The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture seeks suitable Nigerian nationals for the position below at the Institute's Headquarters in Ibadan.
Duties
Provide overall technical leadership, coordination, and quality assurance for Component 2 (Agri-Enterprise Growth) across Nigeria, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, ensuring alignment with the I-Youth 2.0 theory of change and results framework.
Develop and coordinate country-specific implementation plans for agribusiness parks, cooperatives, finance and market linkages, input support, technology adoption, climate-smart innovations, and youth helpdesk interventions.
Ensure interventions are appropriately adapted to country-specific regulatory, market, institutional, and operational contexts while maintaining consistent implementation standards across the three countries.
Oversee the establishment, strengthening, and operationalization of agribusiness parks as sustainable enterprise hubs providing youth with access to productive infrastructure, technologies, inputs, services, and markets.
Coordinate the establishment and strengthening of youth agribusiness cooperatives and clusters, including appropriate governance, mentorship, and enterprise support systems.
Lead and coordinate partnerships with financial institutions, investors, off-takers, aggregators, input suppliers, government agencies, and other ecosystem actors to strengthen youth access to finance, inputs, and markets.
Oversee the provision of starter and booster support and facilitate sustainable access to quality inputs, equipment, and other productive resources for participating youth.
Coordinate the adoption and dissemination of relevant digital technologies and climate smart agricultural innovations in collaboration with IITA, CGIAR technical teams, and other partners.
Provide technical guidance and performance oversight to service providers, mentors, and country teams responsible for delivering Component 2 interventions.
Monitor the performance and utilization of agribusiness parks, cooperatives, and other enterprise growth interventions and facilitate corrective actions where required.
Coordinate closely with Country Coordinators, field teams, the PMO, and the MEAL function to monitor implementation against approved work plans, budgets, indicators, and enterprise growth targets.
Identify implementation risks, bottlenecks, and emerging opportunities and recommend appropriate actions to strengthen Component 2 performance.
Contribute timely and high-quality technical inputs to project, management, and donor reports and support documentation of enterprise growth results, lessons, and good practices.
Represent Component 2 at relevant technical meetings, stakeholder engagements, and donor forums, as required.
Ensure compliance with IITA policies, donor requirements, safeguarding standards, and applicable environmental and social safeguards.
Perform other related duties as assigned by the Executive Manager, I-Youth 2.0, or the Chief Executive Officer, Youth in Agribusiness.
Requirements
Master's degree in Agribusiness, Agricultural Economics, Agriculture, Business Administration, Enterprise/Entrepreneurship Development, Economics, Development Studies, or a related discipline is required.
A minimum of seven (7) years of progressively responsible experience in agribusiness/enterprise development, value chain development, or youth economic empowerment programming is required.
Competencies:
The ideal candidate must have:
Demonstrated experience designing or managing interventions related to agribusiness incubation/parks, cooperative or enterprise cluster development, access to finance, and market linkages.
Experience working across multiple countries or managing multi-location technical interventions, ideally within West Africa.
Experience managing or coordinating service providers and technical partners on donor-funded programs.
Familiarity with digital agronomic advisory tools (e.g., AKILIMO) and climate-smart agriculture approaches is desirable.
Demonstrated experience engaging financial institutions, aggregators, off-takers and private sector actors in support of enterprise growth.
Strong technical knowledge of agribusiness development, enterprise growth, and value chain financing.
Excellent program coordination and multi-country management skills.
Strong partnership building, negotiation and stakeholder engagement skills.
Sound analytical, planning and problem-solving abilities.
Strong monitoring, reporting and results-orientation.
Excellent communication, presentation and report-writing skills.
High level of professionalism, integrity, cultural sensitivity and accountability.
Proficiency in Microsoft Office applications and relevant project management or data tools.
Willingness and ability to travel frequently and extensively within Nigeria, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Benefits
We offer highly competitive salary with equally attractive benefits and excellent working conditions in a pleasant campus environment.