Job Title: Livestock Officer
Organization: Farm Africa
Project Name: Livestock for Livelihoods (L4L) programme
Funding Source: UK Aid
Duty Station: Uganda
Reports to: Project Coordinator
About US:
Farm Africa is an international non-governmental organization working to end hunger and bring prosperity to rural Africa. We work to increase the incomes and improve food security of smallholder farmers, pastoralists, agro-pastoralists, and forest dwellers in East Africa. A core part of our strategy is to ensure that our interventions are both economically sustainable and scalable. The systematic integration of market linkages in implementing programmes is crucial to our ability to scale our interventions cost-effectively. Farm Africa has the ambition to be the leading European NGO specialising in Agriculture, Natural Resource Management and Market Engagement.
About UK Aid Project:
Farm Africa was recently awarded a £5m grant for a Livestock for Livelihoods (L4L) programme operating in Uganda’s Karamoja sub-region and Ethiopia’s South Omo zone funded by the UK government (UK Aid).The project will be implemented across four districts of Karamoja sub-region (Moroto, Napak, Kotido & Nakapiripirit). During this four year programme Farm Africa will work with local civil society, SMEs, cooperatives and farmer organisations to develop market systems that support livestock services and enterprises for 21,000 women, contributing to women’s economic empowerment, reduced poverty and improved nutrition of women and children. The project will address market failures in animal health and breeding services to improve livestock productivity, build capacity and assets of herders, establish trade and enterprise opportunities and improve household nutrition practices through behavioural change. It will demonstrate how nutrition interventions can build on women’s economic empowerment to contribute to both increased income and improved household nutrition.
Job Summary: The Livestock Officer is responsible for leading the delivery activities focusing on livestock and livestock management in designated sub-counties of Moroto, Napak, Nakapiripirit and Kotido districts in line with the operational plan for the project. In particular, the LO, with support from the Community Facilitator (CF) will be responsible for mobilising women’s livestock groups and supporting their development – with a particular focus on supporting them to increase the size and productivity of their goat herds, savings and credit, land use and fodder management and value addition. The LO will also organise the technical training of CAHWs and provide technical support in the establishment of private sector breeding stations for different breeds of goat. The Livestock Officer will work closely with the team from our nutrition partners, AFRII, to ensure that members of the women’s livestock groups are actively participating in activities designed to drive behaviour change and improve nutritional outcomes at a household level. The LO will also contribute to project planning and monitoring and evaluation activities, ensuring that accurate and timely impact data is collected from project participants. The LO will be based in our field office in Moroto, Karamoja, and will report to the Project Coordinator.
Key Duties and Responsibilities:
Activity planning and delivery in accordance with L4L budgets and implementation plan.
- Work with the PC to develop weekly and monthly work plans to support timely delivery of activities
- Work with the CF to ensure that livestock-related project activities are implemented and outputs achieved as planned and within the agreed budget, including:
- Mobilising and provide ongoing support to women’s livestock groups – delivering ongoing training in areas such as leadership and group dynamics, savings and credit, goat rearing and land use and fodder management
- Establishing and provide ongoing support to a group level revolving scheme, ensuring relevant group level by laws and agreements are in place and being adhered to.
- Facilitating technical training of community animal health workers (CAWHs) and supporting CAWHs to cascade their learnings
- Providing technical support in the establishment of breeding stations and technical breeding training
- Organising technical training of buck keepers
- Promotion of saving culture and of good nutritional practices
- Ensure that Farm Africa Approaches to livestock programming are used to guide high-quality delivery
- Work in close collaboration with the wider L4L team in Uganda and Ethiopia, and in particular the Senior Livestock Officer in Uganda, to ensure consistency in delivery across all project sites
- Ensure that livestock-focused activities are aligned with, and mutually supportive of other interventions in the same areas
- Work with the Project Coordinator (PC) and the Project Accountant and Administrator (PA&A) to ensure all activities are planned and conducted according to the organization and the donor financial and procurement requirements and procedures.
Support project management and coordination
- Support the PC & PA&A with activity planning and budgeting as requested
- Keep abreast of activities being implemented by other partners operating in a similar intervention area and sharing this information with the PC and wider team as appropriate
- Proactively identify and monitor any risks to non-delivery and, where required, develop and implement action plans to address issues identified.
- Support the PC to identify and analyze the causes of spend variances to the budget and make recommendations on actions to be taken as required
Support monitoring, evaluation and reporting
- Contribute to internal and external reporting, with a particular focus on collecting and collating information from women’s livestock groups supported by the project.
- Regularly report on implementation learnings, and make recommendations on areas for improvement or changes in delivery strategy to the PC
- Contribute to the development and implementation of the Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning Plan (MLP) – and in particular support with developing data collection tools that can be used to collect relevant data on the progress of women’s livestock groups.
- Contribute to quarterly internal progress reviews and annual project performance review sand workshops
- Collect information for stories, case studies and lessons learnt as required
Line manage the Community Facilitator
- Hold weekly work planning meetings with the Community Facilitator ensuring that she/he is delivering activities as per agreed work plans and budgets
- Provide leadership and motivation to the Community Facilitator building values-based team working and individual staff skills relevant to the project.
- Regularly provide both informal and formal coaching and feedback to the Community Facilitator and effectively and promptly deal with any poor performance and actively recognise and encourage strong performance.
- Ensure that Community Facilitator has objectives in place (as per Farm Africa’s performance management framework) and that annual appraisals and quarterly review meetings are held to discuss progress and personal development.
- Play a key role in delivering the wider objectives of both the L4L programme, and Farm Africa’s work in Uganda.
- Work with AFRII (implementing partner) to ensure collaborative and integrated delivery of support to women’s livestock groups
- Support the implementation of the project’s visibility strategy in line with donor guidelines.
- Work in close collaboration with the L4L Ethiopia Team – ensuring that knowledge, learnings and tools are shared across the two project locations
- Maintain regular and effective communications with the wider project team, Uganda Country Office and implementing partners.
- In consultation with the PC, act as an ambassador, promoting the project and the work of Farm Africa, including hosting visitors, speaking at workshops, conferences and meeting donors and other officials as and when required.
- Contribute to the development of relevant Farm Africa policies and strategies
Qualifications, Skills and Experience:
- The ideal candidate for the Farm Africa Livestock Officer job placement must hold a Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent in Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Pastoral Development, Rural Livelihoods or other relevant field
- Demonstrable technical knowledge (academic or practical) of small ruminant management and breeding systems
- Further relevant academic qualification in the area of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Pastoral Development, Rural Livelihoods or other relevant field
- At least three years’ experience delivering practical training and support in the livestock sector.
- Demonstrable technical animal health/veterinary knowledge (academic or practical)
- Experience working with pastoralist communities
- Experience of supporting rural communities with fodder and/or land use management
- Experience of organising technical trainings for CAHWs
- Experience of mobilising project participants and engaging them in project activities
- Experience of establishing or supporting the development of village level savings groups
- Experience of working in Karamoja
- Experience of designing and conducting trainings for pastoralist communities
- Experience of designing and conducting trainings using gender-sensitive techniques and methodologies
- Experience of data collection for monitoring and evaluation purposes
- Experience of delivering technical training and support to CAHWs and/or developing training materials for CAHWs
- Experience of promoting behaviour change within rural communities
- Experience of supporting the establishment of livestock breeding services
- Ability to build strong relationships with stakeholders and communities based on trust and collaboration
- Ability to communicate and share knowledge with a broad range of stakeholders with differing backgrounds and abilities.
- Skills in problem identification, analysis and solving of complex issues
- Fluent written and spoken English
- Ability and willingness to travel widely and frequently both within and outside the Karamoja sub-region
- Confident user of Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint
- Willingness to ride a motorcycle in the field, with a valid riding permit (Class A)
- Desirable: Fluency in Karamojong
How to Apply:
All suitably qualified and interested candidates should send an updated CV, salary history, and a two-page supporting statement detailing how you meet the person specification to ugandarecruitment@farmafrica.org including ‘Livestock Officer – L4L’’ in the subject line.
NB: Please DO NOT send additional documents such as certificates and references with your application. Shortlisted candidates ONLY will be required to provide these documents during the interview process. Interviews are expected to take place w/c 7th May 2018 in Moroto (or via Skype). Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.
Deadline: 2nd May 2018 by 5.00pm EAT
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