Intervention Coordinator - Enterprise Growth at IITA - International Institute of Tropical Agriculture

Description

• The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture seeks suitable Nigerian nationals for the position below at the Institute’s Headquarters in Ibadan.

Duties

• Provide overall technical leadership, coordination, and quality assurance for Component 2 (Agri-Enterprise Growth) across Nigeria, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, ensuring alignment with the I-Youth 2.0 theory of change and results framework.
• Develop and coordinate country-specific implementation plans for agribusiness parks, cooperatives, finance and market linkages, input support, technology adoption, climate-smart innovations, and youth helpdesk interventions.
• Ensure interventions are appropriately adapted to country-specific regulatory, market, institutional, and operational contexts while maintaining consistent implementation standards across the three countries.
• Oversee the establishment, strengthening, and operationalization of agribusiness parks as sustainable enterprise hubs providing youth with access to productive infrastructure, technologies, inputs, services, and markets.
• Coordinate the establishment and strengthening of youth agribusiness cooperatives and clusters, including appropriate governance, mentorship, and enterprise support systems.
• Lead and coordinate partnerships with financial institutions, investors, off-takers, aggregators, input suppliers, government agencies, and other ecosystem actors to strengthen youth access to finance, inputs, and markets.
• Oversee the provision of starter and booster support and facilitate sustainable access to quality inputs, equipment, and other productive resources for participating youth.
• Coordinate the adoption and dissemination of relevant digital technologies and climate smart agricultural innovations in collaboration with IITA, CGIAR technical teams, and other partners.
• Provide technical guidance and performance oversight to service providers, mentors, and country teams responsible for delivering Component 2 interventions.
• Monitor the performance and utilization of agribusiness parks, cooperatives, and other enterprise growth interventions and facilitate corrective actions where required.
• Coordinate closely with Country Coordinators, field teams, the PMO, and the MEAL function to monitor implementation against approved work plans, budgets, indicators, and enterprise growth targets.
• Identify implementation risks, bottlenecks, and emerging opportunities and recommend appropriate actions to strengthen Component 2 performance.
• Contribute timely and high-quality technical inputs to project, management, and donor reports and support documentation of enterprise growth results, lessons, and good practices.
• Represent Component 2 at relevant technical meetings, stakeholder engagements, and donor forums, as required.
• Ensure compliance with IITA policies, donor requirements, safeguarding standards, and applicable environmental and social safeguards.
• Perform other related duties as assigned by the Executive Manager, I-Youth 2.0, or the Chief Executive Officer, Youth in Agribusiness.

Requirements

• Master's degree in Agribusiness, Agricultural Economics, Agriculture, Business Administration, Enterprise/Entrepreneurship Development, Economics, Development Studies, or a related discipline is required.
• A minimum of seven (7) years of progressively responsible experience in agribusiness/enterprise development, value chain development, or youth economic empowerment programming is required.

Competencies:
The ideal candidate must have:

• Demonstrated experience designing or managing interventions related to agribusiness incubation/parks, cooperative or enterprise cluster development, access to finance, and market linkages.
• Experience working across multiple countries or managing multi-location technical interventions, ideally within West Africa.
• Experience managing or coordinating service providers and technical partners on donor-funded programs.
• Familiarity with digital agronomic advisory tools (e.g., AKILIMO) and climate-smart agriculture approaches is desirable.
• Demonstrated experience engaging financial institutions, aggregators, off-takers and private sector actors in support of enterprise growth.
• Strong technical knowledge of agribusiness development, enterprise growth, and value chain financing.
• Excellent program coordination and multi-country management skills.
• Strong partnership building, negotiation and stakeholder engagement skills.
• Sound analytical, planning and problem-solving abilities.
• Strong monitoring, reporting and results-orientation.
• Excellent communication, presentation and report-writing skills.
• High level of professionalism, integrity, cultural sensitivity and accountability.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office applications and relevant project management or data tools.
• Willingness and ability to travel frequently and extensively within Nigeria, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Benefits

• We offer highly competitive salary with equally attractive benefits and excellent working conditions in a pleasant campus environment.