Farmer-to-Farmer Country Director at Land O’Lakes Venture37: (Deadline 22 May 2023)

Farmer-to-Farmer Country Director at Land O’Lakes Venture37: (Deadline 22 May 2023)

Farmer-to-Farmer Country Director

Rwanda

Job Description

Assignment Location: Kigali, Rwanda

Posted: May 8^th, 2023

Closing date: May 22^nd, 2023

Background:

Land O’Lakes Venture37 is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit helping communities around the world build economies by strengthening agriculture from farm-to-fork, helping businesses grow, and linking farmers to markets. Since our start in 1981, we have been leveraging nearly 100 years of expertise in crop inputs, agricultural insights, dairy and animal nutrition from our close affiliate, Land O’Lakes, Inc., a farmer-owned agribusiness committed to fulfilling its purpose of feeding human progress.

Project/Proposal Summary:

Land O’Lakes Venture37 is anticipating a new United States Agency for International Development (USAID) awarded Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) Program centered on climate-smart and inclusive food systems. The proposed F2F program will focus volunteer efforts on improving climate responsiveness and inclusivity in various food systems by addressing barriers to adaptation of environmentally sustainable agriculture practices across a variety of crop and animal agricultural value chains, as well as identifying and adapting to gender- and youth-based inhibitors to food system participation and production. 

Job Description:

The Farmer to Farmer Country Director (CD) will provide strategic vision, overall leadership, and technical direction to the project and ensure the project is planned and executed with quality, accountability, and measurable impact in Rwanda. The CD will liaise with the Rwanda USAID Mission and other donor partners and programs, as necessary, and will manage project staff and implementing partners to ensure proper reporting, financial management, and compliance. The CD is expected to coordinate with government and other stakeholders to ensure that activities complement ongoing initiatives and adhere to country and global standards. Based in Kigali, the Country Director will oversee a small team located in the project office in Kigali and reports directly to the Deputy Program Director (DPD). The Country Director is expected to travel frequently to host organization sites in-country.

Primary Responsibilities: 

The main duties include but are not limited to the following:

• Identify and form relationships with program partners and potential volunteer host organizations and businesses, working with staff to draft and articulate assignments to be filled by experienced US agriculture sector volunteers, and supporting volunteers to have successful assignments with their hosts.
• Provide strategic leadership to the design and implementation of the project activities.
• Oversee project finances, planning, administration, compliance, reporting, monitoring and evaluation, and overall learning.
• Manage relationships with implementing partners and host organizations.
• Ensure optimal use of human, financial, and physical resources to successfully meet project milestones, objectives, deliverables, and targets.
• Ensure mechanisms are in place to monitor the implementation of projects, including progress toward achieving objectives and targets with high-quality and on-time performance.
• Ensure timely, high-quality, and complete submission of work plans, quarterly and annual reports, financial reports, and any other reports required by the donor.
• Ensure project activities are compliant to Land O’Lakes’ standard operating procedures, and USAID policies and regulations, and national policies and laws.
• Ensure documentation and dissemination of findings, impact, innovations, and lessons learned.
• Ensure gender equality approaches are integrated into programming; identifying learnings on a regular basis, refining the design as needed to improve gender equality across project activities.
• Promote sustainability of project activities with effective networking, linkages to other programs, capacity building of project staff, and institutional strengthening of implementing partners and community-based organizations.
• Create a collaborative organizational culture and facilitate exchange of knowledge for cross-organizational learning.
• Encourage learning and knowledge sharing/recording as an essential part of doing business and ensure employees own their own learning.
• Ensure tools for learning, such as blogs, articles, social media, brochures, coaching, training, etc. are in place. Encourage employees’ enrollment in relevant social networks and communities of practice. 

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in international development, business administration, economics, social sciences, agriculture, or a closely related field is required.
• 8 + years of experience working in the food processing industry or on development programs particularly in the areas of food safety and packaging.
• Strong leadership, communication, and interpersonal skills, including proven ability to develop and communicate a common vision among diverse partners and lead a multi-disciplinary team.
• Strong leadership qualities and depth and breadth of technical and management expertise in agriculture programming.
• Experience in systems strengthening, capacity building, service delivery, and quality improvement is highly desirable.
• Demonstrated ability to create and maintain effective working relations with host country government personnel, stakeholders, NGO partners, and international donor agencies.
• Strong interpersonal, writing, and oral presentation skills in English.
• Ability to work independently and manage a high-volume workflow.
• Relevant computer software skills (including, at a minimum, the standard applications in MS Office).

The position described above is contingent upon activity award.

This position is open to Rwanda nationals only. International allowances and benefits are not applicable to this position.  

Only short-listed candidates will be contacted. No phone calls will be accepted.

Land O’Lakes never requests money or payment from candidates for any position type. Please report any such requests to Land O’Lakes. 

Application Link:  

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