Economic Recovery Assistant - Agriculture (Monguno) at Danish Refugee Council (DRC)

Purpose

The DRC Nigeria is looking to recruit an experienced, highly- qualified and enthusiastic professional to join the Economic Recovery team in Nigeria. Coordinate with partners and other stakeholders in the implementation of food assistance , livelihood programming through supporting market systems development (MSD), improved production practices for farmers’ associations, cash transfer programming (CTP) and village savings and loans associations (VSLA) while developing the social cohesion between members of the target communities.

Duties and Responsibilities

Supporting CTP and Agricultural Inputs Distributions and Farming Skills Training using Market Systems Development (MSD) Approach

• Work with Government and Community Resilience Groups (CRGs) to screen, select and verify beneficiaries in the target communities.
• Provide agriculture livelihood guidance, on an individual, group or association basis, to increase beneficiaries’ awareness of different agricultural value chain options based on market assessment and beneficiary interests.
• Provide information to beneficiaries about agricultural livelihoods and post-harvest value chain opportunities.
• Organize agricultural training on micro gardening and small farming management activities with beneficiaries
• Provide information to the beneficiaries on, market opportunities, and facilitate business linkage for improved agro-inputs vendors to increase ease of access and availability of inputs for smallholder farmers enterprise creation.
• Train, coach and mentor farmers on improved agricultural (livestock and crop) production practices
• Facilitate the implementation of Cash Transfer Programmes (CTP) at ward level, Conditional Cash Grants
• Work with line manager to plan for agricultural inputs distributions using MSD approach and ensuring distributed inputs accountability.
• Linking bulk agriculture produce buyers with farmers’ associations and input sellers with farmers.
• Work closely with Ministry of Agriculture Extension workers in facilitating crop farming/poultry production trainings for beneficiaries.
• Work with existing agricultural cooperatives or formation if not in the local government of implementation to easily access agricultural opportunities like lending and available information on learning good agronomic practices.
• Support the organization of trainings and other events related to the project.
• Provide administrative support if required.
• Submit weekly reports and contribute to compilation of the monthly report and submit to line manager.

Stakeholder Coordination

• Coordination of LGA and Ward level stakeholders in consultation with line manager.
• Ensure that protocol is followed through stakeholder consultation at all stages of project implementation.

Social Cohesion Programming

• Assess the relevance of potential intercommunal dialogue activities linked to agriculture to improve the dialogue and cooperation between these fields (e.g. joint workshops, peer-to-peer activities, language exchanges, etc.
• Maintain Excel tracking sheet to ensure that data are collected on a timely basis.
• Contribute to regular reporting on achievements and challenges related to the project as requested by the Economic Recovery and Market System Team Leader .

Monitoring & Evaluation

• Work closely with the monitoring team and the Economic Recovery and Market System Team Leader on the timely monitoring and evaluation of all components – information, beneficiary selection, beneficiary feedback about activities, etc.
• Facilitate the qualitative and quantitative monitoring of the project through team meetings, visits to selected beneficiaries, regular reporting and any other monitoring tools.
• Participate in the internal evaluation of the program.

The responsibilities listed in the JD are not exhaustive and may be readjusted according to operational needs but will remain in line with the overall purpose of the role.

Experience and technical competencies: (include years of experience)

Desirable:

• Previous working experience with humanitarian agencies
• Experience working with hosts, returnees and displaced populations.
• Previous experience working on Market Systems Development approaches

Essential:

• Experience in Agriculture programming and trainings.
• An understanding of humanitarian/civil society issues in the country and the region.
• 1-2 years working experience, in the field of agriculture is required

Qualifications

• University degree or advanced training/ course in Agriculture, Agronomy, Agricultural Extension, Social Science, International Affairs, Humanitarian or related field
• Professional experience of at least two years, including one year working with a humanitarian organisation;
• Proficient with standard software tools (Microsoft Word, Excel, and Power-Point);
• Good communication, and writing skills;
• Excellent negotiation and diplomacy skills;
• Ability to work in complex environments and under pressure