Organizational Overview

Research Triangle Institute (RTI) has over 30 years’ experience assisting governments, communities, and the private sector. As a not-for-profit, independent research institute based in North Carolina, USA, RTI has roughly 5,000 employees with global experience implementing international development projects. RTI’s Sustainable Growth & Resilience (SG&R) technical unit within the International Development Group brings together RTI experts and capabilities across food security, agriculture, energy, environment, water, governance, and economic opportunity. SG&R will leverage RTI’s experience designing and delivering multisectoral programming and technical solutions to respond to climate change, build resilience, and promote economic growth around the world.

SG&R’s Global Food Security and Agriculture portfolio is working to strengthen agricultural markets, engage youth and women as critical leaders of the on- and off-farm workforce, and tackle the dual burden of malnutrition around the globe. RTI’s work is helping foster stronger food systems, reduce malnutrition in all its forms, build resilience and engage the next generation of food security leaders. RTI is currently partnering on nearly 30 projects in East Africa, including activities focused on private sector-driven agricultural growth in Rwanda and market systems development in Kenya.

Project Description

The purpose of the Feed the Future Ethiopia Transforming Agriculture activity is to increase access to healthy diets, particularly for women and children, by improving competitiveness, inclusiveness, and resilience of the Ethiopian food and agriculture system.  Feed the Future Ethiopia Transforming Agriculture will also increase incomes gained from agriculture by as much as 40 percent over the next five years. To achieve its goals, the activity must collaborate intensively with other USAID funded projects working in the food and agriculture sector.

Responsibilities

Position Description

RTI is seeking a Private Sector Engagement Manager for Feed the Future Ethiopia Transforming Agriculture. The Partnerships Manager will be responsible for providing strategic and technical private sector engagement (PSE) leadership for the activity, providing expertise and guidance in all results areas on special considerations for engaging the private sector in planning, design, and implementation of intervention areas. Following a market systems approach, they will help stimulate private sector-led solutions and foster public-private collaborations that contribute to access to healthy diets in line with USAID’s Private Sector Engagement Policy. This position will be based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and will report to Deputy Chief of Party-Operations.

Your primary responsibilities will include but not be limited to:

• Identify, design, and implement strategies and program activities to deepen private sector engagement with key market systems actors in priority value chains and supporting sectors and services, with an emphasis on raising the profile of women, youth, and person with disability led/managed/owned enterprises. This includes identifying and assessing opportunities to harmonize or layer partnership activities.
• Oversee due diligence process to determine any reputational implications of working with proposed private sector partners and to identify win-win opportunities.
• Coordinate with the technical and grants team to conduct outreach and build awareness among relevant private sector actors of the activity’s Catalytic Growth Portfolio and associated opportunities.
• Oversee implementation of the activity’s private sector relationship management approach, including interventions such as: quality check-ins between grantees and project managers on a regular basis; collecting and analyzing data from the partnership health tool; coordinating exit interviews with partners; and maintaining a customer relationship management database to track partnership activities and interactions.
• Provide technical assistance and capacity building to project stakeholders to structure collaborations between the public and private sectors.
• Identify and coordinate opportunities to assess and monitor the framework for micro, small and medium enterprise resilience.
• Lead and/or oversee discrete and ongoing technical services to enhance application of private sector engagement approaches and foster partnerships collaboratively with project teams. This could include but is not limited to initial startup staff trainings, conducting private sector landscape assessments, assisting project teams with co-creation and co-design, helping teams manage for partnership health.
• Advise government ministries/bureaus/offices on effective approaches for collaborating with the private sector.
• Gather evidence, lessons learned, and technical innovations of the activity to enhance the activity’s private sector engagement approach.
• Contribute to the production of high-quality technical deliverables and reporting.
• Collaborate with RTI’s Private Sector Engagement Director to ensure alignment of PSE approaches with USAID and RTI guidance, and to share insights that can help inform other RTI projects.

Qualifications

Required Skills and Qualifications:

• Master’s degree and 6 years of experience, or a Bachelor’s degree and 8 years of experience, or the equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Prior experience working on donor funded projects, particularly USAID-projects, preferred.
• Demonstrated experience and technical knowledge in private sector engagement and/or market systems development related work, such as identifying and facilitating public and private sector partnerships, and leading market systems analyses and studies.
• Demonstrated familiarity with current trends in private sector engagement and inclusive market systems in Ethiopia.
• Existing connections with private sector actors supporting the food and agriculture system.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.
• Verbal and written fluency in English and Amharic required. Other local language capabilities preferred.
• Ability to travel and work throughout Ethiopia in difficult terrain/conditions at times.

How To Apply