Research Management Coordinator – Agricultural Innovation System

The International Water Management Institute (IWMI) seeks to recruit a Research Management Coordinator – Agricultural Innovation System to initiate, provide suggestions for, and monitor the small-scale irrigations (SSI) and agrifood systems scaling partnership to promote private and public sector’s investments and interventions in Ethiopia. While primarily dedicated to SSI initiatives, also contribute to various ongoing projects, including Solar and irrigation projects, Digital Innovations for a Water Secure Africa (DIWASA), Sustainable Finance, Scaling for Impact, and other Science for Impacts and bilateral projects.

The International Water Management Institute (IWMI) is a non-profit international research organization, serving a global mandate to improve management of water and land for food, livelihoods, and nature. IWMI headquarters is located in Colombo, Sri Lanka and one of its sub-regional offices is located in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. IWMI is one of the 15 research centers supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).

Key Responsibilities:

Coordinate and lead research on scaling and partnership activities for small-scale irrigation (SSI). Activities include:

• Manages and overseeing the development of SSI scaling pilots and partnerships in Ethiopia, researchers and external partners;
• Develop new ideas, products, techniques, methodologies, approaches, practices, and procedures to operationalize the Scaling of innovations in various projects;
• Contributes to scaling and innovation and private sector resource mobilization through significant input to proposal development;
• Lead and facilitate collaboration among partners and researchers for joint data collection, analysis, monitoring, and evaluation of SSI and agrifood systems scaling pathways;
• Lead the development of data base systematically and product Annual review of the solar pump together with other partners
• Leads the writing of project reports and draft peer reviewed articles and journal publications;
• Analyzing data and draft scientific publications, policy briefs and technical reports in the areas of private and public sector’s SSI and agrifood systems scaling interventions;
• Lead the development of communication products aimed at disseminating to policy makers, practitioners, and researchers.
• Supervises interns, temporary staff, consultants within the project he/she is managing.
• Conducting SSI and agrifood systems stakeholder analysis and mapping, market margin assessment along scaling pathways, private sector financing, and identification of blocking and enabling mechanisms to SSI and agrifood systems scaling;
• Facilitating the collaboration among partners and researchers to pilot joint data collection and analysis, and monitoring and evaluating of SSI and agrifood systems scaling pathways to document and present lessons learned to sustainably and equitably incentivize uptake;
• Identifying partnerships, policies and institutional requirements for testing approaches, technologies and investment propositions that have strong scaling potential;
• Building and maintaining SSI and agrifood systems scaling dialogue platforms and processes with national and regional stakeholders and research partners, including the private sector;
• Perform any other related duties as may be required.

Minimum Requirements:

Education:

• Master’s degree  or PhD degree in Development Economics, Rural Development, Human Geography, Sociology, or a closely related field relevant to Water Resources Management, Agricultural Development and Agricultural innovation systems and scaling, or similar.
• In depth knowledge in a technical or specialized field
• Understanding of theoretical concepts / principles and their context

Experience:

• MSc degree and 10 years relevant work experience or PhD degree and 3 years relevant work experience, preferably in international work setting and in areas such as scaling of agricultural innovation, and facilitating multi-stakeholder dialogues and/or innovation platforms;
• Experience in transforming research into knowledge products for outreach and impact in Ethiopia and wider forms of development policy and practice influence;
• Proven track record in communicating research findings in international conferences and other platforms.

Skills:                 

• Negotiates with external stakeholders to ensure the best implementation for the project;
• Ability to facilitate and lead multi-stakeholder partnerships in agri-business and irrigation, and gender and youth inclusion issues;
• Ability to maintain strong external partnerships and alliances in complex institutional environments, including the private sector;
• Ability to apply technical, economic, and institutional reasoning to innovation scaling and policy issues in a critical manner;
• Proven ability to work collaboratively and effectively with academic and non-academic stakeholders.
• Ability to in using statistical analytical techniques.

Source: https://www.ilri.org/join-us/jobs-careers?jid=55601-research-management-coordinator-agricultural-innovation-system-internal-external