Position: Director- Delivery Unit 

Term of Employment:  One year with possible extension

Duty Station(s): Addis Ababa

Required Number: One

Salary & Benefits: Negotiable

Application deadline: May 28, 2022

BACKGROUND:

The Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Institute (ATI) is a strategy and delivery-oriented government Institute created to help accelerate the growth and transformation of the country’s agriculture sector. The ATI envisions that smallholder farmers are commercialized with greater incomes, inclusiveness, resilience and sustainability, contributing to transformed agriculture by 2030.

The Institute focuses on two primary national approaches to catalyze agricultural transformation. First, we support the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), and its federal and regional affiliate institutions and other partners to identify and address systemic bottlenecks within the sector’s development plan. Second, we support Regional Governments to accelerate the development of high-priority commodity value chains in clearly defined geographic clusters, through the Agricultural Commercialization Clusters (ACC) Program.

Our major activities include conducting strategic and analytical studies, providing technical implementation support, coordinating platforms to better integrate partners and projects, and designing and directly leading a number of implementation projects. Our headquarters are in Addis Ababa, with regional office representations in Amhara, Oromia, SNNP, and Tigray regional offices, allowing us to work closely with a wide range of public, private and development sector partners across the country. 

ATI had launched a Delivery Unit in the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) in 2009 E.C. to directly support MoA’s work to address systemic challenges of the sector. The MoA Delivery Unit will be jointly overseen by the Minister of Agriculture and ATI’s senior management. The Delivery Unit team has been playing a highly visible and pivotal role in accelerating agricultural transformation and development in Ethiopia.

The MoA Delivery Unit will be active in several key areas:

• Support the rolling out of enhanced planning, project management and reporting tools, processes and systems to track and report on the progress of priority activities
• Support the development of robust targets, plans and budgets by initiative owners
• Strengthen execution and day-to-day project and activity management capacity of staff
• Strengthen preparation, quality control and close follow up of activity reporting by staff
• Support proactive identification of key issues in specific activities or overall initiatives, analytical and technical problem solving on these issues, and escalation for senior decision-making
• Provide light analytical problem-solving support to senior leadership on high priority requests, such as analysis of trends, strategic planning or policy analysis
• Facilitate the provision of or directly provide technical advisory and input, contributing to ToRs, concept notes, studies and workshops and also develop training materials on specific topics

POSITION SUMMARY: 

The Head of the Delivery Unit will be seconded at the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) and report to the Minister of the Ministry of Agriculture where the DU is placed, with a second functional reporting line to the Senior Director of Systemic Intervention oversight Team at ATI. He/she will work closely with the Minister and office of the Minister to align on DU priorities, agree on annual plans and targets, put in place regular performance monitoring and management routines, seek feedback on DU performance, and escalate critical issues that require the senior leader’s involvement. The DU Head will also be responsible to produce a monthly performance report on the DU to ensure issues in the implementation of this new model can be quickly identified and enhancements proactively made.

Candidates for these roles must therefore bring an entrepreneurial, can-do attitude, and enjoy working in a fast-paced organization that is mission and results driven. They will have to have very strong leadership, senior stakeholder management, and team management experience, and a track record of effectively leading planning and execution of major programs, projects or initiatives. They will also demonstrate very strong analytical and critical thinking skills, attention to detail, and excellent written and verbal communication, and program and project management skills. Strong candidates will also have the ability to exercise good judgment in a variety of situations, multitask and work under pressure and competing priorities.

ACCOUNTABILITY:

The Director of DU is accountable for the delivery support of MoA’s work on the Transformation Agenda and key priority areas of the Minister by:

• Leading the support on the rollout of enhanced planning, project management and reporting tools, processes and systems to track and report on the progress of priority activities
• Leading the support on the development of robust targets, plans and budgets by initiative owners
• Overseeing the execution and day-to-day project and activity management of staff
• Overseeing the preparation, quality control and close follow up of activity reporting by staff
• Leading the support of proactive identification of key issues in specific activities or overall initiatives, analytical and technical problem solving on these issues, and escalation for senior decision-making
• Leading the provision of light analytical problem-solving support to senior leadership on high priority requests, such as analysis of trends, strategic planning or policy analysis
• Facilitating and coordinating the provision of or directly providing technical advisory and input, contributing to ToRs, concepts notes, studies and workshops and also developing training materials on specific topics
• Oversee the execution and tracking of the Minister’s key priorities and ad-hoc requests as needed by the MoA senior leadership

RESPONSIBILITIES:

The responsibilities of the Director of DU are for the delivery of DU goals. Responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

Planning 

• Develop annual plans, targets and budgets for the DU around critical focus areas including stakeholder engagement, initiative planning, tracking, reporting and escalation, execution capacity building, problem-solving and light analytical support, change management and office management
• Put in place robust annual planning, target-setting and budgeting process with owners of priority initiatives, and regular performance monitoring and management routines with senior leadership, initiative owners and relevant stakeholders
• Input to the design, development, rollout and continuous improvement of enhanced planning, project management and reporting tools, processes and systems for the DU to track and report on the progress of priority initiatives and activities, and ensure effective use of these tools, processes and systems

Tracking and Monitoring

• Lead the tracking of the performance achieved for Transformation Agenda sub-deliverables, supported by the Delivery Unit
• Lead the monitoring and reviewing the TAD performance monthly, quarterly and annually 

Technical Support

• Oversee the provision of technical supports as needed by the directorates and implementation owners of MoA and affiliate institutions

Capacity Building

• Provide execution effectiveness capacity building sessions to the directorates and implementation owners of MoA and affiliate institutions

Stakeholder Management - Establish strong, trust-based relationships with and regularly engage relevant internal or external senior stakeholders and initiative owners around annual planning and target-setting for priority initiatives, enhancing execution effectiveness, tracking, reporting and escalation, and problem-solving, to ensure strong stakeholder buy-in and achievement of initiative targets

External engagements

• Ensure the effectiveness of the Delivery Unit through regular engagement with MoA senior leadership as well as senior management at ATI
• Support SD and follow up on engagements with regional BoAs Directors, experts, and advisors
• Establishing strong relationships with and regularly engaging the Minister of MoA, State Ministers, directors, experts and relevant external senior stakeholders to ensure strong buy-in and support achievement of targets for priority TAD initiatives
• Facilitate interactions with private sector actors, cooperatives, etc., as needed

Internal alignment and coordination

• Delivering against the agreed priorities for the DU through day-to-day management of the DU staff and activities
• Oversee and manage the staff in the DU day-to-day, ensuring effective engagement with stakeholders and initiative owners, and coaching, providing feedback and performance reviews for these staff
• Oversee or directly manage a team DU staff including a core team composed of Delivery Manager, Senior Data and Reporting Officer, Senior Delivery Analyst, and Program Assistant; and a large technical team composed of Transformation Agenda Advisors, and Senior Transformation Agenda Specialists

Leadership

o  Strategic thinking

• Provide guidance and direction to DU staff as well as TAD implementers and initiative owners in identifying, developing and implementing strategic solutions for challenges around implementation and reporting
• Proactively identify gaps in DU program
• Perform diagnostics of projects, and interventions and propose solutions
• Strategize to ensure collaboration across Projects, VCs and VC segments

o  Problem solving

• Oversee the identification, prioritization and effective delivery of technical and analytical problem-solving support for challenges in the implementation of priority initiatives, as well as light analytical support to the MoA senior leadership provided on a demand basis
• Proactively engage with ATI teams or external partners for heavier or more analytical problem-solving support where needed
• Effectively translate high-level strategy into project and intervention for program

o  Progress review

• Lead progress review of DU programs against plans & KPIs
• Lead progress review of TAD related projects against plans & KPIs

o  People Performance Management

• Provide effective upward reporting and timely escalation of critical issues to the Minister of the MoA, and the senior director of the Systemic Intervention at ATI where relevant, on prioritized initiatives as well as progress, challenges and constraints of the Delivery Unit

o  Capacity Building

• Responsible for identifying and filling capacity gaps in DU staff
• Facilitate experience sharing and adoption of best practices across sectors in the Ministry and affiliate institutions

o  Operational support

• Reporting: Director of DU will report to SD, Systemic Interventions and ultimately to (D)CEO, Programs.
• Approvals: Review/approve leaves, DU team’s plan, performance goals/targets, budgets, reports, procurement, travel, etc.
• Report Writing: Provide qualitative info/narrative for reports
• Resource Mobilization: Support SD with content/data

Other

• The Director of DU is responsible for any additional interventions and projects as assigned by SD, Systemic Interventions to meet goals at the vertical level
• The Director of DU is also responsible for any additional interventions and projects needed for the successful implementation of the TADs
• Contribute to recruitment, onboarding, and initial and ongoing capacity building of staff in DU

Job Requirements

• Minimum of MBA, MA, MPA, MSc, DVM or Master’s degree in management, leadership, business administration, project management, economics, public administration, veterinary medicine, veterinary epidemiology animal husbandry, animal science, plant science, and other relevant fields of study
• At least twelve years of work experience, preferably in a management consulting or large program management setting, or other roles focused on strategic planning, program/project design, management and reporting, and applied analysis; five of the twelve years of experience should be in a leadership or managerial position
• Has good experience of working in/with/ various international organizations and national institutions including higher education institutions, research institutions and sectoral bureaus,
• Ample experiences of organizing & guiding the transfer of research findings to the end users in terms of technologies and/or knowledge generation in scientific publications. 
• Broad experience in leading, structuring and managing national and collaborative international programs/projects, analytically-focused work, and senior management reporting and decision support, in a range of sectors or topic areas
• Strong understanding of public and development sector issues and organizational culture, and ability to effectively liaise with senior and mid-level leadership in government organizations
• Understanding of the Ethiopian Agricultural Sector and its various challenges and possibilities with a broad perspective on how the entire system operates and how public, private and non-government organizations operate
• Hands on experience on Delivery Mechanisms in public institutions highly desirable
• Self-starter with strong motivation, vision, ownership and commitment to drive transformation
• Highly collaborative leadership style and demonstrated success in leading, motivating, managing and developing high-performance teams
• Exhibits an innovative and high-performance mindset and culture, and can perform at a high level under pressure, with a high workload and in challenging environments
• Highly results-oriented and delivery focused, with the ability to strengthen the accountability of others
• Promotes data-driven and evidence-based problem-solving, and timely, effective decision-making
• Can act as a champion for change and can effectively support change management efforts
• Strong team player with excellent relationship building skills, ability to promote dialogue and communicate clearly and confidently
• Proactively seeks and acts on feedback to drive own development and contributes to others’ development through active coaching and sharing knowledge and best practices
• Strong knowledge and skills in Microsoft Office Suite, and various program/project management and data and reporting systems
• Strong set of personal values including integrity, honesty and desire to be of service
• Fluency in English, Amharic and other languages required  

How to Apply

Interested applicants can apply using THIS LINK

Note: Please DO NOT submit scans of certificates with your application. Women are highly encouraged to apply