Project Overview

The Knowledge Hub for Organic Agriculture in Southern Africa (KH SA) is a collaborative country-led partnership forming part of the Knowledge Centers for Organic Agriculture (KCOA) project. The KH SA project aims to scale up adoption of organic farming practices in the Southern African region over a four year period (2019 – 2023). The KCOA project comprises four other regional hubs: North, West, East and Central Africa.

This is an indicator-led development project, with the indicators provided by the KCOA project. The strategy is thus to organise activities in each country in a manner that is appropriate to the context and the needs of that country, while also addressing the regional needs and achieving the goals and objectives of the project. The objectives of the project will be achieved through the following three outputs:

· Output 1: Validated technical and methodological knowledge for the promotion of organic agriculture, including processing, is prepared for the context of the participating countries and stakeholder groups.
· Output 2: Validated knowledge, strategies and good practices in the field of organic agriculture, adapted to the contexts of the countries participating in the regional knowledge hubs, have been disseminated.
· Output 3: Key actors in the organic agriculture value chains of the participating countries in the five regions are networking in an exemplary manner.

Southern Africa (KH SA) region is under the leadership of the Sustainability Institute who work in cooperation with in-country partners – PELUM in Zambia, the Namibia Nature Foundation (NNF) in partnership with the Namibia Organics Association (NOA) in Namibia, and the South African Organic Sector Organisation (SAOSO) in partnership with PGS-SA in South Africa. The in-country partner/s in Malawi will be established later in the year. The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).

Job Description

The incumbent will be the lead technical expert responsible for all strategic and operational data, information and knowledge activities related to the project, including all research, development, monitoring, evaluation, analytics, and reporting of project performance and results. S/he will lead
activity efforts to strengthen research, development, monitoring and evaluation, and performance reporting within the geographic area of Southern Africa (Zambia, Namibia, Malawi and South Africa).

This includes overseeing support to in-country partners in the aforementioned countries, inter alia, technical training and guidance, providing technical direction, reviewing monitoring results and submitted documents to analyse the performance of the project activities and project services to ensure data accuracy and quality. S/he will liaise with relevant technical advisers and counterparts (in-country M&E and Knowledge Officers, as well as members of a regional data/information verification committee) responsible for country specific M&E, research and knowledge management tasks.

The M&E and Knowledge Manager will also work closely with project knowledge partners such as FiBL. The M&E and Knowledge Manager is also responsible for overseeing the M&E and knowledge management strategies and activities for in-country partners in Zambia, Namibia, Malawi and South Africa and therefore a close and frequent consultation and liaison with the country-based knowledge officers is anticipated.

Requirements

• Familiar with agriculture (including livestock and fisheries) of the sub-region (Southern Africa). Demonstrated working knowledge of ecological organic agriculture in Southern Africa, particularly production, processing and marketing, including training, networking, advocacy and policy development;
• Experience in monitoring & evaluation including statistics, analytics or a related field is required. At least a Master’s degree in a related field is a pre-requisite;
• Minimum of 5 to 8 years of work experience in designing, establishing, and managing monitoring and evaluation systems, ensuring data quality, and managing data intensive, performance-based programmes funded by international donors;
• Strong qualitative research skills;
• Good social skills. Good human relation skills, a track record in managing team members across borders and experience in working with a team of experts;
• Demonstrated ability to be the senior technical specialist and subject matter expert in data analytics – mainly qualitative data;
? Demonstrated ability to perform robust data extraction from internal and external information systems;
• Demonstrated ability to utilise appropriate tools and packages;
• Demonstrated ability to prepare expert quality data visualisations and communicating them in understandable formats to different audiences using digital and other pathways;
• Demonstrated ability to perform data quality analyses and make recommendations based on findings;
• Demonstrated experience in information systems and monitoring and evaluation processes as they relate to data collection for result based monitoring (RBM) and reporting;
• Demonstrated written, presentation, communication and organisational skills in English;
• Able to work independently from home, with own computer and access to reliable internet for online calls with team. Required to travel to KH SA office at the SI in Stellenbosch to meet with team a few times per month.
• Willing to undertake occasional short local and regional travel

Applicants to submit a 2-page CV including references and motivating cover letter. All applications and queries to be sent by Friday, 9 October 2020. Only successful applicants will be contacted.