Post Doctoral Associate for UniBRAIN at Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa

Location: Nairobi
Last Date: January 13, 2011
Email: ed@fara-africa.org

The Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa

Vacancy Announcement
POST DOCTORAL ASSOCIATE FOR UniBRAIN: Ref: FARA/adv/Post Doc-/UniBrain/2010

The Royal Danish Foreign Ministry has provided a grant to the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) to support a Universities, Business and Research in Agricultural Innovation (UniBRAIN) initiative, which is being implemented by a partnership of FARA and its constituent Sub-Regional Organizations (SROs), the African Network for Agriculture, Agro forestry and Natural Resources Education (ANAFE), the African Technology Policy Studies network (ATPS) and the Pan African Agribusiness and Agro-industry Consortium (PanAAC).

UniBRAIN’s Development Objective is for innovation and entrepreneurship derived jobs in the agricultural sector to be created through partnerships between universities, research institutions and the private sector. Achieving this objective would make a significant contribution to making African agriculture competitive in the increasingly global market. It would also contribute to improving the livelihoods of African agricultural producers, who are predominantly women, and enable them to adapt to and to help ameliorate the impact of climate change.

It would also contribute to achieving optimal balances between farmers’ returns and the cost of food for Africa’s millions of low income consumers, who spend most of their meagre incomes on feeding their families. This will be done by developing innovations that promote efficiencies and strengthen weaknesses in the links in African agricultural value chains, stretching from the origin of agricultural inputs to consumer markets. In other words, UniBRAIN will promote innovation in any aspect of the agricultural industry.

The major components of the UniBRAIN Initiative are:
A. Agricultural business innovations developed in a conducive institutional setting linking universities, research institutions and private sector in Danida priority countries. These are in Eastern Africa: Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania; in West Africa: Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, Ghana; in Southern African: Mozambique and Zambia
B. Agribusiness entrepreneurs and innovators produced by improving BSc and MSc agribusiness teaching and training
C. Innovation outputs, experiences and practices shared and up-scaled through improved networking and channels of communication
Implementation of UniBRAIN is facilitated by a consortium in which each member has, by virtue of its mandate and accomplishments, responsibilities for facilitating the involvement of particular categories of collaborating institutions and guiding the development of particular components.

Specifically:
FARA has overall fiduciary responsibility of the initiative and will facilitate the involvement of agricultural research institutions in the countries in their sub-regions.
ANAFE facilitates the involvement of African and non-African universities including up-scaling of UniBRAIN outcomes and products amongst African universities and provides guidance for the improvement of agribusiness teaching and training
ATPS provides guidance on the establishment, management and operation of agribusiness incubators.
PanAAC facilitates the involvement of African and non-African agribusiness and agro-industry enterprises, through entrepreneurship mentorship, development and up scaling of the selected viable business innovations.

FARA is seeking to recruit a Post Doctoral Associate to perform inter alia the following duties
a) Establishing and implementing a programme for capturing the lessons learnt in implementing the UniBRAIN initiative. This will involve:
• Interacting with a wide diversity of the Initiative’s stakeholders across Africa
• Writing succinct reports
• Analyzing qualitative information as well as quantitative data
b) Reviewing UniBRAIN reports and publications to distill the lessons learnt in establishing the agribusiness incubators
c) Reviewing UniBRAIN reports and publications to distill the lessons learnt in improving tertiary agribusiness education
d) Acting as a support to the UniBRAIN Technical Coordinator
Required
PhD in business, agribusiness, finance, economics or agriculture or agricultural related subject
Knowledge of capacity needs and capacity building in Africa. Mastery of the English language, spoken and written French or Portuguese would be an added advantage

Compensation
FARA offers competitive terms of employment. FARA is an equal opportunity employer and encourages applications from women and men.

Duration
The postdoctoral position will have duration of two years with a possible extension for a maximum of one more year.

Applications
Please send (preferably via e-mail) an expression of Interest of not more than 2 pages, an up-to date curriculum vitae and list of publications for the last 5years, together with the names, addresses, e-mail addresses, telephone and fax numbers of three referees: to Prof. Monty P. Jones, Executive Director, FARA, PMB CT 173, Cantonments, Accra, Ghana; Email: ed@fara-africa.org ; Fax: +233 0302 773676. Applications will be accepted up to 13th January 2011; Please send hard copies of your documents via courier on the same date.

The nature of work requires consideration of a national of an African country. This position will be based in Nairobi

NB: Please quote the vacancy reference code in your application to this job. Only shortlisted applicants will be contacted