The Bilateral Ethiopia Seed Business Development and Marketing Expert Jobs in Ethiopia

The Bilateral Ethiopia Seed Business Development and Marketing Expert Jobs in Ethiopia

Job Id: 199107

Category: Business Development, Management Location: Hawassa, SNNPR
Career Level: Senior Level (5+ years experience)
Salary: Based on the Scale of ISSD Ethiopia Programme for regional expert

Job Description

The position
With a position of Seed Business Development and Marketing Expert, you will function within a team of individuals with complementary expertise in seed sector development.

You will be supervised by the regional scientific coordinator, who will be assisted by a regional project manager. The regional project manager will supervise you on a day to day basis.

Expertise, guidance, and support in gender; informal seed systems; business development; project implementation strategy; monitoring and evaluation (M&E); and data management will be provided by the Addis Ababa based ISSD Ethiopia project management unit (PMU).

A team of experts from Wageningen University and Research centre (Wageningen UR), the Netherlands will support PMU. Regional activity planning will be conducted with the participation of PMU and often in collaboration with other projects united by the BENEFIT partnership.

You will be an active participant in knowledge sharing and learning events with the teams based at other duty stations.

Key Responsibilities:

Capacity strengthening of seed producers, which include, seed producer cooperatives, small and medium private and public seed enterprises as well as community based seed producer groups, in seed business management and in marketing as well as seed enterprise development.

You will be expected to train and coach seed producers to professionalize business practices and identify, develop, and secure markets for their seed.

Facilitating business linkages. Your role is also to help seed producers in identifying and sustainably linking with relevant input and service providers, including: early generation seed producers; seed inspectorates; processors; traders; relevant government organizations; financial institutions; and buyers of quality seed.

Planning, monitoring and evaluating activities related to seed business development and marketing. You should actively support seed producers to contribute to project planning, monitoring and evaluation (M&E), and work with the project’s M&E team in data collection; management; analysis; and reporting.

Documenting and sharing experiences on seed business development and marketing. You will participate in project knowledge sharing processes and events within your own team and with others.

BENEFIT-ISSD aims to improve access to quality seed

The goal of BENEFIT-ISSD Ethiopia is to improve female and male smallholder farmers’ access to and use of quality seed of new, improved and/or farmer preferred varieties to sustainably increase agricultural productivity.

The programme builds upon eight years of experiences in supporting the development of a vibrant, pluralistic and market oriented seed sector in Ethiopia.

In this, its current phase starting January 1st, 2016 and ending December 31st 2019, BENEFIT-ISSD Ethiopia strengthens seed producers in three different seed systems (informal, intermediary and formal); enhances the performance of seed value chains within these seed systems; and contributes to an improved enabling environment for the seed sector.

In addition, the programme strengthens professional capacities for implementing the ISSD approach.

ISSD Ethiopia is implemented in four regions of Ethiopia through multiple partnerships

BENEFIT-ISSD Ethiopia is one of the partners of BENEFIT. BENEFIT stands for Bilateral Ethiopia Netherlands Effort for Food, Income and Trade. It is a partnership among four programmes in the country and with the Ethiopian agricultural sector itself, funded by the Dutch Government.

BENEFIT-ISSD is implemented by five regional units

hosted at four universities (Bahir Dar, Haramaya, Hawassa and Mekelle) and Oromia Seed Enterprise in four regions of the country, supported by a programme management unit and BENEFIT Partnership Coordination Unit (PCU), both located in Addis Ababa, and by Wageningen University & Research, the Netherlands.

What kind of person we need

Hard working; work independently; good interpersonal communication; facilitation and mediation skills; flexible; reasonable; accommodative; constructive and contributing

Supportive Knowledge, experiences and skills required:

The Seed Business Development and Marketing Expert should have knowledge, experience, and skills in:

Developing business plans and generating new business models;

Accounting / financial management;
Promoting entrepreneurship and enterprise development;

Conducting market analysis, seed demand assessments / market forecasts;

Product marketing, promoting, branding, and value addition;

Developing and securing new markets for goods and services;

Working with a range of stakeholders to facilitate public and private partnerships;

Building strong relationships with customers/client relations.

To perform the function optimally, you should be able to:

Coach seed producer organizations, which include community based seed producer groups, seed producer cooperatives, small and medium public and private seed enterprises, on the above-mentioned and other technical aspects of seed business development and seed marketing;

Work effectively with seed producers to identify and address challenges to seed business development and marketing;

Maintain existing networks within the seed sector whilst actively seeking out new relations with relevant organizations and projects;

Organize meetings, workshops, and forums in the seed sector for the purpose of facilitating seed business development and marketing;

Conceive and apply participatory methodologies and tools to assess business performance and market opportunities;

Assess seed producer procurement, production, and marketing strategies and traders and processors sourcing strategies;

Work with seed producers to maintain basic balance sheets of income and expenditure in order to assess cost structures, manage working capital, forecast revenues, and estimate profitability and marginal rate of return on investment;

Act as an ambassador to the project, its implementing partners and target groups;

Contribute to project related communication and knowledge sharing products and supported media;

Participate actively in project planning, monitoring and evaluation.

Job Requirements

Applicants must satisfy all of the following minimum requirements:

Most preferably MSc/MA degree in Cooperative management, Cooperative development, cooperative organization development and organization development as related to farming, with a minimum of 10 years of demonstrated experience in related fields of work;

Graduates with Bachelor’s degrees may still be eligible on condition that they have at least 12 years of demonstrated work experience relevant to the job.

Proficiency in written and spoken English;
Duty Station: Hawassa University, College of Agriculture, Hawassa

Level: Senior (10+ years of experiences with MA/MSc or 12+ years of experience with BA/BSc) in agricultural economics, economics, business management, marketing, enterprise management, agri-business.

How to Apply

Interested candidates are invited to send a well-formulated letter of motivation of no more than one page and their up-to-date CV within ten days from the date posted on ethiojobs web site by email to vacancy.issdethiopia@gmail.com

Please indicate in the subject line application for seed business development and marketing expert.

Only short listed candidates will be contacted for face-to-face interview. Short listed candidates are required to submit scanned copies of their academic credentials at the time of interview.

For more information on the project, please visit our websites:

www.issdethiopia.org

www.issdseed.org

www.benefitethiopia.org

The Bilateral Ethiopia Seed Business Development and Marketing Expert Jobs in Ethiopia