The program

Mercy Corps has been operating in Ethiopia since 2004, working in rural, peri-urban and urban areas in five regional states – Somali, Oromia, Afar, Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples, Amhara – and the capital city of Addis Ababa. We engage in both development and humanitarian work, and seek to integrate approaches, programs and geographies as much as possible.  Our partners include government, academic institutions, development and private sector actors, civil societies, and communities.

Resilience in Pastoral Areas (RIPA) program is a five-year USAID-funded initiative that aims to improve the resilience capacities of households, markets and governance institutions across 22 woredas in the Somali, Afar and Oromia regions. RIPA is designed across four major technical themed components with targeted activities and a ‘Crisis Modifier’ which will allow implementation to pivot the adaptive management approach and respond to humanitarian needs in ways that support, not undermine, long-term development and resilience objectives.

General Position Summary

The Market Systems Development (MSD) Coordinator is member of RIPA Market system development team and responsible to coordinate RIPA Component 3 (Livestock/crop production and marketing) in Afar region. He/she will oversee the RIPA Market system development specialists and activities in the region. The MSD Team uses a market-systems, community-led approach to stimulate economic growth creating wealth and jobs for the poorest while maximizing investment from the private and public sectors. The MSD Team is comprised of technical expertise in the areas of production, marketing, employment, input/output markets, post-harvest technologies and financial services. Its main sectors include livestock, crop/fodder, livestock products, energy, financial services, enterprises development and related sectors.

ESSENTIAL JOB FUNCTIONS

• Oversee and coordinate field level MSD team and activities to ensure quality and timely delivery of planned activities.
• Provide technical leadership to field team in planning, organizing, implementing, monitoring, reporting and evaluation of MSD activities.
• Advises the Area Manager on related MSD activities and supports to ensure better RIPA overall implementation in the cluster.
• Manage relationship with relevant government stakeholders, public and private partners including key actors (inputs suppliers, producers, information service providers, and other appropriate actors) in the target area for better success.
• Facilitate private sector engagement in his/her respective responsibility in the region by bringing innovative ideas and initiatives to MSD team.
• Work closely with all RIPA component team members ensuring activity integration and achieve overall RIPA goal;
• Contributes to the key monitoring and measuring indicators, milestones and plans in close collaboration with MSD and M&E team and be responsible for monitoring and reporting outputs and outcome indicators in each component.
• Ensures the program captures and updates information about market developments within the components.
• Compile and submit regular updates/reports (weekly, monthly and quarterly); and
• Other duties as assigned.

REPRESENTATION AND COORDINATION

• Liaise with local government officials, local NGOs and civil society organizations, local religious leaders and other notables to ensure support for and acceptance of Mercy Corps’ programs.
• Maintain close working relationships with donors, other humanitarian and development organizations, and local partners, including representing Mercy Corps at local coordination meetings as assigned.
• Represent Mercy Corps professionally in the responsibility areas as to bring credit and to maintain its humanitarian and development mission.

Team management

• Build effective relationships with program teams implementing production, marketing, diversified economic opportunities, based on mutual trust, collaboration, urgency and curiosity.
• Assist team members with information, tools and resources to improve performance & reach objectives.
• Promote accountability, communicate expectations and provide constructive feedback informally and formally.
• Create and sustain a work environment of mutual respect where team members strive to achieve excellence.
• Support hiring and orientation of team members with a focus on MSD.

SECURITY

• Ensure compliance with security procedures and policies as determined by country leadership.
• Proactively ensure that team members operate in a secure environment and are aware of policies.

ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING

• As part of our commitment to organizational learning and in support of our understanding that learning organizations are more effective, efficient and relevant to the communities they serve, we expect all team members to commit 5% of their time to learning activities that benefit Mercy Corps as well as themselves.

ACCOUNTABILITY TO BENEFICIARIES

• Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically to our beneficiaries and to international standards guiding international relief and development work, while actively engaging beneficiary communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects.
• Team members are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner and respect local laws, customs and MC’s policies, procedures, and values at all times and in all in-country venues.

Supervisory Responsibility

Accountability: MSD Team

Reports Directly to: Area Manager

Works Directly with: Component Leads for RIPA, MSD Advisors, other administrative, finance and operations staff in-country,

REQUIREMENTS

Knowledge and Experience

• Experience in private sector is strongly preferred
• Bachelor’s degree in agriculture, agribusiness, economics, business administration or other related field, or commensurate private sector or field experience is required;
• Minimum of 5 years’ experience in private sector or working with other agencies in program coordination, market systems facilitation, production, agribusiness and/or financial services.

SUCCESS FACTORS:

• Fluent in English, Amharic and local language for the location applied: Somali and/or Afar (capable in all require basic skills: reading, listening, speaking and writing);
• Business minded, entrepreneurial, curious, great problem solving skills, unafraid to ask questions, and results motivated;
• Excellent communication, presentation, facilitation and networking skills with a wide range of actors across geographical areas;
• Computer literate especially in Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook)