Job Vacancies at Ikore International Development Limited

Location: Abuja/Virtual

Job Description

• You are passionate about improving the lives of rural poor, believe that small holder farmers should participate effectively in market systems.
• You are a self-starter and not afraid to learn
• You enjoy a challenge and are open to different ideas and working in a collaborative environment.
• Are you interested in social innovation, Agri-business and sustainability?
• Are you entrepreneurial and can work under little or no supervision?
• Do you have a solid understanding of what technologies fit where in a business context? Then apply for any of this

Main Responsibilities

• Provide support to rural SMEs in fine tuning their strategy
• The roles require a working knowledge of the Nigeria Agri business space
• Be prepared to tackle new challenges and ultimately push the sector towards a better practice.
• Contribute to project Planning and business development to ensure that technical aspects are well integrated into broader project goals
• Participate in strategy and business development
• Deliver high-quality marketing and sales strategy support
• Provide content for blog and other media platforms

Qualification

• MBA candidates seeking for internship positions, recent graduates or interns with Degree in Engineering, Sciences, business or other related fields Working experience in Startup/engineering firm is desirable but not compulsory
• Less than 28 years of age
• Based in Abuja

Requirements
who we are looking for:

• Highly entrepreneurial
• High motivation, good work ethic, maturity and personal initiative
• Aptitude for, and enjoyment of, leading and managing teams
• Strong oral and written communication skills
• Strong attention to detail, with a quality-focused mindset
• Analytic problem solving skills, with a creative and innovative outlook
• Primary and secondary market research skills desired
• Fundraising skill
• Stakeholder and Partnership Management Skill
• Social Media Skills
• Sense of Humor

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Scope of Work
The Partnerships Manager will have the following duties and responsibilities in two main areas:

• Strategic Partnerships and External Relations:
  • Cultivate and maintain relationships among business partners, NGO’s, government officials, and stakeholders to expand the organization’s market reach and meet organizational goals.
  • Liaise with partners to solve issues, communicate needs and create synergy.
  • Strengthen existing relationships and collaborations to ensure the partnerships are profitable and beneficial to all parties.
  • Field visits with partners to meet with clients to determine potential new collaborations and write feasibility studies.
  • Document key findings, lessons learned, challenges and impact of Ikore’s work for a wide-variety of audiences.
  • Stay up-to-date with developments within the industry, target industries and proactively identify new opportunities for alliances or action.
• Fundraising:
  • Develop proposals, pitch potential partnerships and communicate alliance value via skype, phone and in person.
  • Build the organizational network through a targeted approach aligned with our goals.
  • Research strategic partnership opportunities that can lead to new revenue streams and growth of existing partnerships.
  • Attend and organize meetings and events to serve as a representative for the organization.
  • Produce timely and accurate donor and other stakeholder reports.
  • Work closely with leadership to identify key high level targets.
  • Coach relevant Ikore staff on investor and donor engagement and talking points to increase fundraising.

Expertise and Qualifications

• Master's Degree in International Relations, Economics or another relevant field
• Proven ability to develop, write and budget out proposals for private and public sector partners
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, able to deliver clear, concise information to partners, clients and team
• Ability to work with diverse cultural teams independently with strong initiative and proactive involvement
• Exceptionally detail-oriented and organized, ensuring quality and consistent output
• Ability to work effectively amidst competing priorities and deliver on deadlines
• Excellent grasp of tools like MS word, excel, PowerPoint, with knowledge of tools like R or STATA as a strong plus.

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Details

• Ikore seeks young and dynamic people interested in growing a career in International development/Consulting to improve organizational capacity and impact for rural poor. Our projects will be demanding and the selection process is rigorous.
• We recruit highly dedicated volunteers only.
• But no previous work experience is required and also you don’t need to have studied development to join us.

If you answer “yes” to the questions below, then you are qualified to apply:

• Enthusiasm: Do you really feel excited about becoming a pro bono consultant?
• Time: Do you have enough spare time to work on our consulting projects?
• Determination: Are you ready to work diligently and pay attention to the details?
• Preparation: Do you understand what working as a pro bono consultant entails?

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Scope of Work

• Identify technical, social, governance and financial gaps required bring various value chains to scale
• Collaboratively with community groups develop 10-year detailed implementation plans and activity-based budgets for each project and set of value chains
• Identify, evaluate and prepare/expand the business case for projects/value chain for use to seek investments from private investor and other funders
• Oversee implementation of activities that expand value chain and build market links for the projects
• Identify and support capacity development of leaders within the communities needed to drive business results
• Assist in the monitoring of the project results throughout their implementation
• Working with program’s environment finance lead, support the development of financial models and attracting value chain investors and supply chain buyers
• Support value chain projects in negotiating terms and conditions for investments.

Expertise and Qualifications

• Master's degree in an Agriculture, Economics or a Business related field.
• At least five years of experience as the technical manager for donor-funded value chain, Making Markets Work for the Poor (M4P) and/or Market Systems Development projects.
• Demonstrated success using facilitation in at least one of the following: value chain approach, M4P, or Market Systems Development approach, which lead to greater competitiveness and inclusiveness in markets.
• Demonstrated experience with conducting value chain analysis and developing value chain work plans preferred.

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Scope of work

• Ensure projects and programmes are driven and achieved within defined budgets and to specified standards of quality and performance. Responsible for forward planning of the engagement, cost and control systems,
• Help design and operationalize processes and systems which will feed data and analysis from grants and research back into key strategy and portfolio management decisions,
• Contribute to the sourcing, planning and co-ordination of the Ikore’s projects from inception to completion,
• Research, draft and produce high quality project output deliverables: project initiation report, assessment report, gap analysis, outline strategic business case, investment memorandum, training curriculum, business process manual and financial models for a variety of purposes and audiences, summarizing developments and recommendations for program areas and external partners.
• Provide project updates on a consistent basis to various stakeholders about strategy, adjustments, and progress
• Organise project team meetings and teleconferences; attend and prepare meeting minute, agendas and relevant paperwork; ensure documents are distributed in a timely fashion; ensure issues and risks and escalated promptly.
• Build standardized training processes and support the raising of capacity across the team around Ikore’s processes Strategic Projects,
• Implement an effective tracking system for key performance indicators for the organization and the Business Operations unit
• Conduct research and synthesize complex bodies of knowledge and information into clear, concise, and actionable summaries.
• Capture data coming in from grants, contracts and partners. Analyze data in excel and other programs.

Degree of Expertise and Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or other advanced degree in any field
• Creative problem solver with a rigorous approach and an aptitude for quantitative analysis.
• Highly strategic thinker with the agility to analyze questions across multiple bodies of work, as well as go deep for a sustained period on a challenging question around one body of work.
• Demonstrated initiative to solve unstructured problems with little oversight, high energy, and a positive attitude.
• Highly organized and efficient; able to prioritize work based on minimal direction

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Scope of work

• Formulate strategies to develop service markets in these commodity chains/rural markets and seek opportunities to work as per sector strategy.
• Identify intervention activities and ensure the appropriate communication of clear intervention guidelines, expected outcomes, timeframe and workplan to all relevant parties
• Assist the Value chain Manager in the development of relevant grant agreements, MoUs, ToRs and any other administrative requirement for the interventions
• Conduct regular field visits to ensure proper implementation of activities.
• Remain well aware of developments in the relevant sectors/markets/commodity chains.
• Refine and adapt the intervention strategies in light of participant and stakeholder requests and changing needs and opportunities, within the overall program of Ikore
• Help identify market failures and pressure points for addressing them; help identify ways to render a given market more functional and efficient, in a manner that will benefit the poor.
• Refine and adapt the commodity chain intervention strategies in light of participant and stakeholder requests and changing needs, within the overall program:
• Develop intervention strategies and implementation procedures in a participatory manner with key stakeholders.
• Identify priority areas for interventions that will change as opportunities pass or are realized and new ones emerge.
• Provide weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual reports on programme interventions – including impact assessment reports. Also provide relevant ongoing intervention activity feedback including formal and informal feedback from the field.

Degree of Expertise and Qualifications

• A Masters degree or similar qualification in Business, Economics or Development Studies;
• Minimum of 3 years’ work experience in activities related to agricultural commodities and rural development, with some experience working with the private sector and confirmed knowledge of the institutions and organizations that provide services to the agricultural sector in Nigeria.;
• Experience in developing simple business plans;
• Experience writing reports
• Ability to influence a range of people including client organisations, government agencies and other key stakeholders by building constructive relationships through clear communication and generate effective discussion and mutual support for plans and ideas.
• Strong project management expertise, exposure to implementing technical assistance projects, and ability to bring together sector stakeholders would be advantageous.

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Scope of Work

• Define and take ownership of internal corporate communication strategies, both offline and online
• Define and implement the communication plan,
• Planning and project managing marketing campaigns and evaluating their success
• Monitor tracking systems for marketing campaigns and online activities
• Assisting with the production of marketing material and checking for quality
• Manage blog postings, social media platforms, write press reports, news releases and manage public relations/press agencies
• Write/edit/proof-read case studies and brand content for presentations, submissions, newsletters, as well as internal communications
• Track and report on the performance of our content activity, using best practice to stimulate both traffic to our digital and social media platforms and engagement levels with them
• Compile and disseminate Ikore newsletter and monthly internal newsletter
• Create and maintain impact dashboard, tracking engagement and growth across project
• Oversee deployment of digital communications assets for online fundraising, crowdfunding, and development-related social and web campaigns
• Plan and implement events for Ikore

Qualifications

• First Degree in Communications, Journalism or other related fields
• Past experience producing content for the web (blog, Facebook, Twitter, articles)
• Digital marketing or content marketing experience
• Experience in web analytics tools (Google Analytics), and social media marketing applications
• Ability to optimize content for search engines and lead generation
• Proven written communication skills.
• Thorough understanding of the digital media space, social media channels, e-mail marketing, and how to get users to engage with content.

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Scope of Work

• Coordinate all activities directed at enhancing agricultural productivity in Ikore’s project implemented in Nasarawa state or Niger State.
• Provide good agronomic and support training courses for farmers in the Rice and Soy value chains, set up and manage demo plots of same crops.
• Coordinate/deliver field training to extension agents from government, private sector and project partners, with a focus on training-of-trainers and using a market systems methodology.
• Responsible for the development of extension and training materials, based on technical input from the agronomists and public and private partners,
• Work closely with the productivity team to ensure that that training feedback is incorporated into training material design.
• Coordinate the formulation. implementation and analysis of applied on-farm research activities, focusing on enhancement of agricultural productivity in an environmentally and financially sustainable way for scheme farmers in the targeted states.

Expertise and Qualifications

• B.Sc or Master's degree in Agronomy, Soil Science, Seed Production or Entomology.
• Over 3 years practical relevant experience in either of the above discipline
• Ability to speak Hausa will be an advantage.
• In depth knowledge about the agronomic activities of specific crops will be an added advantage.