Cooperative Business Advisor Land O’Lakes Venture37

Cooperative Business Advisor

Cooperative Resilience and Equity Activity (CORE)

Lusaka, Zambia

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 at fostering 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 continuous improvement in the local and global development community through embedded applied research.

Position Summary:

The Cooperative Business Advisor will be responsible for overall coordination and management of the CORE’s cooperative performance improvement objective in Zambia. This position will lead the efforts to streamline activities associated with advancing the business performance of partner primary cooperatives in Zambia, ensuring quality program implementation by working directly with primary cooperatives and by building relationships with cooperatives, and other stakeholders. This role will also provide expertise in areas of cooperative financial management, business management, business development services, cooperative governance, linkages/access to finance and markets.

Primary Responsibilities:

The primary responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

Technical responsibilities: “Improve the business performance of partner primary cooperatives” (70%)

• Work with the Zambia Program Manager to develop scopes of work that are responsive to identified performance areas.
• Develop and maintain relationships with program partners, cooperatives, districts, and private businesses through regular visits.
• Provide capacity strengthening to cooperatives through training and/or coaching, focusing on financial management, cooperative governance and business development services (BDS).
• Conduct annual capacity-needs assessments at partner cooperatives to inform performance priority areas of improvement.
• Monitor and track cooperative business performance, and regularly liaise with the Zambia Program Manager, Zambia MEL Specialist for associated reporting and thoughtful planning of future technical assistance.
• Educate businesses and employees on cooperative business management systems, working together to create and improve relevant policies and practices

Project Management/Implementation Responsibilities (30%)

• Work with Venture37’s accounting and finance staff in Zambia to ensure timely and accurate payments are made to consultants and contractors and in accordance with Venture37, Zambian government and USAID rules and regulations.
• Monitor consultants and review deliverables for quality and completeness.
  Follow Land O’Lakes Venture37 procedures to mobilize and manage individual consultants and firms providing technical assistance to partner cooperatives and apex organizations.
• Liaise with the MEL manager to ensure firms and individual consultants are submitting accurate, timely MEL reports.
• Track key implementation lessons and liaise with the Zambia Program Manager and Zambia MEL Specialist to properly document.
• Supervise and mentor staff under their direct management to support their performance and professional development.
• Other duties as assigned by the supervisor to support the project and/or the work of Land O’Lakes Venture37 in Zambia.

Reporting & Supervision:

• This position is supervised by the Zambia Program Manager.
• This position will oversee at least two Zambia-based positions and a large cadre of consultants providing technical assistance to partner cooperatives.

Required qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in business, management, or any other related development subject.
• Relevant background in developing business development services to farmer cooperatives and or small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
• Minimum of four (4) years’ experience strengthening the capacity of farmers and/or leaders of producer organizations (Cooperatives).
• Good understanding of agricultural cooperatives development.
• Experience managing relationships with local partners, private and government agencies.
• Ability to lead, manage and supervise a team including consultants.
• Team player with excellent interpersonal and written and oral skills.
• Proficiency in MS Office, especially Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook
• Fluent in English and at least one local language in Zambia.