Agribusiness & Marketing Expert Integrated Seed Sector Development

Integrated Seed and Sector Development Uganda (ISSD Uganda) is an independent local NGO in Uganda, which aims to be a leading agricultural development organization in fostering resilient seed and food systems for sustainable agricultural production. ISSD Uganda builds on the impactful outcomes and experiences of the successfully implemented seed projects that focused on; seed sector transformation; capacity building and knowledge transfer; partnerships and sector coordination, as well as supporting fragile communities including refugees.

Project overview
Restoring Resilience of highland farmer communities and watersheds in Uganda is a 4-year project funded by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Kampala. The project is a land restoration and farming systems project in the Western and South Western Highlands of Uganda, implemented in a collaborative partnership between Wageningen Environmental Research (WENR) as lead partner, and ISSD Uganda, as the local implementing partner. The project works through three pathways to achieve its goal to build resilient farmer communities and watersheds in the highlands of Uganda. In Pathway 1 “resilient farming systems” the project focuses on empowerment and motivation of farmer households to work towards establishing resilient farming systems through the PIP approach; Pathway 2 “watershed restoration” focusses on restoring natural resources and ecosystem functioning to enable restored watershed resilience; and Pathway 3 “improved marketing” focusses on improved marketing opportunities for all farmers directly engaged in the project, and the wider community. The project headquarters will be in Fort portal.

Position overview
The Agribusiness & Marketing expert focuses on coordination of activities on improved marketing in Pathway 3. The position is responsible for implementing initiatives that will improve marketing opportunities for smallholder farmers directly engaged in the project with a special focus on women and youth. The expert will work closely with the field staff to support farmers and other stakeholders to address bottlenecks that limit market access; strengthening marketing opportunities for key local crop commodities; and supporting growth of viable entrepreneurial initiatives. S/he will guide communities to select relevant interventions to solving the market related bottlenecks, and collaborate with relevant institutions and service providers in the development and execution of interventions.

Main Duties and Responsibilities
• Conduct market analyses to identify general market access bottlenecks within the communities
• Facilitate the participatory prioritization of the general market access bottlenecks to be addressed by the project with the relevant stakeholders
• Guide partnership formation development of MoUs and signing of agreements to improve collaboration for improved market access at community level, district level and with other stakeholders
Coordinate and provide technical support to field staff and beneficiaries on planning, implementing and monitoring of the agreed partnerships and measures to addressing the market access bottlenecks based on the signed MoUs
• Provide selected entrepreneurial groups with tailor made trainings to improve their business skills, governance, financial sustainability, accountability and client focus and support them into participatorily developing and validating Integrated Group Plans (IGPs)
• Identify a range of relevant financial services products for the entrepreneurial groups, assess groups’ constraints to access of each product and broker access to finance and investment between the entrepreneurial groups and various financing structures
• Monitor implementation of the IGPs and report the performance of each entrepreneurial initiative as per set milestones
• Build capacity of selected ‘IGP Trainers’ to train other youth or women led groups into development and implementation of IGPs for their entrepreneurial initiatives as part of the scaling initiative
• Build capacities of value chain actors and key stakeholders on “resilience-based stewardship” and how to establish sustainable “business” relations with farmers
• Establish and maintain effective links with all key stakeholders (e.g., district authorities and development organisations) to strengthen collaboration on agribusiness related issues
• Identify areas for synergy with other EKN funded interventions within the project site to complement project interventions and address issues beyond the project’s scope
• Support the project M&E team to develop and maintain an M&E system for the project interventions especially development of a proper data collection system
• Document best practices and lessons learnt of the project and support to replicate it
• Compile and prepare periodic progress reports highlighting progress made in improving marketing opportunities for farmers within the watershed based on project periodic plans
• Contribute to project newsletter articles and annual reports
• Facilitate implementation of the project baseline study and relevant research studies (as they come up) by actively contributing to their design, rollout and report writing.

Qualifications, Experience, & Competencies
• Master’s degree in Agricultural Economics, Agribusiness Management, Agricultural marketing, Rural Development, or agricultural related degree
• Minimum of 8 years’ experience working with rural smallholder business development, providing services, training and/or technical assistance
• At least five (5) years’ experience in local value chain development projects and market systems development, preferably in the Western and South Western Highlands of Uganda
Working knowledge in identifying opportunities for value addition and market access at the processor and household level
Experience working with financial institutions to improve farmers’ access to financial services
• Proven ability and demonstrated experience of appraising business cases, with experience in Gender (male, female, and youth) entrepreneurship programs
• Strong agribusiness relationship management experience and focus with ability to stimulate trust and manage various stakeholders
• Excellent communication in English (written and oral), reporting and presentation skills. Local language skills an added advantage
• Flexible approach to take on additional responsibilities as assigned/delegated;
• Willingness to travel to all project locations;