Background: LWR is currently recruiting a Chief of Party (COP) for a USDA-funded Food for Progress project in Burkina Faso, expected to increase agricultural productivity and expand domestic, regional, and international trade of high-quality sesame seed. This five-year, estimated $24 million project will facilitate relationships between sesame growers, unions, and exporters. The project will focus on the four highest sesame-producing regions of Burkina Faso (Boucle de Mouhoun, Est, Hauts-Bassins and Cascades).
The position will begin July 1, 2016.
Description: The Chief of Party overall vision, leadership, technical and administrative leadership and expertise for the program. The COP is responsible for management of all aspects of the program implementation in meeting the objectives of the initiative including, but not limited to, technical, administrative, operational, and logistical management interventions. The COP will take a leadership role in coordination among the program team, consortium members, other implementing partners, public and private sector partners, and government stakeholders, and will liaise with USDA as necessary. Responsible for ensuring that the programmatic implementation meets expected standards of technical quality in compliance with USDA requirements, including monitoring, evaluation and learning. S/he will ensure completion of reports, evaluations, analyses, assessments, and deliverables in compliance with USDA quality standards.
Duties:
Leadership, Vision and Strategy:
- The COP has leadership, supervisory and management responsibility for all program staff, including consortium member program staff, and will work closely with LWR management and support staff (including finance, administration and program).
- Plan, organize, and supervise the overall program activities.
- Ensure that all activities conform to the terms and conditions of the donor agreement and meet the expected technical quality standards, and that the strategic objectives and results of the program are accomplished.
Program Management and Administration:
- Manages all operations related to the project according to the work plan, project documents and implementation strategy.
- Develop and manage relationships with the public and private sector.
- Provides overall supervision for the implementation and integration of all program activities and provides overall direction to daily implementation plans to ensure all program goals are met.
- Manage program funds and other resources for the program
- Prepare status reports, budget information and other documentation as needed, and ensure timely reporting to USDA
Program Quality:
- Oversee the design, monitoring, evaluation and learning of the project in accordance with M&E requirements
- Ensure that program activities are implemented and monitor the achievement of results, ensuring compliance with project indicators
- Ensure that program activities and approaches adopt best practices in gender-responsiveness, protection, governance, and participant accountability.
- Ensure the delivery of quality training, technical assistance, and administrative and financial support to all partner agencies and government, including the selection and coordination of sub-grantees and consultants
Representation:
- Provide leadership and oversight to the consortium, ensuring that all members work cooperatively and that sub-grantees targets for their portion of program activities are fully met according to their scopes of work and sub-award terms
- Serve as primary contact to USDA, the public and private sector, and the host country government , taking responsibility for addressing all matters related to the program
- Strengthen linkages with existing partners and develop linkages with potential partner agencies
- Oversee communication strategies for the program in compliance with donor’s branding and marketing requirements, as well as LWRs internal procedures
Human Resource Management
- Manage the recruitment of a team of skilled, competent, qualified and innovative program staff, in collaboration with LWR regional and country program management
- Ensure staff compliance with all USDA and LWR administrative, operational procedures and policies, as well as applicable donor regulations.
- Lead and manage LWRs program team, including staff with administrative related duties, and consortium staff, to ensure that they are able to successfully implement efficiently all program operations and achieve program objectives.
- Encourage a culture of learning, innovation and creativity, and contribute to an environment conducive to professional development among program staff.
Qualifications:
- Deep commitment to LWRs core values and ability to model those values in relationships with colleagues and partners
- Minimum of a Masters in economics, business, international development, agricultural economics, agribusiness or a related field; Doctorate level degree is desirable
- Minimum 10 years of increasingly higher levels of responsibility working in international development, preferably in commercial value chains, food security, and economic growth with an emphasis on development and marketing of agricultural products;
- Chief of party level experience on USDA-funded economic growth, livelihoods, rural agriculture or food security projects is required.
- Demonstrated capabilities in managing complex consortium or partnership relationships, institutional capacity building, high level strategic vision and leadership, and experience working effectively with private sector, civil society, local, regional and central-level government authorities and with USDA and other development partners is required
- Demonstrated experience working with farmer cooperatives in market development, value added processing, and the formation of market linkages to private sector actors;
- Knowledge or understanding of social, economic, and political context governing rural economic development and food security in Sahelian West Africa
- Knowledge of US Government regulations, policies, and procedures, preferably USDA, or those of an equivalently complex international government funding organization
- Demonstrated ability in successfully leading and managing donor funded programs of a similar scope and scale required, and experience leading U.S. government funded programs a plus
- Familiarity with and commitment to gender integration in programming;
- High level of leadership, interpersonal, technical, and analytical skills including a demonstrated ability to interact effectively and collaboratively with a broad range of public and private sector counterparts and other key stakeholders
- Ability to travel up to 50% of his/ her time, nationally and internationally as required.
- Proficiency in MS Outlook, Microsoft Office, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and Outlook;
- Fluent verbal and written English language skills required
- High verbal and written proficiency in French.
Note: This job description is not an exhaustive list of the skill, effort, duties, and responsibilities associated with the position.
HOW TO APPLY:
Please view http://lwr.iapplicants.com/ViewJob-733953.html for a full position description and application instructions.
