BACKGROUND AND JUSTIFICATION
DAI has been contracted by DFID to implement the 5 Year FoodTrade East and Southern Africa (FTESA) Programme. FTESA will be based in Dar es Salaam, and will cover the nine countries of Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda (East Africa) and Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe (Southern Africa). FoodTrade ESA will systemically improve the functioning of national and regional staple food market systems; impacting directly on over 400,000 households and consumers through stable markets for staple food products. It will achieve this through the establishment of a Project Management Unit (PMU) to foster catalytic and innovative solutions through the use of two facilitative tools: a Challenge and Development Fund.
FoodTrade ESA uses a market-based approach to working with enterprises to promote the participation of poor men and women in wealth creation and improving the benefits they gain from engaging in staple food trade. As such, FTESA is concerned with the functioning of staple foods markets, and the need to overcome market failures to achieve systematic change that would create opportunities for more smallholder producers to participate in formalized, functioning markets. FTESA uses market-friendly mechanisms to leverage on ‘enterprise contribution’ to development through sharing the risk burden where commercial risk is too high. Foodtrade focuses on innovations in areas such as improved storage, inputs and service markets, information and coordination mechanisms and policy and regulation with the aim to get more people trading in regional staple food markets. FoodTrade ESA’s vision is to unlock trade across borders and across the region to get more food to more people.
OBJECTIVE
This is a full time position, aimed at strengthening FoodTrade ESA’s engagement with staple markets systems.
Broadly, the position will:
Objective 1: Identify market constraints and use market analysis to scope out potential
interventions in the ESA region that could benefit from both the Challenge
Fund (CF) and Development Fund (DF).
Objective 2: Manage a portfolio of projects within FoodTrade ESA, overseeing their regular
reporting against contract and results; and undertaking regular field visits as part of project monitoring
Objective 3: In collaboration with Trade Policy Advisor conduct policy analysis within
ESA to identify potential policy changes that could unblock bottlenecks to
effective trade
SCOPE OF WORK
Significant potential exists within the ESA region for intra-regional trade from areas of surplus to deficit areas. However, many factors impede this potential trade. These key areas of constraints include:
- Food storage and collateral management systems.
- Supply chain coordination and information systems.
- Structured market systems that afford fragmented farmers and traders opportunities to enter in staple grains trade
- Markets for inputs, including seeds and fertiliser.
- Markets for services, including advice, transport, finance, insurance, and market intelligence.
- The regulatory environment affecting the success of these interventions
This position will contribute towards designing interventions that address these constraints. The role of the Market Systems Advisor will largely involve ongoing project management for a portfolio of projects that intervene in the staple foods markets. These will be as designated by the Deputy Team Leader with the following broad tasks:
- Regularly update FoodTrade ESA on relevant literature reviews, reports, market related and policy documents on regional trade in staples in ESA region and contribute to currency in programme knowledge of market systems in staple foods
- Proactively meet with key informants from industry and relevant public sector entities and representative of producers, processors, retailers, exporters and other stakeholders. It is envisaged that regional economic bodies such as COMESA, EAC and SADC will be consulted as well.
- Assess the opportunities for intervention using the CF and DF
- Assess different strategies to broker partnerships with identified stakeholders
- Contribute towards influencing strategies that the programme designs to influence relevant polices affecting trade in staples; as well as in opportunities and options for changing or improving these through FoodTrade’s influencing strategy
- Actively represent and promote FoodTrade in the ESA region
- Any other reasonable task allocated by the Deputy Team Leader from time to time
TASKS/DETAILED REQUIREMENTS
The Market Systems Advisor (MSA) will complete the following tasks in the day to day functions of this position. This list is not exhaustive, and the Team Leader or Deputy Team Leader may define additional task within the scope of the overall programme objectives:
- Manage FoodTrade ESA’s projects assigned throughout their project cycle (design, inception, implementation and periodic reporting and results; communications with partners; and general oversight of their performance with regards to their agreed results)
- Manage FoodTrade ESA key relationships in staple foods industry, private sector players (producers, processors, retailers, warehousing, service providers etc), public sector, RECS (SADC, EAC and COMESA) in addressing the issues related to regional staple foods value chains and trade
- Design Challenge and Development Funds portfolios: Collect evidence, and assess opportunities for interventions in markets through Challenge and Development Funds, and design concepts for call for expressions of interest for such intervention areas identified
- Monitor the contracts awarded to ensure they are contributing to agreed outcomes between FoodTrade and DFID
- Assess different policies affecting staple foods trade and design consultative forums for evidence sharing to build trust amongst key players and policy makers
- Writing several programme reports to DFID (regular progress, projections, annual plans, technical papers on various positions and options on key issues for FoodTrade etc)
- Participate in key regional policy dialogues, representing FoodTrade ESA in various platforms
- Manage multiple teams of technical assistance and consultants’ contracts to ensure quality, value for money and results that contribute to FoodTrade’s goals and outcomes.
- Represent portfolio of projects to DFID steering committee quarterly meetings
Supervisor: The Advisor reports to the Deputy Team Leader for Technical Programmes.
Timeframe: Sept 1, 2015 – March 31, 2018
Location: This position will be located in Nairobi, with travel required.
Application Deadline: 31st July 2015
