TechnoServe

Title: Associate Advisor Agronomy

Reports to: Senior Advisor – Agronomy

Location: Meru

Grade: 5

About TechnoServe

At TechnoServe, we believe that everyone deserves the opportunity to build a better life. For over 50 years, we have given smallholder farmers and entrepreneurs the skills, connections, and confidence to lift themselves out of poverty. We leverage the power of markets and the private sector to create sustainable economic growth to benefit people and the planet. Our unique mix of business solutions, deep knowledge of local contexts, and data-driven insights is helping to fight poverty across Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

TechnoServe staff are local–95% are from the countries in which they work. We put a high premium on collaboration and entrepreneurship. We hold ourselves and each other to the highest standards of integrity and transparency. And we focus on delivering lasting impact for our mission.

Program Description

TechnoServe’s Nespresso AAA Sustainable Quality Program is a partnership with Nespresso SA program is designed to implement the Nespresso AAA program in Ethiopia and Kenya. The overarching goal is to reduce poverty of 200,000 smallholder coffee farmers in Kenya and Ethiopia through increased coffee incomes as a result of improved yields, quality and market access to Nespresso’s AAA supply chain. The Nespresso AAA Program will build on the natural synergies with the BMGF-funded Coffee Initiative in Kenya and Ethiopia.

Position Description

The Associate Agronomy Advisor shall support the implementation of strategies that will enable clients to achieve sustainable increases in coffee quality and yields.

Key roles and responsibility

• Sensitize cooperative leadership, smallholder coffee farmers and local stakeholders on the TechnoServe coffee project work.
• Implement existing strategies to provide assigned cooperatives with agronomy training and with structured post-training farm visits to improve adoption.
• Train and advise farmers being assisted by the project on coffee agronomy best practices with the objective of helping them to improve coffee yields and quality.
• Train, mentor, coach and support assigned Farmer Trainers on all technical and operational aspects of their work and in relationship with farmers. This includes assisting them to set performance goals, continuous assessment of performance and giving feedback.
• Participate in the implementation of the defined project monitoring, measurement and evaluation activities that ensure accurate and consistent capture of date for project reporting and documenting of the impact of our work.
• Create linkages between cooperative leadership, farmers and suppliers of recommended inputs and other farm requirements.
• Collect, collate, validate and submit the specified project data and clients’ reports within stipulated time lines.
• Cultivate and manage good relationship with clients both at leadership and farmer levels as well as with key industry stakeholders and community leaders at local levels.
• Keep abreast of developments concerning coffee at the cooperative and in the local community and regularly report these.
• Understand, respect and promote TechnoServe’s values, vision, and strategy in the implementation of assigned duties.
• Any other relevant tasks as assigned by the Senior Business Advisor.

Required skills and experience

• Bachelor’s degree in agriculture, agronomy, horticulture or related agricultural sciences or 2 years’ experience in the coffee sector doing similar work.
• At least two years’ professional experience – ideally in the private sector – in one or more of the following areas: coffee processing or agronomy; business or cooperative management; SME development; agriculture; training; extension services.
• Good understanding of the Kenya coffee industry and especially the cooperatives sector.
• Possess an aptitude and skills for training adults in a field set up.
• Strong planning skills and ability to generate innovative solutions in highly dynamic work situations.
• Demonstrated ability to prepare and present well-written, cohesive analyses and reports.
• Strong interpersonal, collaborative and cross-cultural skills.
• Willingness to spend significant time in project implementation sites located in rural areas.
• Valid motorcycle riding licence.
• Fluency in English and Kiswahili.

We encourage all qualified individuals who share TechnoServe's vision of improving the lives of others through proven business solutions to apply.

With our commitment to diversity, we are proud to be an equal opportunity employer and affirmative action employer and do not discriminate on the basis of gender, race, color, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, HIV/AIDS status, protected veteran status, disability and all other protected classes.

We are also proud of our commitment to protecting staff, partners, and beneficiaries from abuse and exploitation and thoroughly vet all final candidates through rigorous background and reference checks.

If you have a disability that affects your ability to use our online system to apply for a position at TechnoServe please contact the Human Resources at recruitment@tns,org or cal +1 202 785 45 15.