Market Section Manager at Palladium Group

Project Overview and Role

• Propcom Mai-Karfi is a six year DFID programme aimed at increasing incomes for the poor in Northern Nigeria through enhanced employment opportunities for increased employment and improved productivity in selected agricultural market systems in Northern Nigeria
• The Market Section Manager will have the overall responsibility of providing strategic guidance and management for the programme market groups by managing all the programme interventions within the market section and overseeing both the strategic and administrative elements of the interventions. S/he will also be required to establish and manage relationships with potential partners and stakeholders in the various interventions within the market sector. The Market Sector Manager will identify and design potential interventions for the programme and develop strategies for implementing these interventions.
• S/he will be responsible for ensuring strong linkages between the market sector and the Evidence and Learning/ Results Measurement team of the programme.
• Though based in Abuja, this post will require frequent travel to the field.
• The Propcom Mai-karfi staff work as an integrated team. The Market Section Manager will be expected to contribute to other aspects of the programme.

Responsibilities
The Market Section Manager will be responsible for the following:

• Provide overall strategic direction for the market sector and all interventions within the sector; monitoring and quality assuring all intervention guides and resulting outputs
• Identify new markets with the aim of contributing to the overall programme strategy; liaise with programme senior management team on potential markets and design effective implementation strategies for approved market interventions ensuring that the meet all donor and programme requirements
• Initiate and manage all market related value chain analysis ensuring study designs, contracting and implementation are done in accordance to set standards; coordinate the development of final market opportunity reports as well as all other weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual reports within the market sector
• Drive the stakeholder analysis of the selected commodity chains as well as identifying and contacting potential agents of change.
• Oversee the implementation of all market intervention ensuring that initiative is taken within each intervention and setting work plans for the interventions
• Identify and establish strategic partnerships within the market and play a lead role in managing all established partnerships.
• Ensure sustained reporting on all intervention activities, progress reports, on and off field feedback and lessons learnt from each intervention.
• Identify key policy areas for each intervention and establish appropriate partnerships and contacts aimed at driving the policy amendment process where applicable.
• Coordinate all administrative aspects of Market partnerships including but not limited to grants, MoUs and contracts
• Manage the outputs of all members of the market section team ensuring optimum performance of all members of the team
• Establish and maintain processes and systems which ensure strong continued linkages between the programme's Results Measurement team and the Market Section team ensuring all interventions are adequately and extensively researched, reported and monitored.
• Oversee spendings on interventions within the market ensuring the meet agreed standards and also exhibit the DFID value for money policy
• Contribute to overall programme strategy as part of the senior management team (SMT)

Working Relationships

• The Market Section Manager will report to the Team Leader and will manage all members of the market section team. S/he will be a key strategic member of the programme staff and will form part of the senior management team contributing to the overall programme strategy and deliver.
• S/he will also be expected to work closely with the Results Measurement team of the programme and work effectively with all other members of the Propcom-Maikarfi team.
• The Market Section Manager will work closely with all market partners ensuring that all interests are adequately protected and all interventions have the potential for sustained improvements of the standards of the poor within the market areas.
• S/he will be required to drive the programme and donor interests within all interventions within the market thereby representing the programme on a strategic level with both the donor and other stakeholders.

Competencies:

• Communication: Confidently delivers tailored messages to various audiences using various media and tools. Asks insightful questions, validates the speaker?s feelings and points, and encourages the speaker; leaves the speaker feeling heard. Reports concisely and proactively with observations, analysis, and implications of the observations on project work and has the ability to present such findings to a variety of stakeholders in a concise and effective manner.
• Relationship Builder: Quickly develops trusting relationships with others; proactively assesses and manages trust with others. Maintains industry, government and corporate networks and consistently forges new business relationships to fit strategic priorities. Identifies shared goals and develops effective strategies around those goals; follows-up on connections to catalyze positive relationships. Demonstrates neutrality and helps parties come to creative agreements and solutions, while keeping ownership with the parties.
• Business Person: Understands the idea of the marketing mix (the 5 ?P?s); can gather market info and give advice on marketing strategy; Advises on building and keeping good customer relations. Keeps records in more complex business environments; Advises on basic finances; Identifies and considers the financial risks of decisions; considers the economic value for the markets before making financial decisions. Delivers training workshops; Advises on selecting and recruiting staff; appreciates the importance of incentives for performance
• Coach: Regularly engages with market actors and stakeholders to uncover and identify specific needs; builds desire in the coachee to address the needs. Offers specific, constructive feedback to others; leaves the coachee feeling empowered to improve; actively seeks out feedback to improve; uses feedback in reviewing intervention strategies. Creates buy-in from the coachee to improve; helps develop action plans; provides support, while ensure coachee ownership over the process
• Innovator: Tests out new ideas on an ongoing basis; failure encourages greater future effort; often demonstrates creative thinking; uses innovative approaches in the execution of work; actively searches for solutions beyond traditional boundaries. Makes time to reflect and codify learning; seeks out sources of learning; regularly adjusts actions based on comparing expected results against actual results; makes informed decisions based on lessons learnt from other interventions within the sector.  Proactively shares both successful and unsuccessful endeavours; actively identifies issues that may hinder effective collaborations and devises means of minimizing these; takes a leadership role in a team
• Political Economist: Critically analyses institutions using a visual model, objectively allocating roles and functions. Can prescribe an agenda to improve the institutional arrangements for the benefit of poor people. Rigorously analyses the way power and politics affects markets and poverty; can model the power relations; and can prescribe improvements for the benefit of poor people.  Collects and arranges complex evidence within an Excel workbook; cost-benefit analysis of economic options; prescription and argument for pro-poor improvements in markets.

Essential Qualifications
The Market Section Manager should have;

• A Masters degree or similar qualification in Business, Economics or Development Studies;
• A minimum of 3 years experience in implementing and managing projects with at least one year spent on the field on market research community projects;
• At least 2 years experience leading a busy team and coordinating across teams;
• Experience in business strategy development with focus on agricultural value chain analysis
• Experience reviewing and writing reports
• Experience in the development of surveys and data collection instruments for monitoring programmes;
• Previous data analysis experience using Microsoft Excel or any other data analysis tool;
• Previous experience using the market for the poor (M4P) approach would be of great advantage.
• Knowledge of the institutions and organizations and/or businesses that provide services to the agricultural sector in Nigeria and at the State level;
• Previous supervisory/ managerial responsibilities within a busy team