Agricultural Livelihood & Extension Technical Officer at Nuru Nigeria

Nuru Nigeria is a local NGO with affiliates in the US, Kenya and Ethiopia, and is starting up operations in Nigeria. The mission is to end extreme poverty in remote rural communities. Nuru’s first involvement in Nigeria was established in 2017 and began work in 2018 in Adamawa State, Nigeria with the creation of Nuru Nigeria. The long-term goal of Nuru Nigeria is the establishment of a locally led, self-sustainable, Nigerian NGO which will continue to work with local rural communities indefinitely.

We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: Agricultural Livelihood & Extension Technical Officer

Location: Michika, Adamawa (NN Field Office)
Employment Type: Full time
Career Level: Mid-Level
Start Date: As soon as possible

Position Description

• The Agricultural Livelihoods & Extension Officer will report to the Impact Manager and provide technical support to the field team in key programmatic areas such as the input on loan intervention and agricultural technical components.
• S/he will work with the team to design, prepare and implement the agricultural intervention and will work towards their achieving strategic goals and milestones while providing support to the Impact Manager in making impactful organizational decisions.
• She/he will provide technical expertise in resilient agriculture with special focus on improved agricultural extension, agribusiness & value chain development, smallholder farmer financial inclusion and farmer cooperative management.
• She/he must have an extensive experience in smallholder agricultural intervention, farmer training and extension services.
• The Agricultural Livelihoods & Extension Officer role will be community based with 60% time on the field in the assigned Nuru intervention areas to implement all impact field and agricultural related activities in tandem with the Nuru impact team while working closely with other components to deliver Nuru’s vision in the rural communities.
• She/he shall ensure integration and promotion of the Nuru’s do-no-harm principles, conflict sensitivity, trauma awareness, social cohesion and inclusivity.

Key Responsibilities
Technical Support:

• Provide technical support to the impact manager and other strategic leadership team to design and deliver a participatory and community-led intervention through co-creation with community participants.
• Provide technical support to the leadership team by working closely with the leadership and training officer in the development of training curriculums and
• other technical extension materials to be use for training and building farmers capacity.
• Support the impact manager to coordinate and implement all Nuru impact & agricultural related program activities in the intervention communities with a focus on achieving Nuru’s vision and strategic objectives.
• Apply analytical and critical-thinking skills to a wide range of development issues in order to design holistic, integrated, and impactful activities for the target community.

Implementing Core Agricultural Activities:

• Provide relevant technical guidance and support the impact team to effectively implement all impact agricultural related activities in a sustainable way with
• special focus on the Nuru value chain crops Soybean and Groundnut).
• Support the Nuru Impact team to deliver agricultural inputs on credit to farmers, provide technical guidance on aggregation of produce, market linkage activities and facilitate timely loan repayment.
• Facilitate and provide guidance to farmers on appropriate cropping patterns, farming techniques through establishment of demo plot to promote adoption of
• good agricultural practices and savings & loan activities to promote social cohesion increase income.
• Carryout periodic farm monitoring and assessment of farmers registered under the Nuru intervention to ensure farmers adopt Nuru processes, meet up with
• organizational criteria and to access the performance of crops on the established farms.

Agricultural Training and Curriculum Development:

• Directly responsible for providing the technical content on all agricultural extension training materials, training curriculums and financial inclusion training materials.
• Work closely with the leadership team to provide technical support in training and developing the capacity of smallholder farmer groups on Good Agricultural
• Practices (GAP), Small ruminant production, farmer group organization, Agribusiness enterprise and Income Generation Activity (IGA) management for building a resilient, prosperous and sustainable farmer organization.
• Deliver one-on-one extension services to farmers and provide other on-farm extension advisory support services to the farmers.

Community Engagement:

• Directly responsible for managing assigned Nuru intervention communities and integrating Nuru organization within the assigned communities ensuring organizational acceptance by the communities.
• Facilitate the establishment of farmer associations and provide support in their transitioning into well-structured farmers organizations.
• Support Nuru scaling and expansion plans into new communities and deliver full agribusiness intervention to farmer organization ensuring take over by established cooperatives for sustainability.
• Establish and maintain successful relationships with Markets actors, implementing partners, community leaders, and other key stakeholders within implementation field sites.

Other Responsibilities:

• Prepare high-quality monthly Activity Progress Reports and ensure they are submitted on time, document and share lessons learned, success stories as well as the general situation and community updates and feedbacks.
• Ensure agriculture and livelihood interventions are effectively integrated with other impact program focus areas and collaborate with the rest of the Nuru team and specialists
• Support the Nuru Nigeria Monitoring & Evaluation team (to deliver surveys, assessments and other monitoring activities) to ensure that interventions are on- track for progress and increased impact.
• Exemplify the servant leadership philosophy of Nuru Nigeria and work with other team members to build an organizational culture of service and a farmer-first principle.
• Foster organizational development through strict adherence to Nuru’s values and principles ensuring accountability and high performance at all times.
• Manage and monitor all mobile money platforms in the communities and support in establishment of service point for increase access to financial services.
• Perform any other duties as required by and instructed by the Impact Manager

Terms and Conditions:

• The appointment will be for a 12 months period, renewable based on funding and performance.

Job Requirements

• Bachelor's Degree in Agricultural Extension, Agronomy, Crop Production / Protection or relevant field. Master's Degree will be an added advantage.
• Excellent farmer extension and advisory expertise with strong farmer training facilitation skills,
• Experience with curriculum design, particularly for agricultural best practises.
• Must have at least 4-5 years of working experience in agriculture, value chain development or food security programs, preferably including experience in the soybean, groundnut and small ruminant value chains.
• Extensive experience implementing agricultural interventions in remote and conflict-affected areas of North Eastern Nigeria.
• Expertise in nutrition-sensitive agriculture will be a plus.
• Experience in applying gender mainstreaming to program planning and implementation.
• Experience with the implementation of climate smart agriculture (CSA), a gribusiness and market system strengthening interventions among smallholder farmer cooperatives in rural communities.
• Previous experience building partnerships across the private and public sectors, community-based stakeholders and other relevant agricultural agencies/institutions in Nigeria.
• Previous experience working and managing international donor grants, such as USAID and GIZ, will be an added advantage.
• Female candidates are strongly encouraged to apply.

Nuru Nigeria Offers

• Salary is competitive depending on qualifications, skills and experience.
• Positive atmosphere of dynamism and motivated team setting.
• Atmosphere of a forefront professional and flexible NGO with a unique new development approach.
• Annual, Maternity and Paternity leave benefits.
• Transport costs and communication allowance.
• 13th Month Salary
• Training and capacity building program and intensive mentorship by expat team.
• Life Insurance covering accident, disability and related benefits
• Health Insurance covering employee and family.
• Pension benefits.
• Atmosphere of diversity committed to providing equal employment opportunity, forbidding discrimination based on race, color, religion, gender, national or ethnic, origin, age and differently able, with respect to policies and visions.
• Other Labor best practices apply.

Application Closing Date
14th March, 2022.

How to Apply
Interested and qualified candidates should send their CV to: [email protected] using the Job Title as the subject of the email.

Information Information and Notice

• Applicants will not be discriminated against on the basis of ethnicity, colour, gender, religion, socio-economic status, age, disability or health status.
• The management of Nuru Nigeria reserves the right to verify all of the applicant's information and conduct background checks on shortlisted candidates including reaching out to his/her previous employer.
• Only Shortlisted candidates will be contacted.