Deputy Country Director/Sector Leader Agri-Food

1 day ago
Full time role
In-person · Ouagadougou, Centre Region, BF... more

The person
If you are an impact-driven agri-food leader, SNV Burkina Faso will be keen to recruit you in the role of a Deputy Country Director (DCD) / Sector Leader (SL). In this role you are pivotal to grow and enhance the Agri-food portfolio, you are representing SNV towards (potential) donors and you ensure the quality of the Agri-food expertise with and through our programs and projects. Next to this you will be deputy to the Country Director and take part in the Country Management Team that is jointly heading the Burkina Faso team of about 80 people across 5 locations.

As Deputy Country Director/Sector Leader Agri-food:
You are working with more than 5 project managers of our Agri-food teams and partners across our portfolio to deliver impact. You drive the national community of practice, and you ensure the use of our MEL frameworks to generate learning and insights across the diverse teams. You will oversee all projects within the Agri-food system to ensure implementation and together with the project manager improve the quality of the overall sector performance at country level. 

You play an important role in Business Development, instigating, developing, and translating opportunities into sound project proposals, connecting with Global Expertise teams and partners. You maintain close relations with relevant stakeholders, keeping the pulse of the development sector in country, representing SNV to remain strategically targeted and responsive to potential stakeholder needs. 

In your role as DCD you are expected to represent the CD in their absence or otherwise needed, in all related matters such as; stakeholder management, country performance and compliance and decision making. You might be asked to take on specific general management tasks, pending your experience. You are a champion on SNV culture, representing our values and encouraging a team culture of learning, creativity, and innovation.

Duties and responsibilities:

The selected candidate will be responsible for the following tasks:

Strategic Leadership

  • Providing innovative leadership and encouraging people to take an active role in programme design and proposal development and ensuring quality and implementation in line with the strategic directions within the annual Plan of Burkina Faso.
  • As a key member of the Country Management Team (CMT), responsible for enabling and supporting the CMT uphold the highest standards of behaviour embracing diversity and inclusion across teams, maintaining SNV code of conduct and intentionally radiating SNV culture statements.
  • Drive Agri-food systems impact via programme and project delivery, actively promoting reflections and learning based upon SNV MEL framework and ensure continuous development of practice standards across projects. 

People leadership

  • Providing leadership, coaching and technical support to teams
  • Driving the community of practice within the country
  • Growing and nurturing talent, actively looking at opportunities to build diverse experience across teams.
  • Directly leading a team of project managers in the Agri-Food sector, instilling adaptive leadership with people centricity across the respective teams.

Collaboration and consultation

  • Participating in global Agri-Food community of practice and meetings to ensure impactful steering of the sector.

Representation

  • Building, maintaining, and expanding relationships with donors and other partners (government, local partners, national and international NGOs and bilateral and multilateral agencies, private sector), for a high level of visibility by actively participating in external and internal networks and events.

Project/program delivery

  • Driving data-based reflections and decision-making at all levels, with a specific focus on ensuring that the agri-food systems programs are designed and implemented in quality.
  • Contributing to the development of the country strategic and annual plans and budgets and reports on progress/ performance against targets, within the requirements of the corporate planning process.
  • Ensuring effective and efficient project/programme delivery in compliance with donor reporting and to promote cross-sectoral learning.

Business Development

  • Supporting Business Development (BD) by developing proposals to secure funding for innovative Agri-Food programs and may also support business development for Energy and Water sectors.
  • Supporting the country program to pursue and track business opportunities for new projects and programmes. 

Your profile:
You will have innate passion for people; you believe that experience and growth can be transferred to others and you have a strong technical background in the Agri-food sector. You are an experience project manager with a passion to design and enable sound theories of change that drive systems impact. Whilst being rooted in science, you adapt to context, and you inspire people from diverse backgrounds to join our cause. You are experienced with MEL frameworks, and you actively promote learning against insights generated from our field work. You are ensuring project reflections feed into practitioner learning cycles.