Agricultural/Food Systems Economist-Scientist

Scientist - Agricultural/Food Systems Economist

ICRISAT is seeking for Global Professionals who are highly motivated and qualified Agricultural/Food Systems Economist to lead and implement project activities in select countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The ideal candidate should be an expert with considerable experience in applied economics and with a passion to advance food systems transformation and impact evaluation, leveraging the potential of grain legumes, dryland cereals and oil seed crops towards improving smallholder farmers income, environmental stewardship and the improving the quality of people’s diets/dietary diversity and health. The candidate should be willing to work at select global locations of ICRISAT in East and Southern Africa (ESA) and West and Central Africa (WCA). ICRISAT implements research and development projects across its 3 Global Research Programs in 3 regions. The focus will be on qualitative and quantitative research, to deliver situation analyses and needs assessments ex ante and ex-post impact assessments, informing country specific goals and strategies and engagement with global networks, and to guide intervention prioritization and planning, understand and evaluate the outcomes and impacts of ICRISAT and partners’ innovations, and develop scaling strategies for validated and promising innovations. The scientist will work with other ICRISAT staff to design and implement studies, as well as advise and support others on socioeconomic elements of a range of projects in its 3 global research programs. The scientist will be responsible for analyzing and reporting on results and findings. He/she will also have the opportunity to contribute to business development. The incumbent will be part of ICRISAT’s Global Research Program (Enabling Systems Transformation) and report functionally to the Cluster Leader for Technology Adoption and Impact Analysis based in Nairobi, Kenya. The position will be based in Lilongwe, Malawi with the incumbent reporting administratively to ICRISAT’s Country Manager for Malawi.

ICRISAT is a non-profit, non-political organization that conducts agricultural research for development in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa with a wide array of partners throughout the world. Covering 6.5 million square kilometers of land in 55 countries, the semi- arid or dryland tropics has over 2 billion people and 644 million of these are the poorest of the poor. ICRISAT and its partners help empower these disadvantaged populations to overcome poverty, hunger and a degraded environment through better agricultural production systems.

ICRISAT is headquartered at Patancheru near Hyderabad, India, with two regional hubs and eight country offices in sub-Saharan Africa. ICRISAT envisions a prosperous, food-secure and resilient dryland tropics. Its mission is to reduce poverty, hunger, malnutrition and environmental degradation in the dryland tropics. ICRISAT conducts research on its mandate crops of chickpea, pigeonpea, groundnut, sorghum, pearl millet and finger millet in the arid and semi-arid tropics. The Institute focuses its work on the drylands and in protecting the environment. Tropical dryland areas are usually seen as resource-poor and perennially beset by shocks such as drought, thereby trapping dryland communities in poverty and hunger and making them dependent on external aid. Please visit – www.icrisat.org

Duties and Responsibilities:

Work closely with the Cluster Leader for Technology Adoption and Impact Analysis and Country Managers in select countries in ESA as well as the Program Director - Enabling Systems and other scientists to perform the following tasks:

• Assist with efforts to integrate monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) in the design of projects/programs. This includes working with the digital agriculture cluster team of ICRISAT in the use of real time dashboard and mobile project monitoring tools to track project implementation and the adoption of innovations
• Assist in refining existing and developing new robust analytical tools for implementing, monitoring, learning and evaluation framework, including period tracking of relevant indicators of select project and other on-going research and development projects in SSA. Learning-oriented MEL activities should also contribute to the broader ICRISAT and one CGIAR’s agendas
• Conduct field research to characterize target dryland farming systems, their trajectories and trade-offs, including a documentation on their cost-effectiveness and risk analysis
• Lead and supervise in country baseline, socio-economic data, ex-ante and ex-post impact assessment studies, data encoding, editing and cleaning; and conduct quantitative data analysis using spreadsheets, statistical, econometric and mathematical programming models as may be appropriate
• Conduct quantitative and qualitative studies to identify opportunities and constraints to technology adoption (particularly including seed), institutional innovation, and food systems change
• Build the MEL capacity of partner regional and national agricultural research institutions (NARs), publicprivate partnership initiatives and research assistants where appropriate and promote linkages and networks
• Work with Gender Lead to ensure gender sensitive, socially inclusive, and market-responsive technology interventions and extension approaches for enhancing livelihoods, including demonstration of new technologies to generate demand and capacity building of local institutions
• Lead the documentation of impact related success stories and publish research results in high impact peer-reviewed journals and influence change among policy makers and stakeholders to support dryland crop-livestock systems production, marketing and consumption
• Lead the communication of research results to a diverse audience, including the science community, change agents, policymakers, the media, and farmers
• Ensure a system for internal documentation of MEL data, development and maintenance of scientific data management system, where open data standards are met, including uploading data sets, with appropriate meta-data
• Contribute to, and occasionally lead, the writing of grant proposals
• Contribute to the design and evaluation of sound scaling methods for technologies and interventions by instituting a continuous process of reflection and learning and ensuring that lessons learned are documented and shared
• Build, facilitate and inspire multi-disciplinary collaborative teams of researchers, and support overseeing research quality and portfolio development; achieving deliverables and outcomes
• Performing other duties as assigned by the Regional Director for ESA regionSelection Requirements: 
  
  The selection criteria for the incumbent will encompass
  
  • Ph.D. degree in an agricultural/applied economics, development economics, food economics, or a related discipline with some experience in farm management economics and project monitoring, evaluation and learning. Specific training related to dryland farming systems is an added advantage
  • A minimum of 5-years hands-on career experience working within agricultural research in food systems interventions, preferably in the SSA region
  • Strong experience in statistical and econometrics analysis of survey data using STATA and other appropriate econometric software packages, and an understanding of farming systems in the SSA, particularly, ESA will be an added advantage
  • Experience in conducting quantitative and qualitative studies farm household surveys and in the use of econometrics to analyze such data. Skills in qualitative research methods will be an advantage
  • Solid and up-to-date understanding of monitoring, evaluation learning, impact assessment and scaling-up principles and methodologies with excellent track record in developing M&E frameworks and implementing results-based performance management in agricultural research and development context
  • Experience in to identify opportunities and constraints to technology adoption and food systems change
  • Good and/or promising record of high impact factor peer referred publications and citations
  • Familiarity with database development, storage and management is desired
  • Demonstrated strategic thinking and time management skills with good ability and demonstrated expertise to write, plan research, analyze data and complete timely reports
  • She/he must have strong communication skills in spoken and written English with ability to communicate in local languages a plus
  • Proven coordination/leadership skills, ability to work with multi-disciplinary teams with proven sensitivity to cross-cultural and gender issues and interact effectively with the Institute's partners and service providers
  • Willingness to travel extensively in the ESA region and occasionally to WCAWork Location: Lilongwe, Malawi with field work travels to other project sites and partners in Sub-Saharan AfricaGeneral:
    
    This is a contractual role for a period of 36 months (3 years’).
    How to apply:
    
    Applicants should apply on or before 31 July 2023, with their latest Resume, and the names and contact information of three references that are knowledgeable about their professional qualifications and work experience. All applications will be acknowledged; however only short-listed candidates will be contacted.
    ICRISAT is an equal opportunity employer