Project Officer - Agriculture & Livelihoods at Catholic Relief Services (CRS)

Job Summary

• As Agriculture and Livelihoods Officer, you will provide technical leadership and champion field-level implementation of the EU-funded Regreening Africa project's agriculture, natural resource management, and livelihood development interventions. You will be responsible for the project’s extension and advisory services, including supporting community mobilizers/facilitators in participant mobilization, mounting demonstration plots, field-level training facilitation, and ensuring the quality of activities. You will ensure that project agriculture, NRM, and livelihood results are achieved on time and within budget, including strategies for phase-out and sustainability, and that the budget is consumed as planned. As a senior leader, you will proactively manage security and mitigate security risks.

Roles And Key Responsibilities

• Plan and implement agriculture, livelihood development, and natural resource management activities with the CRS Program Manager and CARE Nigeria.
• Lead community mobilization efforts, including participant identification, activity demonstrations, training sessions, and routine monitoring, with the support of Community Mobilizers/Facilitators.
• Assist the Program Manager in preparing high-quality monthly, quarterly, and annual program progress reports and other documentation.
• Contribute to the design, organization, and execution of business development, learning, evaluation, and knowledge-sharing activities led by CRS and CARE Nigeria.
• Represent the project in technical working groups and clusters, such as the Food Security Sector (FSS), ensuring continuous visibility and active engagement.
• Foster stakeholder collaboration with key government bodies, including the Agriculture Development Program (ADP) and Ministries of Agriculture, Environment, Trade, and Works.
• Ensure alignment of project activities with program objectives and community needs, providing regular feedback and recommendations for improvement.

Required Languages - English and Hausa
Travel - Must be willing and able to travel up to 30%

Knowledge, Skills And Abilities

• Strong strategic, analytical, systems thinking, and problem-solving skills, with capacity to see the big picture and ability to make sound judgment and decisions.
• Strong relations management abilities. Ability to relate to people at all levels internally and externally. Strategic in how you approach each relationship.
• Team leadership abilities with diverse/multi-disciplinary teams. Coaching skills.
• Strong communications and presentation skills; able to develop tailored and persuasive messaging for varied audiences.
• Proactive, resourceful, solutions-oriented, and results-oriented.

Preferred Qualifications

• Recognized leader in the sector as demonstrated by peer-reviewed publications, conference presentations, etc.
• Recognized leader in systems thinking and development in areas of market systems development, and resilient market systems.
• Demonstrable experience in private sector engagement; locally led development, localization, and partner capacity strengthening.
• Detailed understanding and practical experience in gender, youth, and social inclusion programming in complex projects and fragile environments.
• Demonstrated experience of successful program management, including management of complex, high-value, multi-activity projects, with complicated logistics.
• Experience engaging partners and strengthening partnerships. Knowledge of CRS partnership strategy is a plus.
• Ability to represent and present at high levels.
• Experience in MS Office package (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Visio), Web Conferencing Applications, and information and budget management systems.

Supervisory Responsibilities: None.
Key Working Relationships

• Internal Regreening Africa Program Manager, Emergency Coordinator, Borno Head of Office, Country Program MEAL Coordinator
• External MDA representatives, Community Leaders, and other NGO representatives.

Qualifications
Basic Qualifications

• University degree in Social Sciences, NRM, Agriculture or any other relevant equivalent degree
• At least 3 years’ experience in project implementation preferably with an international humanitarian NGO
• Demonstrated experience in data collection
• Experience with or interest in learning ICT4D technology applications for emergency work
• Proven experience in conducting participatory activities for qualitative program monitoring
• Demonstrated commitment to gender-responsive programming
• Excellent organizational, analytical, oral and written communication skills
• Team-oriented and strong interpersonal skills
• Ability to work effectively under pressure and to organize and prioritize a variety of initiatives
• Willingness to travel within Sokoto and other parts of Nigeria 60% of the time