Partnerships Coordinator Job opportunity at Wageningen UR ISSD Programme

Job Title:  Partnerships Coordinator

Wageningen UR Uganda is an organization supporting societal learning and innovation processes at macro, meso and micro level in Uganda involving different stakeholder groups working together on development issues.

About ISSD:

Wageningen UR Uganda with support from the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is implementing a four years’ Integrated Seed Sector Development (ISSD) programme. The programme aims to strengthen the development of a vibrant, pluralistic and market-oriented seed sector that is able to address key challenges that hamper the seed sector such as seed quality assurance and availability of foundation seed.

In collaboration with the government of Uganda, three field offices are hosted at Abi (West Nile), Mbarara (Western Uganda) and Ngetta (Northern Uganda) Zonal Agricultural Research and Development Institute (ZARDI). Each centre hosts an Agribusiness Expert and a Seed Expert working with 10 farmer groups spread over several districts strengthening their capacity to produce and market quality seed of locally demanded crops and varieties and support them towards developing commercially sustainable local seed businesses. In 2015, ISSD Uganda will engage in out-scaling the number of Local Seed Businesses (LSBs) from 30 to 100 through partner organisations.

Job Summary: The Partnership Coordinator will support and coordinate the seed sector stakeholders’ involvement in ISSD and facilitate public-private sector collaboration in ISSD activities. S/he will actively engage in national seed sector platforms and support the ZARDI based ISSD experts in designing and facilitating multi-stakeholder processes at zonal level. S/he will coordinate the partnerships with organisations working with the LSBs under the out-scaling component. The Partnership coordinator will play an important role in the monitoring and backstopping of partnership processes including grants management.

Key Job Duties and Responsibilities:

1. Coordination of Partners:
2. Facilitating strong sector stakeholder networks innovations:

• Create and coordinate partnerships for out-scaling and for innovation projects and support the technical staff to implementing them;
• Oversee the grants provided to all ISSD partners in collaboration with other ISSD staff and experts. The grants will include those to LSBs, out-scaling partners and any other ISSD grantees;
• Foster and maintain good working relationships with partners involved in the out-scaling and innovation projects, and provide them regularly with status reports and communication packages;
• Monitor development of the partnerships and analyse results to ensure that agreements are followed up and are effective;
• Monitor Partnership commitments, maintain an up-to-date record on reporting deadlines of partners, and prepare partnership briefs/status reports for the ISSD team;
• Monitor innovation projects and document lessons learned from innovation projects, both process wise and result wise.

• Actively engage with all key stakeholders, including public and private sector officials to strengthen and build on the several seed sector interventions in the country and maintain seed sector related networks at zonal and national level;
• Support and mobilise stakeholders at national and zonal to come up with innovation projects that address bottlenecks in the seed sector;
• Pro-actively facilitate seed sector meetings and events and support organising committees of these events;
• Actively link with other initiatives, like CATALIST (IFDC), other ISSD initiatives in Africa, ABI trust, USAID FTF activities, EAAPP etc; and
• Document experiences and lessons learnt in the process of addressing common bottlenecks in the seed sector.

Qualifications, Skills and Experience needed for the job:

• The ideal candidate should preferably hold a Masters’ degree in agricultural related fields; MA in social science with affiliation to agriculture; or MBA with affiliation to agriculture;
• A minimum of three or more years’ experience in facilitating multi-stakeholder processes;
• Three or more years’ experience in partnership coordination and cultivating and stewarding individuals and partner organisations through programming;
• Excellent interpersonal relationship skills
• Exhibit thoroughness
• Good communication, facilitation and persuasion skills;
• Strategic thinker, who can anticipate and troubleshoot possible issues that may arise within the partnerships;
• Possess the ability to work in a multi-disciplinary team, having excellent interpersonal and suave communication skills;
• Excellent analytical with attention to detail;
• A productive self-starter who can develop innovative ideas and translate them into concrete actions and project proposals;
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills in English, including the ability to present written documents to a large audience;
• Computer literacy skills i.e. excellent in word processing, MS Excel, MS PowerPoint, and internet use;
• Willingness to travel extensively in Uganda is required;
• Past experience in the Uganda seed sector is an added benefit.

How to Apply for the job:

All suitably qualified and interested candidates are encouraged to send their updated CVs and cover letters with three work related referees to the address or e-mail below. All applications shall be marked with the position being applied for. E-mails that exceed 2 MB will not be considered.

While we thank all applicants for your interest, only those selected for interviews will be contacted. Any form of lobbying will lead to automatic disqualification.

People Performance Group

Plot 8 Kitante Close, Kitante

Kampala, Uganda.

E-mail to: application@ppg.co.ug

Deadline: 19^th October, 2014

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