Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency Evaluations and Learning Director Jobs

Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency Evaluations and Learning Director Jobs

Job Id: 224370

Category: Economics

Location: Addis Ababa

Career Level: Managerial Level (Manager, Supervisor, Director)

Employment Type: Full time

Salary: Competitive

Job Description

Vacancy Announcement

Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency

Position: Evaluations and Learning Director

Term of Employment: One year with possibility of extension

Duty Station(s): Addis Ababa

Required Number: One

Salary & Benefits: Competitive

Application Deadline: October 09, 2019

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 mentor-ships necessary to achieve their career goals.

Position Summary:

The Director of the Evaluation and Learning Unit (EL) will lead the EL team to design, conduct baseline and evaluation studies on ATA projects.

The Director will work closely with senior management and leaders across the organization, in addition to a variety of high-profile stakeholders and partners.

The Director will lead the EL team to generate significant learning and insights to improve the design and operation of current and future interventions, both at the ATA and with our partners in the Transformation Agenda.

This position will report directly to the Senior Director of Implementation Support. The mission of the Implementation Support vertical is

to improve the impact and effectiveness of the ATA’s and our partners’ work with smallholder farmers.

Implementation Support Vertical also oversees the Project and Portfolio Management Office, Analytics, Cross-cutting Initiatives and the Delivery Unit (at the Ministry of Agriculture); and the Director will closely work with these units and other project staffs.

The Director will be a key thought partner to the Senior Director in refining the strategy for the Implementation Support Vertical.

Essential Duties:

Lead the EL team to achieve maximum impact through actionable, insightful and collaborative project design, baseline and evaluation studies.

Lead the EL team to produce high-quality and timely baselines and evaluations of the ATA’s work with smallholder farmers, including partnering with a variety of consultants and research organizations

Synthesize and communicate learnings from evaluations and progress reviews to ensure continuous improvement of policy development, project planning and implementation, both within the ATA and with our partners

Act as a thought partner to help project teams develop meaningful results frameworks and monitoring & evaluation plans

Work with Project and portfolio management unit to create systems and capacity building initiatives for the effective and efficient management of projects in ATA

Work closely with researches to move from individual project evaluations to cross-project meta-analysis and modelling to understand the drivers of change in agriculture

Lead operations research within the framework of projects being implemented by ATA for generating and applying learning

Proactively coach and develop EL staffs and independent contractors (ICs)

Engage in GTP II evaluation and GTP III

Planning of Transformation Agenda

Undertake other assignments as directed by the Implementation Support Senior Director.

Job Requirements

Master’s degree in Monitoring and Evaluation, Development Economics, Economics, Agricultural Economics, Development Studies, Statistics or another relevant field.

At least 10 years hands-on experience in managing a monitoring and evaluation system and/or impact evaluation, preferably in the fields of agriculture or rural development, based on planning frameworks such as logical framework, results framework, outcome mapping.

Deep understanding of the theory and application of performance evaluation as well as impact evaluation, including best-practice tools and approaches.

Hands-on experience with data management and analytical software such as SPSS/Stata.

An understanding of Ethiopia’s agricultural system, with a broad perspective on how the entire system operates and how public, private, NGO and informal actors interact.

Excellent analytical, problem-solving, and data gathering and analysis skills.

Ability to thrive in a fast-moving, start-up environment, with an emphasis on high performance, teamwork, accountability and results.

Strong set of personal values including integrity, honesty and desire to be of service

Fluency in English is essential;

How to Apply

Application Instructions

We invite all candidates meeting the required qualifications to send (i) a cover letter and (ii) CV (maximum 3 pages) at http://apply.ata.gov.et

Also, please do not submit scans of certificates with your application form.

Women are highly encouraged to apply.

NB. Only short listed candidates will be contacted.

Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency Evaluations and Learning Director Jobs