IFDC 
is recruiting 
PARTNERSHIP FACILITATOR - 2SCALE, COTE D’IVOIRE 

Background

The program entitled “Toward Sustainable Clusters in Agribusiness through Learning in Entrepreneurship” (2SCALE) aims at improving rural livelihoods and food and nutrition security in Africa. It was created by a consortium of partners, led by the International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC), and comprising the Base-of-the-Pyramid Innovation Centre (BoPInc.) and the International Centre for development-oriented Research in Agriculture (ICRA). The program is supported by a grant of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (through the Directorate-General for International Cooperation, DGIS) of the Netherlands.
From 2012 to 2014, 2SCALE developed a portfolio of 53 private-public partnerships in selected high-potential sectors in nine sub-Saharan countries. From 2015 to 2017, 2SCALE supports its private partners to deepen and scale-up these partnerships. The objective is to offer significant opportunity to over 500,000 smallholder farmers to improve their livelihoods and 2,500 SMEs to improve sales and provide jobs, while sustainably supplying food to regional, national and local markets, of which 40 percent will be BoP consumers.
In 2015 2SCALE was approached by private companies to support inclusive business propositions in Côte d’Ivoire. With the recent tightening of the relationships between Côte d’Ivoire and the Netherlands (supported by the opening of a Dutch embassy in Abidjan by mid-2016), DGIS approved the involvement of 2SCALE in two partnerships in Côte d’Ivoire:

• Rice partnership, driven by Brassivoire/ Heineken
• Vegetable partnership, in collaboration with East-West Seed International

2SCALE is proposing to recruit a Partnership Facilitator to support the design of the two partnerships and implement agreed-upon field activities.

Duties

The Partnership Facilitator’s overall duty consists of brokering, deepening and (in 2017) scaling the partnerships selected by 2SCALE in the country. Brokering relates to exploring options to collaborate with private and public partners with an inclusive business agenda, and to designing and building partnerships. Deepening relates to the networks at local (agribusiness cluster) and regional (along the value chain) levels, and sets the stage for further scaling. Scaling in turn is about the additional numbers of smallholder farmers that can be included in these networks, and the volumes of produce that flow through the value chains to target market segments.

Specific duties include the following:

• Collect and analyze market and industry information related to focus partnerships.
• For the rice partnership:
• Coordinate field activities agreed upon in the rice partnership agreement and that fall under 2SCALE’s responsibility, in line with set targets (to be defined by mid-2016).
• Monitor the progress of the partnership in line with 2SCALE’s performance monitoring plan.
• Organize governance meetings and other events with Brassivoire and other parties in the partnership.
• For the vegetable partnership:
• Support target vegetable farmer communities to move from vegetable seed demonstrations to learning plots on good agricultural practices, and to networks with other actors at proximity (input dealers, small processors, financial institutions, etc.), to form vegetable clusters.
• Lead gender analyses and empowerment interventions targeting vulnerable groups, and document them.
• Support vegetable cluster actors to identify strategic interventions to produce and market vegetables in a competitive way.
• Assist cluster actors in translating their strategy into business-driven cluster action plans that create value for all actors. The target is to reach over 10,000 vegetable farmers (including at least 4,000 women) in supported clusters (i.e. farmers who source vegetable seeds from East-West Seed International), and 10 SMEs.
• For all partnerships:
• Develop subgrants as well as terms of reference for specific support activities with direct funding.
• Monitor the implementation of subgrant-funded activities through intensive field visits and coaching of grassroots partners.
• Ensure quality deliverables are submitted by grantees in compliance with subgrants contracts. Approve technical deliverables and review financial deliverables. Initiate and monitor disbursement of subgrant installments by IFDC.
• Track private sector contributions and provide all required documentation in time to the project coordination.
• Coordinate specific support provided by cross-cutting staff in focus partnerships, such as access to finance, technical innovation, local empowerment, communication, audit/coaching of (potential) grantees, monitoring and evaluation.
• Document field achievements, innovations, failures and lessons learned; share them in reports and integrate lessons learned into subsequent project activities.
• Write technical reports and notes as requested, in strict compliance with deadlines.
• In an autonomous way, collaborate (exchange of ideas and documents) with Partnership Facilitators in charge of similar partnerships in the other 2SCALE countries (West Africa, East & southern Africa).
• Develop and ensure good working relationship with agribusiness partners and local authorities.
• Act as the representative of 2SCALE when required to do so.

The Partnership Facilitator is also responsible for any other assignments that the IFDC Country Representative or the project management deem necessary for the success of the project.

Supervision

The Partnership Facilitator is supervised by and reports to the IFDC Country Representative.
S/he works in close collaboration with cross-cutting thematic specialists and the regional agribusiness coordinator.

Position and duty station

The 2SCALE Côte d’Ivoire Partnership Facilitator is a national position with a duty station at IFDC’s office in Abidjan.

The position requires intensive travels in target regions in Côte d’Ivoire, and exceptionally to other 2SCALE countries.

Profil du poste

• Minimum Bachelor’s degree or equivalent in agriculture or agribusiness.
• At least 2 years of relevant experience in agribusiness or agricultural development. An experience in the rice sub-sector or in the vegetables sub-sector would be an advantage.
• Up-to-date knowledge of the agricultural sector in Côte d’Ivoire, and in particular of value chains related to rice and vegetables.
• Good understanding of and work experience in value chain development.
• Proven experience in organizing and facilitating capacity building programs (trainings, demonstrations, field visits, etc.) and other events for value chain stakeholders.
• Result-orientation and ability to take initiatives under minimal supervision, and to reach targets.
• Excellent spoken and written French, with work proficiency in English. Ability to write quality documents in French.

Dossiers de candidature

Interested and eligible candidates are requested to visit the website www.2scale.org to find out more information about the 2SCALE approach.

Kindly send your applications in French or English via email, and including as separate attachments a cover letter and a CV to recruitment2scaleCI@ifdc.org with copy to recruitment.twoscale@yahoo.com 

Note

Only pre-selected candidates will be contacted. They will be invited for interviews and oral and written tests. The anticipated start date of the assignment is April 15, 2016.

Women are strongly encouraged to apply