead in updating monthly funding pipeline tracker, portfolio dashboards (budget monitoring, donor reporting performance), updating the corporate risk register.
- Lead in producing and monitoring monthly reporting deliverables for donor awards.
- Lead in producing DC monthly funding bulletin.
- Coordinate quarterly updates of the DC risk register.
- Lead in training of existing and new staff on CRM utilization (DC Focal point for Oracle and Fusion (procurement, CRM).
- Lead in updating the CRM database with donor contacts, awards.
- Lead in RM webinar content and facilitation.
- Lead in go-no-go, due diligence for new RM opportunities and donor partners.
- Coordinates inter-divisional team meetings to discuss RM pipeline, opportunities and areas for DC support.
- Supports the DC team to disseminate the RM guide to regional and country offices and main point person for compliance on the guide.
- Coordinates the signing of new funding agreements, working in close cooperation with other AGRA units (legal and financial departments and country offices) and ensuring proper stakeholder management.
- Supports in the preparation of meetings; presentations, talking points and briefing documents.
Model the IRISE Values & Be a Culture Carrier
- Integrity: Uphold moral convictions and always doing the right thing.
- Respect: Value differences and embrace diversity and inclusion.
- Innovation: Strive for excellence and embracing continuous improvement, bold creativity, and change.
- Stewardship: Be responsible for actions undertaken and resources entrusted.
- Equity: Be governed by fairness in all undertakings.
Requirements
Academic and Professional Qualifications
- A bachelor’s degree in economics, social science, international studies or other relevant field.
- Fluency in English; Knowledge of French will be an advantage.
- Proficiency in using applications software, including presentation, spreadsheet, word processing, and project management tools.
- Strong quantitative and analytical skills.
Required Skills/Abilities
- Sound understanding of the donor financing landscape and processes.
- Writing for a range of different audiences to produce high quality and concise materials including internal content, sector insights, marketing and selling materials, proposals and reports for development sector clients.
- Ability to work collaboratively and effectively in a group dynamic of local and remote teams around the world, and of working independently to develop content that can contribute to wider business priorities.
- Ability to translate program-based concepts into simple packaged fundraising material and concepts.
- Analysis and problem solving, with a high capacity for conceptual and strategic/end-to-end thinking.
- Managing and communicating with senior internal stakeholders as well as partner organizations, to present and engage audiences effectively.
- Prioritizing workload including through transparent discussion with senior stakeholders, operating with autonomy to execute on the planned priorities.
- Working flexibly, in an ever changing and complex environment, bringing a curious and creative mindset, demonstrating an openness and drive for purposing new and
- Excellent interpersonal and communication skills to interact with internal and external stakeholder while working in a global collaborative team environment.
Relevant Experience
- Experience in international development with demonstrable track record of working with donors.
- Experienced donor development and resource mobilization expert with a superior track record of success serving international development organizations.
- Success in resource mobilization for large multilateral or bilateral agencies or international organizations
- Knowledge and experience working on performance-based targets for fundraising.
Key Competencies
- Achieving Results: Anticipates constraints, identifies solutions and takes responsibility for addressing critical situations; Sets self and others stretching goals, over and above those required to meet organizational standards and targets; Takes the necessary actions to meet these goals; identifies and applies measures to track and quantify achievement; Aligns projects with organization’s mission and objectives and demonstrates a good understanding of the impact of team’s and own work on external and internal counterparts..
- Managing & Sharing Knowledge: Disseminates and shares knowledge openly and actively contributes to knowledge/network communities for topics relevant to area of expertise; Builds networks for the effective communication and exchange of knowledge and ideas and puts others into contact with various sources of knowledge; Contributes to an environment that is conducive to innovation and learning.
- Accountability: Maintains ethical behavior, admits mistakes and exhibits responsible behavior in the meeting of performance expectations; Actively seeks out solutions to achieve results; Holds self-accountable for achieving results as an individual as well as team members; Identifies and assists in addressing areas of weakness that may impact the department’s performance..
- Diversity & Inclusion: Takes a conscious effort to learn about different styles of conflict resolution; Is proactive in managing conflict over differences when it arises rather than avoiding it; Listens actively for the frames of reference and does not prejudge; Seeks to understand and adapt to different styles when working with those who are different; Treats others as they wish to be treated; Shows readiness to change the way he/she does things to meet the needs of those from diverse backgrounds.
- Adaptability: Adapts personal approach to meet the needs of different or new situations; Seeks guidance in adapting behavior to the needs of a new or different situation.
- Stakeholder Focus/Partnerships: Contacts stakeholders to follow up on services, solutions or products to ensure that their needs have been correctly and effectively met; Understands issues from the stakeholder’s perspective; Keeps stakeholders up-to-date with information and decisions that affect them; Monitors services provided to stakeholders and makes timely adjustments as required; Maintains ongoing communication with stakeholders; Regularly and systematically contacts stakeholders or prospective stakeholders to determine their needs; Uses understanding of stakeholder’s perspective to identify constraints and advocate on their behalf; Works with stakeholders to adapt services, products or solutions to meet their needs; Encourages co-workers and teams to achieve a high standard of service excellence; Anticipates areas where support or influence will be required and discusses situation/concerns with appropriate individuals; Proposes new, creative and sound alternatives to improve stakeholder service delivery; Engages effectively with all stakeholders.
- Teamwork: Establishes strong relationships with colleagues and partners; relates well to people at all levels; Is fully aware of the team purposes, respects and understands individual and collective responsibilities; Willingly puts in extra effort without being asked and adopts a ‘hands-on’ approach whenever necessary to achieve team objectives; Coordinates own work with that of the team to meet agreed priorities and deadlines.
Terms of Appointment
3 Years Fixed Term (Consideration for renewal will be made subject to AGRA’s needs, available funding and performance).
Location
Based in Nairobi, Kenya.
How to Apply
If you believe you are the right candidate for this position, kindly submit your application with a detailed CV (including your e-mail address and telephone contacts to recruit@agra.org noting to quote the job reference number in the subject of your email)
To be considered, applications must be received on or before Monday 25th September 2023.
Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.
AGRA is an Equal Opportunity Employer