Country Coordinator at IITA - International Institute of Tropical Agriculture

Position Description

• Plan and coordinate project activities in-country in conjunction with the Principal Investigator and host institution, and across countries with the two other country coordinators.
• Coordinate and be responsible for financial and technical reporting of in-country activities.
• Lead project activities related to his/her discipline in the country and contribute to cross-country activities and knowledge-sharing systems. Project activities include: multi-locational diagnostic agronomy experiments; populating agronomy data bases; yield-gap and soil constraints analysis at different scales; methods and models to link geo-spatial data across scales; development and testing of decision-support systems, tools and APIs with stakeholders.
• Promote and support cross institutional and inter-disciplinary teams with specific emphasis on the integration of bio-physical and socio-economic information at various scales/levels.
• Facilitate partnerships and build capacity of partners to co-develop, populate, and use project databases, tools, models and APIs.
• Contribute to building capacity of national institutions through the identification and co-supervision or mentoring of project supported post-graduate students programs.
• Collaborate with CGIAR and other research institutes to support/ enhance project outputs and develop synergies with other projects to maximize impact.
• Communicate research results to various audiences and in various forms, papers for publication and presentations of results of this research.

Minimum Qualification & Experience

• The candidate should have a PhD in in one of the following fields: agronomy, agricultural economics, agricultural engineering, earth sciences, agro ecology.

Core Competencies:

• Minimum 5 years' experience in your chosen field/discipline.
• Ability to conceptualize complex problems into analytical and operational frameworks
• Understanding of gender and social inclusion issues and experience with ways of addressing these in research for development programs in order to promote equality of opportunity and outcomes.
 • Clear understanding of the technical and institutional challenges for sustainable intensification in SSA and the role of improved scientific knowledge management for decision support to development interventions.
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, experience working and interacting effectively with a variety of stakeholders ( farmers, extension workers and other service providers, public and private sector entities, national programs), and demonstrated ability to collaborate well across disciplines and with key collaborative institutions and agencies.
• Strong publication record in peer reviewed journals.
• Fluent written and spoken English.
• Knowledge of farming systems in the respective countries. Duty station: Nigeria (Kano)