AGRA is an alliance led by Africans with roots in farming communities across the continent. We understand that African farmers need uniquely African solutions designed to meet their specific environmental and agricultural needs so they can sustainably boost production and gain access to rapidly growing agriculture markets.
The Specialist – Implementation and Delivery will support the Center of Excellence (CoE) in building and strengthening the implementation and delivery capabilities of the teams of the two Agricultural Transformation Offices (ATOs) in Tanzania and Sierra Leone. This is achieved through deploying management and delivery tools, providing needs-based capacity building interventions, and sharing lessons and best practices. The specialist will work under the Lead – Implementation and Delivery to provide technical backstopping, curate best practices, build capacities, and strengthen the center of excellence to emerge as a thought leader for delivery and institutional capacity.
Key Duties and Responsibilities:
- Develop and strengthen multi-stakeholder coordination and accountability mechanisms for priority programs in current and/or future ATOs.
- Design and implement performance management and problem-solving frameworks; this entails designing tools and templates to be used in performance management.
- Develop and support the utilization of delivery tools and practices, delivery chain analysis, stakeholder mapping, prioritization, and root cause analysis.
- Develop data collection, organization, and analysis framework; and serve as a champion of evidence-based decision making.
- Provide needs-based technical support, coach, supervise, and manage delivery specialists/analysts within the ATO.
- Support Lead- Implementation and Delivery in the preparation of the center of excellence plan and budget, with a clear implementation plan and a results framework.
- Support ATOs to design and operationalize investment cases on priority value chains.
- Document lessons, produce knowledge products, and thought pieces related to the center of excellence delivery model and approaches.
- Engage and work with key government stakeholders to mainstream the delivery and institutional capacity approach.
- Coordinate with ATO staff and other partners to provide targeted capacity-building programs to drive priority programs.
- Direct and provide on-the-job coaching and learning by doing to relevant technical and administrative staff of the government and the ATO teams.
- Facilitate and work with governments to strengthen functional sectoral/multi-sectoral coordination platforms, working groups (ASWGs), and donor working groups (DWGs).
- Support the team in designing compelling resource mobilization pitches and engaging development partners to support priority programs.
- Map, target, and engage partners in agrifood systems to forge and operationalize new partnerships.
- Inspire and grow teamwork, partnership, and collaboration among the ATO and government teams to enhance performance and impact.
- Conduct delivery chain analysis across actors and the ecosystem to provide evidence-based recommendations to the ATOs.
- Assess constraints and key drivers of performance, motivations, and perceptions of delivery system actors and provide evidence based recommendations to catalyze agrifood systems transformations.
- Develop and lead systematic routines, frameworks, and dashboards, and track performance and ensure accountability.
- Design and provide need-based capacity building strengthening packages to enhance leadership skills and delivery functions in consultation with the AGRA and other partners.
- Instill and enforce the discipline of delivery culture and routinization by instilling management routines and digital tools to plan/prioritize, set targets, solve problems, establish a data-tracking system, evaluate, and report performance against agreed targets.
- Identify systemic constraints and key drivers of performance, motivations, and perceptions of delivery system actors and provide evidence-based recommendations.
- Facilitate and coordinate functional sectoral/multi-sectoral platforms with clearly defined roles & responsibilities, structures, and systems among actors to effectively roll out implementation.
- Track, evaluate, and report performance outcomes to ensure accountability mechanisms and learnings across the implementing partners in the delivery system.
Key Qualifications and Experience Required:
- Education: Bachelor’s or master’s degree in Business Administration, Public Policy, Economics, Management, public/development administration, Rural Development, or any other relevant field from an accredited institution. An advanced degree in the fields mentioned above will be an added advantage.
- Experience: Minimum 8 years’ professional experience in building and operating delivery mechanisms within or outside food systems; this entails establishing and/or running Agricultural Transformation Offices, Presidential Delivery Units, or other types of delivery mechanisms.
- Experience in institutional capacity building of government institutions.
- Proven track record of managing complex, multi-stakeholder initiatives with tangible results.
- Experience in working with multi-stakeholder platforms and processes, or other complex collaboration and partner management platforms across sectors.
- Strong knowledge of Africa’s food system context and political savviness.
- Exceptional collaboration skills to actively strengthen delivery culture through coaching, mentoring, and capacity building to enhance team and institutional performance.
- Ability to identify systemic constraints and conduct systemic analysis and provide evidence-based innovative solutions.
- Deep understanding of market and government systems, agribusiness ecosystems, value chain dynamics, and market systems to identify viable entry points for private sector engagement and investment.
- Ability to map, engage, and coordinate with key ecosystem and delivery chain public and private sector actors, internal and external stakeholders across agrifood systems, to foster alignment, coordination, and synergy around government priority programs.
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