Program Manager, Zambia Land O’Lakes Venture37

Background:

Land O’Lakes Venture37 (Venture37) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit helping communities around the world build economies by strengthening agriculture from farm-to-fork, helping businesses grow, and linking farmers to markets. Since our start in 1981, we have been leveraging nearly 100 years of expertise in crop inputs, agricultural insights, dairy and animal nutrition from our close affiliate, Land O’Lakes, Inc., a farmer-owned agribusiness committed to fulfilling its purpose of feeding human progress.

Project Description:

Venture37 is implementing the USAID–funded 5-year, $11.6M Cooperative Resilience and Equity activity “CORE” in Rwanda and Zambia. Running from October 2023 through September 2028, CORE aims to foster vibrant, sustainable cooperative ecosystems in Rwanda and Zambia, in which self-managed cooperatives and all their members flourish economically and socially. Through CORE, Venture37 will take a localized and market-responsive approach, engaging market actors, including women and youth in activity design, implementation, and measurement to tailor activities to their unique needs while strengthening their capacity to create sustainable solutions.

Across Rwanda and Zambia, CORE will reach over 160 dairy, grains, horticulture, and oilseed cooperatives and 12,000 members in partnership with local market actors; the activity’s objectives will be met through three major components, namely:

• Inclusively strengthen the capacity of cooperatives by dynamically responding to their unique challenges and market opportunities through but not limited to provision of tailored capacity strengthening, professional management, enhanced strategic market and finance linkages.
• Improve the cooperative enabling environment by working with private and public service providers to deliver market-responsive and well-coordinated services to cooperatives.
• Spur innovation, learning, and continual improvement in the local and global development community through embedded applied research.

Position Summary

The Program Manager will serve as Land O’Lakes Venture37’s technical and cooperative development expert based in Lusaka, Zambia. The primary role is to provide technical leadership and program management for the Zambia-based activities of the USAID-funded Cooperative Resilience and Equity Activity (CORE). The Program Manager will work directly with national level cooperative service providers, building relationships with national-level stakeholders, and overseeing the technical implementation of the activity to achieve activity objectives.

Primary Responsibilities include:

• Manage operations of CORE-Zambia activities including creating and adapting the workplan, overseeing the country-level budget, and tracking deliverables to ensure timeline, quality, and on-budget implementation of activities.
• Lead implementation and achievement of CORE’s cooperative enabling environment improvement objective.
• Liaise and visit regularly with activity partners, including cooperatives, government ministries and agencies and private businesses.
• Manage activity staff and advise on high-level activity implementation including cooperative technical assistance, access to markets efforts, access to finance, cooperative performance periodic assessments and provide development and training opportunities.
• Oversee the project’s gender and youth inclusion work, including direct management of the project Gender and Youth Inclusion Specialist.
  Ensure the project is compliant with applicable rules and regulations of USAID, Land O’Lakes Venture37, and the Government of Zambia.
• Ensure good relationships and serve as main point of contact with the Government of Zambia, USAID and other relevant and strategic partners and stakeholders in Zambia.
• Oversee large sub-awards and consulting agreements to ensure quality implementation.
• Leverage Cooperative Development Program (CDP) activities and learning to inform Practice Management Area strategies around market access and cooperative development.
• Other duties as to be assigned by the supervisor to support the projects and/or the work of Land O’Lakes Venture37.

Reporting & Supervision:

• This position is supervised by the CORE Chief of Party.
• This position will directly manage at least four Zambia-based positions, including the Cooperative Business Advisor, Access to Finance Specialist, Accounting and Administration Specialist, and the Monitoring, Evaluation, Learning Specialist, as well as CORE sub-awardees.

Required qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in business, economics, agriculture, or a related field.
  At least five (5) years of progressively responsible project management or technical experience.
• Experience with agricultural value chains, market systems, and/or agricultural enterprise development.
• Experience working with and strengthening capacity of agricultural farmer-owned enterprises (Cooperatives, Associations, Small and Medium Enterprises).
• Experience managing relationships with local, regional, and government agencies.
• Strong track record of being flexible and adaptable to program changes and needs.
• Experience and ability to manage multiple staff
• Proven track record managing a development project or program in Zambia.
• Fluent in English and Nyanja or Bemba languages.

Preferred qualifications:

• Experience with USAID projects.

Should you be interested in applying for this position, please click “Apply now” on the linked webpage. Along with providing your answers to the the screening questions, under “How would you like to proceed”, please select “Apply to job/ Talent Community only” to then have the option to upload your Cover Letter and CV (do not upload any certifications or references; you will be requested to provide these as needed).

Land O’Lakes Venture37 will never ask you for personable identifiable information, and we will never request money or payment during the recruitment or employment process.

Land O’Lakes Venture37 is an equal opportunity employer and an organization striving to help global communities thrive through agriculture. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, religion, national origin, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or veteran status, among other factors. Our culture values a diversity of voices. So, bring us your unique experiences, your workstyle, and your dreams — they’ll only make us stronger.