Background:
Land O’Lakes International Development is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit helping communities around the world build economies by strengthening agriculture from farm-to-fork, helping businesses grow, and linking farmers to markets. Since our start in 1981, we have been leveraging nearly 100 years of expertise in dairy, animal nutrition, crop inputs and agricultural insights from our close affiliate, Land O’Lakes, Inc., a farmer-owned agribusiness committed to fulfilling its purpose of feeding human progress. Our team is made up of nearly 350 employees who are committed to market-led approaches, and passionate about collaborating locally to create lasting inclusive economic growth. By unlocking the potential of agriculture for the last 36 years, the lives of more than 3 million people have been transformed through nearly 300 programs in more than 80 countries.
Project Description:
Rwanda Orora Wihaze is an anticipated 5 year project funded by USAID/Rwanda. The objective of this project is to sustainably increase the availability of, access to, and consumption of animal source foods (ASF) through the development of a profitable market. The project objective will be accomplished through two related intermediate results: 1.) Strengthened and inclusive private sector led animal sourced food value chains; and 2.) Increased demand for animal sourced foods. The project will work with and through key partnerships including the government of Rwanda, the private sector, the donor community, and local stakeholders to achieve the project objective.
Position Summary and Primary Responsibilities:
The Chief of Party (COP) will provide strategic vision, overall leadership and technical direction to the project. The COP will ensure the project is planned and executed with quality, accountability and measurable impact. The COP will be the primary liaison with USAID and other donor partners, as necessary, and will manage project staff and implementing partners to ensure proper reporting, financial management, and compliance. The COP is expected to coordinate with government and other stakeholders to ensure that activities complement ongoing initiatives and adhere to country and global standards. The position will be based in Kigali, Rwanda with frequent travel to local field sites.
Primary responsibilities of the position include but are not limited to the following:
- Provide strategic leadership to the design and implementation of the project activities and oversees program planning, monitoring, reporting evaluation and overall learning;
- Oversee project finances, planning, administration, compliance, reporting, and monitoring and evaluation;
- Ensure successful project implementation and achievement of results on time and within budget;
- Manage relationship with implementing partners;
- Ensure optimal use of human, financial, and physical resources to successfully meet project milestones, objectives, deliverables and targets;
- Oversee and coordinate the successful completion of planning and budgeting requirements of the project;
- Ensure mechanisms are in place to monitor the implementation of projects, including progress toward achieving objectives and targets with high-quality and on-time performance;
- Ensure timely, high-quality and complete submission of work plans, quarterly and annual reports, financial reports, and any other reports required by the donor;
- Ensure that all activities are undertaken in full compliance with Land O’Lakes’ standard operating procedures, and USAID policies and regulations, and national policies and laws;
- Ensure documentation and dissemination of findings, impact, innovations, and lessons learned;
- Represent project both internally and externally to other donors, stakeholders, implementing partners and government counterparts;
- Ensure gender equality approaches are integrated into programming; implement an engendered design, identifying learnings on a regular basis, refining the design as needed to improve gender equality across project activities;
- Promote sustainability of project activities with effective networking, linkages to other programs, capacity building of project staff, and institutional strengthening of implementing partners and community-based organizations;
- Create a collaborative organizational culture and facilitate exchange of knowledge for cross-organizational learning;
- Encourage learning and knowledge sharing as an essential part of doing business and ensure employees own their own learning; and
- Ensure tools for learning, such as blogs, articles, social media, brochures, coaching, training, etc. are in place. Encourage employees’ enrollment in relevant social networks and communities of practice.
Reporting & Supervision:
The Chief of Party reports to a Regional Program Director and supervises, mentors and develops technical leads.
Required Skills and Qualifications:
- Master’s degree in international development, agriculture, nutrition, or a closely related field is required;
- Minimum of 10 years of experience designing, implementing and managing projects of similar size and scope in developing countries;
- Proven ability to develop and communicate a common vision among diverse partners and lead a multi-disciplinary team;
- Strong leadership qualities and depth and breadth of technical and management expertise in nutrition, livestock, and market system development;
- Experience in developing capacity building and service delivery through local stakeholders is highly desirable;
- Demonstrated ability to create and maintain effective working relations with host country government personnel, stakeholders, NGO partners, and international donor agencies; and
- Strong interpersonal, writing and oral presentation skills in English required.
Preferred Skills and Qualifications:
- Working experience in Rwanda and or East Africa preferred;
- Experience with implementing behavior change communications activities to improve nutrition outcome; and
- Experience managing and implementing USG contracts.
More Information
- Job City Rwanda
