Спеціаліст з розвитку ланцюжків доданої вартості

Проект USAID “Підтримка аграрного і сільського розвитку” шукає кандидатів на посаду спеціаліста з розвитку ланцюжків доданої вартості (Value Chain Specialist). Спеціаліст координуватиме діяльність короткострокових технічних консультантів, слідкуватиме за виконанням грантів та контрактів, спрямованих на покращення продуктивності та збільшення доступу до ринків для українських малих і середніх аграрних підприємств.

Останній термін подання заявок – 31 січня 2018 року. Докладніша інформація про вимоги до кандидатів, умови роботи, порядок подання резюме тощо – нижче, англійською мовою. 

Background: The Agriculture and Rural Development Support project, hereinafter ARDS, is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). ARDS builds on USAID’s previous projects in Ukraine and lessons learned by USAID/Ukraine, Ukrainian partners, and other donors. ARDS is implemented by Chemonics International, Inc. and began on September 7, 2016 and is scheduled to end on July 30, 2020.

ARDS was designed to support broad based, resilient economic growth through a more inclusive, competitive, and better governed agriculture that provides attractive livelihoods in rural areas. ARDS works both at the national and regional level, with a special focus on rural development in southern and eastern Ukraine. For its work in agriculture value chains, ARDS is primarily focusing on dairy, fruits and vegetables, and meat. In rural areas, ARDS has flexibility to expand beyond agriculture into non-farm related employment generation.

ARDS employs an inclusive market system approach. The objective of inclusive market system development is to catalyze a process that results in a market system that is competitive—system actors are able to effectively innovate, upgrade and add value to their products and services to match market demand and maintain or grow market share; inclusive—delivering a sustainable flow of benefits to a range of actors, including the poor and otherwise marginalized, as well as to society as a whole; and resilient—system actors are able to address, absorb and overcome shocks in the market, policy environment, resource base or other aspect of the system

ARDS embraces the collaborating, learning, and adapting (CLA) framework promoted by USAID. Across all tasks of the contract, ARDS works with government institutions, private sector entities, and other partners in planning, monitoring, mapping outcomes, and thereafter scaling up what works and/or adapting by redesigning strategies and tactics employed to implement tasks.

Position Description

The Value Chain Specialist focuses on improving the lives of rural Ukrainian families through working with the private sector, communities, and local governments to implement innovative solutions to address systemic issues in four value chains: meat, dairy, fruit, and vegetables. The Specialist will manage a combination of short-term technical consultants, grants, and contracts focused improving systemic constraints to productivity and market access for Ukrainian SMEs. The Specialist’s responsibilities include serving as a task team leader; presenting results and constraints against the work plan during quarterly reviews, preparing scopes of work for short-term technical advisors, preparing scopes of work for grants or contracts; reporting on monthly results, and collaborating and learning with market actors and donor projects. The Specialist will provide technical leadership for value chain initiatives and bring to bear global innovations to help businesses solve systemic constraints to growth at the local level. Since the focus of the Specialists work will be agriculture, he/she will be expected to spend no less than 30% of the time in the regions of Ukraine working where SME agribusinesses are located.

ARDS operates in a very sophisticated IT environment, using most of the elements of Office 365 (MS Project, Teams, OneNote, Power BI, Planner, etc.). Therefore, the Specialist must embrace modern technology and be able to efficiently use available IT tools for project management.

The Value Chain Specialists reports to the Director of Markets and Rural Development.

Responsibilities

• Oversee the development, update and implementation of the ARDS work plan tasks related to value chains, ensuring application of the market systems development approach
• Work with SME agribusinesses to jointly develop and implement market solutions designed to address systemic failures in the market.
• Ensure the Market and Rural Development team’s achievement of targets related to value chains as set forth in the ARDS work plan;
• Use MS Project and Microsoft Teams to manage tasks and collaborate with other ARDS project staff
• Work with the Markets and Rural Development Director to produce content for ARDS communications materials (e.g., best practices, lessons learned, success stories, behavior change initiatives, and other communications to be identified) and contract deliverables;
• Identify leverage points of new opportunities, promote appropriate collaborations, identify interventions and scale-up best practices;
• Serve as the ARDS resident expert on one or more of the four value chains;
• Assume any other duties as assigned by the Markets and Rural Development Director

Qualifications

• At least ten years’ previous experience in SME agribusiness development, either with in the private sector or with a donor-funded project.
• Demonstrated experience in achieving concrete, sustainable results in SME agribusiness development. Please note that providing “trainings” does not count as a result.
• Proven ability to manage and implement work using tools such as MS Project or other Office 365 Suite of programs (Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, OneNote, Power BI, etc.).
• Well versed in project management professional norms (www.pmi.org) including work breakdown structure creation, management, scheduling, etc.
• Firm understanding of the market systems development approach (https://beamexchange.org)  
• Superior interpersonal, public speaking, and team building skills
• Undergraduate degree required; advanced degree preferred.
• Good English writing and speaking skills required
• USAID or previous donor experience is not required.

Application Instructions.

A complete SOW for the position can be obtained by sending an email to [email protected]. Send electronic submissions to [email protected] by January 31, 2018. Please submit your CV and cover letter with “Value Chain Specialist” and your name in the subject line. No telephone inquiries, please. Only finalists will be contacted.

Chemonics is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate in its selection and employment practices on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, political affiliation, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, disability, genetic information, age, membership in an employee organization, or other non-merit factors.