Recruitment of a consultant for the Knowledge Management – Ghana, Senegal and Uganda
Knowledge Management Consultant (part time) in the IBP/IFAD Project
Ref.: CONS/IBP/2018/04
The Integrated Breeding Platform (IBP) is seeking a Knowledge Management Consultant in the IBP/IFAD Project – Enhancing institutional breeding capacity in Ghana, Senegal and Uganda to develop climate resilient crops for African smallholder farmers.
Background
The Integrated Breeding Platform (IBP) is conceived to help plant breeders accelerate the creation and delivery of new crop varieties in the context of an increasing global demand for food. It does so by giving access to vanguard technology and quality services for both traditional and modern breeding activities at low to no cost. In partnership with AfricaRice, IBP received an IFAD grant for a three-year project – Enhancing institutional breeding capacity in Ghana, Senegal and Uganda to develop climate resilient crops for African smallholder farmers. The project is hosted at AfricaRice headquarters, in Abidjan – Cote d’Ivoire. The project will strengthen the breeding capacity within national agricultural plans in three low-income countries of sub-Saharan Africa (Senegal, Ghana, Uganda), where agriculture is key to rural livelihoods. The project’s design is anchored on knowledge building, dissemination, and policy engagement; one of IFAD’s key pillars for results delivery. Implementation will also be in line with IFAD’s five principles of engagement: targeting and benefitting poor rural people; social and economic empowerment; gender equality; innovation, learning and scaling up of successes; and leveraging partnerships. The project will benefit 10,000/country smallholder farmers directly (in total 30,000 over the three countries) as IBP will be linked with on-going national agricultural strategies and plans led by National Agricultural Systems (NARS) who are partners in the project implementation. There will be attendant beneficiaries in the form of additional stakeholders engaged in various aspects of the commodity (crop) value chains, including small to medium enterprises.
The project will provide expertise, tools and technologies for breeders to manage their ongoing breeding programmes effectively and efficiently, delivering improved varieties with traits based on the needs of the farmers, engage entrepreneurs (especially youth), to establish seed businesses to ensure that farmers have access to the new varieties and other inputs necessary to improve productivity.
The project builds on the fact that delivery pipelines (new crosses, breeding, improved cultivars, adoption testing, production of foundation seed, seed multiplication and distribution to farmers) are already operational for the value chains of the selected crops in the target countries, with intermediary products available at each level. Therefore, a key area of focus is to scale up the production of foundation seed by breeders, to ensure that some improved seed already in the pipeline will be delivered to farmers during the lifetime of the project.
AfricaRice, as host institution of the IBP is recruiting an individual consultant who will work with the partners on the Knowledge Management components of the project. He/she will oversee the KM activities of the national programmes with a focus on integrating the use of Participatroy Varietal Selection, the link with the seed business and the design of a KM Base portal.
Responsibilities :
- The consultant will conduct activities with specific tasks that include ;
- Working with breeders in the target value chains to harmonize the protocols for the PVS activities ;
- Engaging farmers – coordination, data collection and publication ;
- Linking with seed business – coordination and information publication ;
- Desiging the knowledge platform – design and Implementation of the knowledge platform.
Required qualification and experience
Education :
At least Master’s degree in Communication, Knowledge Management or related fields.
Experience :
- At least 10 years of relevant experiences in Communication or Knowledge Management. At least 5 years of relevant experiences with web content management ;
- Experiences in the field of Agriculture Research and Participatory Varietal Selection ;
- Working knowledge with the National Programmes in Africa and the seed business organisation.
Terms and conditions :
This is an international, home based, part-time consultancy position. The duration of the consultancy contract is two years.
Apply here : http://eservices.africarice.org/application/index.php
