Propcom+ Pillar 2 Lead

We are searching for an experienced workstreamlead at our Abuja facility.
About Palladium
Palladium is a global company working to design, develop, and deliver positive impact on the lives and livelihoods of people around the globe. Palladium works to broaden access to health, water, power, and infrastructure; build enduring, sustainable, and transformative institutions and market systems to address global challenges; and conserve the natural world. We operate in over 90 countries and have a workforce of over 4,000 talented, motivated, and diverse staff of all religions, races, languages, and gender identities. Our works across the globe inspires hope, broaden economic opportunities for the poor and underserved, and sustainably integrate the marginalized into functional and efficient market systems where they can realise their dreams.

About Propcom+
Propcom+ is an FCDO-funded eight-year (2023-2030) rural and agricultural market development programme supporting climate-resilient, sustainable agriculture and forestry that benefits people, climate, and nature. The programme is implemented by The Palladium Group, and it aims to transform Nigeria's rural economy by addressing environmental, social, and economic challenges in the country's food and land-use system. It will do this by (i) increasing productivity, improve nutrition and food security; (ii) enhance climate resilience, pursue lower emissions, and protect and restore nature, and (iii) help tackle some of Nigeria’s underlying drivers of conflict and insecurity. It does this by working as a ‘market facilitator’, identifying constraints in markets systems and facilitating changes to enable rural markets to work better for the benefit of poor and climate-vulnerable smallholder farmers and rural small-scale entrepreneurs.
Propcom+ has a target of increasing the incomes and climate resilience of 3.9 million poor and vulnerable people in Nigeria, 50% of whom will be women, through a “3Ps” approach of interlinked components:
P1: Scaling-up a focused basket of Proven climate-smart interventions around agricultural and primary processing / storage practices and models to get these adopted by millions of poor and vulnerable smallholder farmers and small-scale entrepreneurs.
P2: Building markets by developing and Piloting new business models that improve productivity, enhance resilience to climate change, reduce emissions, and improve nutrition outcomes.
P3: Enabling Policies that support a strengthened enabling environment for sustainable food and land-use system.

Position Summary
The Pillar 2 Lead will be responsible for identifying and developing innovative and disruptive business models that can improve agribusiness and agricultural productivity, strengthen resilience of smallholder farmers and firms to climate change, and promote sustainable natural resources management. This position is strategic to Propcom+ programme objectives as it generates pipelines of innovative models that can open new opportunities for market actors, enhance efficiency in production processes, reduce environmental degradation and greenhouse gas emissions, and generally optimize value chain processes that promote people, planet and profit. The Pillar 2 Lead will manage technical ideation processes, sound brainstorming sessions, and strategic engagement with stakeholders across different spectrum of interests. Pillar 2 Lead will also ensure that new business models are systematically designed and piloted to generate evidence and proofs needed to scale the models in different markets.
Reporting
The position holder will report to the Strategy Director.
Responsibility
The position holder will supervise Portfolio Managers and other technical personnel as may be decided by the Senior Programme Management team from time to time.

Primary Duties and Responsibilities:
Sourcing, assessment, design, and incubation of innovative business models.
Develop and apply a framework for identifying and assessing viable innovations that align with the programme objectives.
Develop and apply approaches to generate, incubate, and grow ideas that address specific and relevant constraints in different markets that are of interests to programme objectives and partners.
Collaborate internally within and across technical and cross-cutting teams and with consortium partners as necessary for co-creation, in-depth analysis, and strategic solutioning. The collaboration must strengthen synergy and continually promote a One Programme, One Team approach.
Collaborate externally with market actors, innovators, donor-funded market system development programs, and other cross-cutting partners towards generating robust pipelines of innovative business models that are suitable for piloting.
Provide leadership in piloting ideated innovative models using iterative and adaptive management approaches.
Lead in conceptualizing ideas and developing clear process flow for their implementation.
Support rigorous market system analysis to identify systemic constraints that are limiting efficient functioning of the market and generating ideas to prioritize and address the constraints.
Provide firm-level analysis of needs, capacity gaps, resource-use inefficiency, and productivity inhibiting factors in a way to design alternative and innovative solutions that can be piloted to address the inefficiencies.
Generate climate-smart innovations, pursue low-emissions strategies, and promote low carbon development initiatives to strengthen climate resilience of smallholder farmers and enterprises.
Deliver targeted technical assistance to operationalise business plans intended to strengthen organizational processes for increased profitability and improved stewardship to natural resource management.
Team Management
Manage an agile team (staff, consultants, and subcontractors) ensuring excellent work and high-quality outputs.
Ensure good team management practices including staff planning, recruitment, on-boarding, performance management, and development.
Be responsible to support teams in generating evidence through quality data collection and management in collaboration with the MERL team.
Work closely with other Pillar Leads to ensure a cohesive and supportive team working environment.
Stakeholder Management
Manage relationship within agricultural entrepreneurship and MSME ecosystem, as well as with representatives of the Government of Nigeria where necessary.
Lead the creation of Public Private Partnerships to incentivise the adoption of inclusive and sustainable models and practices.
Build partnerships and establish relationships with other development programs, donor organizations, market system actor groups to strengthen complimentary programming.
Project Management
Lead in quality project reporting and ensuring quality delivery of project results on P2 result areas, activities, recommendations, and lessons learned.
Where relevant, assume responsibility for consistent implementation of company Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and Guidelines, Security Protocols and, where applicable, recommend modifications.
Ensure, at all times, that intervention designs and delivery demonstrate acceptable Value for Money.

Who You Are
A seasoned, and well-rounded professional with experience in the private sector, market systems development, agribusiness financing, and food security programs.
A self-motivated individual with proven track records in developing innovative ideas and business models that are disruptive and novel in nature.
Have proven records of partnership building, attracted private sector investments, and influenced positive and sustainable changes in agricultural market systems.
Experience in climate resilience programming and conversant with contemporary issues in global climate change ecosystems is an advantage.
Possess strong problem-solving skill with ability to analyse complex problems and communicate ideas in simple, clear terms.
A strong personality as starter-finisher, resource mobilizer, idea generator, entrepreneurial and collaborator.

Required Qualifications:
Preferred candidate for this position must have a master’s degree in Economics, Agricultural Economics, Agribusiness Management, Project Management, or related fields. The candidate must also possess:

• A minimum of 10 years’ requisite experience supporting agricultural development, food security, MSME agribusiness and/or private sector development.
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  Experience working on complex donor-funded market systems development programs required. FCDO and USAID experience preferred.
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  Meaningful experience applying market system development approaches across diverse markets in the agriculture and food systems sectors.
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  Strong technical experience in the areas of entrepreneurship, MSME start-up, investment finance and MSME business development and/or startup incubation.
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  Experience in finance and investment programming in thin, fragile, and unstructured markets desired.
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  Active, established networks within food security, agribusiness finance and investment, climate change, and natural resource management sectors.
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  Experience in successful management of high risk and complex food security and agricultural market system programs.
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  Demonstrated sound management skills, effective leadership, self-awareness, self-accountability, and outstanding interpersonal skills.
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  Good writing skills.
  
  Our company provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability or genetics.