Training Specialist at IFDC

Job Description

• Realizing Sorghum and Millet Agricultural Productivity Gains in the Sahel/ Nigeria

Background

• The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) seeks to establish a practical understanding of how the production of sorghum and pearl millet features in Sahelian farming households’ overall livelihoods, and what that means for the investment choices farmers make regarding the production of these crops. Therefore BMGF awarded a grant to Context Global Development (Context) to manage a pilot program in Burkina Faso, Mali and Nigeria that tests different intervention hypotheses through action-research with farming households.
• Context selected the International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC) as a sub-grantee to implement a two-year (2016-2017) pilot project in Northern Nigeria. The purpose of the pilot project is to strengthen the resilience of sorghum/ millet farming systems in Northwestern Nigeria, by empowering smallholder farmers to develop farming as a sustainable business. Building on the approach set by its 2SCALE program (www.2scale.org), IFDC will partner with a lead agrifood company interested in sourcing high-quality sorghum and/or millet from Nigerian smallholder farmers, and facilitate the development and strengthening of business relationships among the value chain actors and supporters.
• The objective is to deepen our understanding of how partnerships, built with grassroots actors (farmers and their local networks, called agribusiness clusters), and the companies and entrepreneurs driving the value chain, achieve impact; and what the business models are that support both competitiveness and inclusiveness. This learning agenda will help identify incentives for smallholders to invest (or not) in sorghum/ millet productivity, and possible scaling pathways for the post-pilot phase.
• The project’s team in Nigeria will be composed of two full time technical staff: a Team Leader and a Training Specialist. They will be supported by part-time technical assistants and consultants, a monitoring & evaluation (M&E) specialist and support staff (administrative/ financial staff and drivers).
• This job description focuses on the Training Specialist position.

Duties

• The Training Specialist is responsible for designing the project’s capacity building strategy, developing its capacity building program and implementing it. S/he will be on the front line in training and coaching sorghum/ millet agribusiness cluster actors in supplying off-takers with commodities that are competitive and meet all quality requirements. Specific duties include:
• Get acquainted with the capacity building initiatives of the lead firm and other chain stakeholders to ensure alignment, complementarities and synergies, and avoid duplication of efforts.
• Through a Diagnostic & Design workshop or any other approach selected by the project, conduct a capacity building needs assessment for smallholder farmers, their organizations and other (potential) cluster actors (input dealers, traders, etc.).
• Building on identified gaps, design a capacity building strategy for farmers and other cluster actors in view to developing competitive agribusiness clusters and integrating them into selected value chain(s).
• Lead the integration of women in all capacity building interventions, including through the development of specific capacity building programs for women.
• Through training, action-research plots, demonstrations, field coaching, exchange visits and other methods, elaborate a capacity building program targeting cluster actors. Content-wise ensure quality, relevance, and logical flow of information; to engage participants and deliver content in an inspiring and useful manner, develop creative and varied facilitation/ training methodologies, tapping into a range of diverse facilitation tools. Capacity building topics will relate to crop production (e.g. good agricultural practices; technical innovations; sole, rotation and intercropping options), organizational development (e.g. strengthening of farmer cooperatives; group leadership), farming-as-a-business (e.g. costs of production; economics of the sorghum/ millet-based farming systems; business planning; cropping plan) and business relationships (within the cluster and with other chain actors and supporters).
• To intensify and accelerate capacity building activities, whenever needed identify and select local capacity building service providers, contract them (e.g. professional service contracts, grants) and monitor their performance.
• On a regular basis, fine-tune trainings and other capacity building programs, based on lessons learned, successes and failures.
• Provide agronomic advice and integrate them in the capacity building programs, to increase the productivity of sorghum/ millet farmers.
• Analyze and document the farming systems, with a specific focus on how farmers make (or not) investments decisions and on incentives to increase their productivity.
• Actively contribute to the pilot’s co-learning agenda from a capacity building and agronomic perspective.
• Write and submit quality progress and other technical reports or notes with a strict respect of deadlines, in good English.
• Document field achievements, innovations, failures and lessons learned; integrate lessons learned into subsequent project activities.
• Develop synergies with other IFDC projects and with other programs in the country.
• The Training Specialist is also responsible for any other assignment that IFDC’s management deems necessary for the success of the project.

Position and Duty Station:

• The Training Specialist’s position is a national one with a duty station in one of IFDC’s offices, either in a major city of Northwest Nigeria or in Abuja.
• The position requires intensive travels (minimum 50% of the time) in Northwest Nigeria, from time to time to other parts of the country and exceptionally to other African countries like Ghana.

Supervision:

• The Training Specialist is supervised by and reports to the Team Leader of the project.
• S/he works in close collaboration with the 2SCALE team in Nigeria and West Africa.

Qualifications

• Minimum Bachelor’s degree in agronomy or agriculture-related field.
• At least 4 years of relevant experience in agriculture, with a minimum of 2 years in training/ capacity building for farmers or other grassroots actors.
• A professional experience in Northwestern Nigeria would be a strong advantage.
• Proven track record in capacity building program design in topics related to crop production and farming as a business.
• Excellent facilitation skills, familiarity with adult learning approaches and methodologies, and competencies to use tailor-made and diversified facilitation/ training methods and tools.
• Ability to communicate effectively and in a participatory way with farmers and other stakeholders from both public and private sectors, and ability to work in a multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary environment.
• Ability to write quality documents in English.
• Fluent in Hausa and English.