Country Director at Farm Africa Tanzania

JOB TITLE: Country Director, Tanzania

REPORTS TO: Director of Programmes

MANAGES: Finance & Administration Manager & Programmes Manager

LOCATION: Dar es Salaam

DURATION & HOURS: Full-time, one-year fixed-term contract

SALARY: GBP 60,200 + GBP 10,000 benefit allowance per annum

JOB DESCRIPTION AND PERSON SPECIFICATION

PURPOSE OF THE ROLE

The Country Director, Tanzania plays a key role in Farm Africa's global leadership team. The Country Director is critical to driving strategic success in our Tanzanian programme and helping to shape the strategic direction of the wider organisation through sharing progress, insights and reviewing the strategic direction of the organisation.

The Country Director, Tanzania is responsible for identifying and securing new funding opportunities to grow and diversify the portfolio by working closely with the Programme Funding unit. This role is responsible for building the pipeline, using the learning from existing successful initiatives, while also developing projects that expand our geographical and technical footprint.

The Country Director, Tanzania provides leadership and management to a well-established team, sets and oversees the delivery of project goals, this role also proactively manages all technical and administration/ oversight issues, and ensures staff, volunteers and beneficiaries are safeguarded.

He/she is responsible for the financial sustainability of Tanzania's operations, represents Farm Africa with donors, maintains excellent relations with the Government of Tanzania, potential implementing partners, and the private sector, and crucially ensures the team work with, and as part of, the wider organisation. On a day to day basis, the Country Director will, through the management of the Programme Manager oversee programme teams, supporting Project Coordinators in delivering against project goals, ensuring project spend is on target and ensuring programme quality and timely delivery of reports. He/she would also be responsible for building the technical capacity of the programme team, ensuring that teams are aware of, and are using, key Farm Africa documents such as the Approach papers to inform technical design of projects. The Country Director will also oversee a team that is responsible for the financial management, human resources, and logistics functions in country.

Externally the Country Director is responsible for developing and maintaining relationships with senior counterparts in partner governments, donors and private sector and raising the profile of Farm Africa's work carried out in country.

KEY TASKS & RESPONSIBILITIES

Strategic Leadership of Farm Africa's Programme in Tanzania

• Ensure the overall portfolio of Farm Africa Tanzania reflects the vision, mission and our key pillars of agriculture, natural resource management, market development and community engagement (including gender).
• Structure the pipeline in such a way that it delivers exciting new projects that aligns with national development plans and SDGs.
• Design and develop innovative programmes that build on our core competencies of productivity increase, farmer organisation and natural resource management to help smallholders gain improved access to markets and maximise post-harvest values.
• Identify possible partnerships, and specific geographic opportunities to deliver against this.
• Be a champion for evidence-based results across the portfolio, supporting teams to generate credible evidence and reflect on how to achieve excellence, representing lessons learned, and ensuring the future direction of the programme builds towards feeding into policy.

Effective operations and Strong Programme Pipeline

• Work with the Director of Programmes and Programme Funding Unit to develop a proactive funding strategy based on the donor opportunities. This will include preparing proposals for submission to donors, in close collaboration with Programme funding and unit, Programme Support team members, and other country programmes.
• Explore new opportunities to deliver Farm Africa's strategic objectives including active partnerships with the private sector, service contracts as well as grants, consultancy in the context of a Sustainable sourcing unit etc.

Efficient and Effective Administration of the Programme

• Ensure Farm Africa Tanzania's operations are compliant with Tanzanian law.
• Drive cost recovery for sustainability of the operation, and provide support and protection to all staff to do their job.
• Carefully manage risks to the programme together with the Director of Programmes.
• Ensure emergency protocols are in place to ensure duty of care to all staff.

High Quality Delivery & Implementation

• Ensure Farm Africa Tanzania projects and programmes attain the highest standards of delivery, effectiveness, and value for money.
• Ensure Farm Africa Tanzania is delivering on, and effectively communicating about excellence in project delivery and evidencing our impact.
• Working closely with the Director of Programmes, be responsible for the programme cycle in Tanzania from beginning to end; working to further improve the efficiency and effectiveness of contract management, project delivery and compliance.
• Manage, develop, and support the Tanzanian team with particular focus on staff development and proactive performance management.

Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning

• Working closely with Farm Africa's Director of Programmes, ensure a focus on the design and implementation of M&E activities to enable Farm Africa to measure the impact of our work, maximise our effectiveness (including programme design), and provide evidence to influence external stakeholders.
• Working closely with Farm Africa's Director of Programmes, develop knowledge products from our projects that can showcase our results.
• Ensuring that Programme Participatory review meetings take place on bi-annual basis to track project indicators.
• Ensuring that programme reviews take place to track progress against activities and budget.

Stakeholder Engagement and Relationship Management

• Identify, understand and engage with principle stakeholders that are critical to the success of our work.
• Maintain strong relationships with key existing donors, government departments, private sector organisations and other NGOs to achieve the strategic goals of Farm Africa in Tanzania.
• Lead key relationships with new donors and other strategic partners in Tanzania and in the region.
• Work collaboratively with the senior management team and the Technical Team to continue to build Farm Africa's reputation as a technically expert organisation, with appropriate lessons and evidence to influence decision-makers and policymakers.

Corporate Leadership

• Provide broader leadership across the organisation, contributing to the overall strategy and future growth of Farm Africa by active contribution to Director's Group deliberations and decisions.
• Chair the senior management team in Tanzania providing support, development and performance management to the team.
• Ensure outstanding communication of programme information across the organisation, working closely with the other directors and senior managers on internal learning and knowledge management.
• Recruit and lead a team that is bought into the shared strategy, is aligned across technical areas, solves problems together and holds each other accountable for impact.
• Performance manage staff effectively, including building a culture of feedback and nurturing the next generation of Farm Africa leaders.
• Ensure that the Tanzanian team are fully conversant with their obligations and duties in relation to Farm Africa Code of Conduct and Safeguarding policies.
• Contribute to organisational learning by identifying innovations and factors which contribute to or inhibit success and impact.

Core Behaviours

We assume that as Farm Africa CD you will have all (or most of) the competencies of a top-class agriculture, private sector and natural resource management expert. Above all else, we expect you to display a passion and endless enthusiasm for the role of agriculture (and smallholder farmers) in delivering transformational change in Africa. We also expect you to:

• Build strong senior relationships across a range of stakeholders characterised by a healthy balance of rapport and challenge in order to develop a clear and focused strategy.
• Read the political landscape and key relationships effectively to ensure the strategy is workable.
• Represent the 'legacy' of Farm Africa's work in the past, upon which our solid reputation is built.
• Effectively communicate Farm Africa's wider organisational mission to the team and stakeholders, and pro-actively drive the direction of the organisation.

You will also:

• Deliver through your team by building trust, aligning against the shared strategy, and tailoring your support to their challenges and objectives.
• Create a culture of feedback, debate and learning to solve the most pressing issues as a team.
• Respond to new challenges and opportunities decisively by adapting the team's approach and innovating.
• Identify key measures of success and put in place the systems and culture so that the team hold each other accountable to them.

PERSON SPECIFICATION

Education & Qualifications

• Essential: Degree in a relevant discipline.
• Essential: A profound understanding of the socio-political and economic climate and institutions in Tanzania and the region.

Experience

• Essential: A proven track record of working as Country Director in an International NGO, with a demonstrable track record of having made a strategic contribution to the organisation's aims and objectives.
• Essential: Strong track record of developing funding bids and designs for new programmes.
• Essential: Demonstrable experience of working with a range of stakeholders including governments, institutional funders and private sector, governments and NGO's.
• Essential: High level expertise in agriculture, agricultural economics, natural resource management or closely related field in a developing country context.
• Essential: Significant experience of managing operational teams in complex environments, including a profound understanding of operational and delivery risk.
• Essential: Significant demonstrable experience of delivering projects to time and budget in Sub Saharan Africa.
• Essential: Experience in working with multiple partners including grass roots communities, private sector, governments and NGOs.
• Essential: Experience of working in Sub-Saharan Africa in a rural context.
• Essential: Experience in gender analysis and ability to design projects with a gendered lens.
• Desirable: Experience as Country Director in Tanzania.
• Desirable: Knowledge of key donors in agriculture, climate change, resilience, market engagement.
• Desirable: Experience of Theory of Change, log frame design and designing M&E frameworks.
• Desirable: Knowledge and experience of M4P approaches to value chain.
• Desirable: Commercial experience in agriculture in Sub Saharan Africa.

Skills & Abilities

• Essential: High intellectual capacity with strong analytical skills.
• Essential: Mature and positive leader, able to manage and work in an international environment with strong inter-personal skills.
• Essential: A pro-active creative thinker with demonstrable ability to adapt to a constantly changing environment.
• Essential: Strong written and verbal communication skills in English with the ability to engage with a wide variety of external and internal stakeholders.
• Essential: Ability to prioritise and delegate a constant and demanding workload.
• Essential: Strong people management skills, including an excellent understanding of team dynamics and project management with an ability to motivate and develop individuals and teams for high performance.
• Essential: Financial management ability and entrepreneurial flair.
• Essential: An outstanding networker, able to build and maintain key relationships.
• Desirable: Able to be a thought leader and influencer.
• Desirable: Kiswahili an advantage.

Other Attributes

• A team player.
• A willingness to learn.

Our Values

Investing in smallholder farming is the number one way to combat poverty in rural Africa. Farm Africa is a leading NGO specialising in growing agriculture, protecting the environment and developing businesses in rural Africa.

• EXPERT: Expertise and insightful evidence-based solutions are at the heart of everything Farm Africa does.
• GROUNDED: Our teams and partners work closely with local communities, engaging them in every level of decision-making.
• IMPACTFUL: We deliver long lasting change for farmers, their families, and the environments they live in.
• BOLD: We model innovative approaches and are not afraid to challenge strategies that are failing.

About Farm Africa

Farm Africa is a leading charity that works in partnership with smallholder farmers and small businesses in eastern Africa to improve the quality, quantity and value of their produce, so that they can support their families with more resilient livelihoods. We build the positive case for farming in harmony with nature, so that increasing yields goes hand in hand with restoring ecosystems and biodiversity.