Dairy Productivity Advisor at TechnoServe

Job Summary:

• The Dairy Productivity Advisor will work under the supervision of the Senior Dairy Productivity Specialist. S/he will ensure that herders under their jurisdiction are equipped with the relevant knowledge and skills that substantially increase their dairy productivity both in quantity and quality of fresh milk.

Program Overview:

• TechnoServe’s Building Precision Dairy Models in Nigeria (BuPreDMiN) aims to build a precision, sustainable, and productive local dairy value chain in Nigeria within 4 years in a way that increases the incomes, resilience, and carbon footprint of dairy farmers in Nigeria.

Primary Functions & Responsibilities:

Project Inception Phase

• Take the lead in community entry, sensitization, mobilization, and enrollment of smallholder herders into the Danone backward integration in the dairy value chain.
• Ensure gender targets for the identified and enrolled herders are met
• Identify potential local community trainers (LCTs) in the assigned communities and support the operations team during recruitment.
• Coordinate the LCTs to organize herders into self-help groups for training interventions, milk aggregation, and supply to Danone

Project Implementation Phase

• Execute every assigned task with the understanding, compliance to, and promotion of TechnoServe’s values, vision, and strategy.
• Lead the scaling up of enrolment of herders for the Danone backward integration in the dairy value chain through community entry, sensitization, and mobilization.
• Ensure gender targets for the identified and enrolled herders in the expansion program are met.
• Identify potential local community trainers (LCTs) in the assigned communities and support the operations team during recruitment.
• Coordinate the LCTs to organize herders into self-help groups for training interventions, milk aggregation, and supply to Danone.
• Provide leadership to the local community trainers (LCTs) and ensure their capacity is deepened through train-the-trainer and simulation sessions.
• Support the Senior Productivity Specialist in developing training schedules and content to address quality and quantity gaps identified at the Milk Collection Center (MCC).
• Support the LCTs during step-down trainings and ensure compliance to the program quality guidelines.
• Support LCTs in resolving herders’ financial inclusion gaps for seamless business transactions with Danone.
• Facilitate the linkage of herders to high-quality and cost-effective sources of inputs to drive profitability.
• Support the MCC Specialist in mobilizing herders to supply Danone with high-quality and quantity of milk at designated collection centers.
• Support the MCC team in organizing regular town hall meetings with herders to brief and address emerging issues in the supply chain.
• Support all monitoring and evaluation activities, surveys, reporting, and develop success stories and lessons learned.
• Support herders sustainably in managing records of activities, and drive data collection of information required for monthly reports and analysis.
• Assist in implementing strategies that help resolve any occasional discrepancies and irregularities
• Strict adherence to the time and scope of the program.

Perform other duties in line with the evolving needs of the program.

Required Qualifications and Experiences:

• Bachelor’s degree or HND in Agriculture, Vet. Medicine, Agribusiness, Animal Science, or other relevant fields.
• At least 2 years of experience in related capacities to agribusiness, training, or marketing, with at least 1 year of experience in the livestock value chain (cattle, goats, sheep) within western Nigeria.
• Demonstrated understanding of the dairy value chain in Nigeria.

Knowledge and Skills:

• Must have strong interpersonal skills.
• Strong communication and knowledge transfer skills
• Ability to constructively engage a broad range of stakeholders, especially community leaders, and influential persons
• Good negotiation and persuasion skills
• Ability to develop well-written, cohesive analyses and reports
• Strong organizational and problem-solving skills
• Proven skills with Microsoft Office software (Excel, Word, PowerPoint). Knowledge of the use of Appsheet or similar application will be an advantage.