Scientist – Agricultural/Food Systems Economist

ICRISAT seeks applications for a highly motivated and qualified professionals for the global position of Scientist – Agricultural/Food Systems Economist to support Technology Adoption and Impact Analysis Under the global Research Program Enabling Systems Transformation. The Position can be based in any of the mentioned locations – Accra (Ghana), Bamako (Mali), Dakar (Senegal), or Kano (Nigeria), Niamey (Niger).  The incumbent will report directly to Director – Enabling Systems Transformation and administratively to ICRISAT’s Country Representative of the designated country.

ICRISAT is a non-profit, non-political organization that conducts agricultural research for development in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa with a wide array of partners throughout the world. Covering 6.5 million square kilometers of land in 55 countries, the semi- arid or dryland tropics has over 2 billion people and 644 millions of these are the poorest of the poor. ICRISAT and its partners help empower these disadvantaged populations to overcome poverty, hunger and a degraded environment through better agricultural production systems.

ICRISAT is headquartered at Patancheru near Hyderabad, India, with two regional hubs and eight country offices in sub-Saharan Africa. ICRISAT envisions prosperous, food-secure and resilient dryland tropics. Its mission is to reduce poverty, hunger, malnutrition and environmental degradation in the dryland tropics. ICRISAT conducts research on its mandated crops of chickpea, pigeonpea, groundnut, sorghum, pearl millet and finger millet in the arid and semi-arid tropics. The Institute focuses its work on drylands and on protecting the environment. Tropical dryland areas are usually seen as resource-poor and perennially beset by shocks such as drought, thereby trapping dryland communities in poverty and hunger and making them dependent on external aid. Please visit – www.icrisat.org

For the position:

The ideal candidate should be an expert in applied economics with considerable research experience in advancing food systems transformation and impact evaluation, leveraging the potential of grain legumes, dryland cereals and oil seed crops towards improving smallholder farmers income, environmental stewardship and the improving the quality of people’s diets/dietary diversity and health in collaboration with other CGIAR partners. The candidate should be willing to work at select regional locations of ICRISAT in the WCA sub-region. The focus will be on qualitative and quantitative research, to deliver situation analyses and needs assessments ex- ante and ex-post impact assessments, informing focus country specific goals and strategies and engagement with global networks, and to guide intervention prioritization and planning, understand and evaluate the outcomes and impacts of ICRISAT and partners’ innovations, and develop scaling strategies for validated and promising innovations. The scientist will work, advise and support other teams on socioeconomic elements of a range of projects in its three global research programs. The new incumbent will be responsible for analysing and reporting on results and findings. He/she will also have the opportunity to contribute to business development.

Responsibilities:

• Work closely with the Cluster Leader for Technology Adoption and Impact Analysis and Country Representatives in select countries in WCA as well as the Global Program Director – Enabling Systems Transformation and other scientists to perform the following tasks:
• Assist with efforts to integrate monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) in the design of projects/programs. This includes working with the digital agriculture cluster team of ICRISAT in the use of real time dashboard and mobile project monitoring tools to track project implementation and the adoption of innovations;
• Assist in refining existing and developing new robust analytical tools for implementing, monitoring, learning and evaluation framework, including period tracking of relevant indicators of select project and other ongoing research and development projects in SSA. Learning-oriented MEL activities should also contribute to the broader ICRISAT and CGIAR’s broader agendas for its Portfolio 25 Science programs;
• Conduct field research to characterize target dryland farming systems, their trajectories and trade-offs, including a documentation on their cost-effectiveness and risk analysis in target countries;
• Lead and supervise in country baseline, socio-economic data, ex-ante and ex-post impact assessment studies, data encoding, editing and cleaning; and conduct quantitative data analysis using spreadsheets, statistical, econometric and mathematical programming models as may be appropriate;
• Conduct quantitative and qualitative studies to identify opportunities and constraints to technology adoption (particularly including seed), institutional innovation, and food systems change;
• Build the MEL capacity of partner regional and national agricultural research institutions (NARs), public – private partnership initiatives and research assistants where appropriate and promote linkages and networks;
• Work with ICRISAT’s Gender Lead to ensure gender sensitive, socially inclusive, and market-responsive technology interventions and extension approaches for enhancing livelihoods, including demonstration of modern technologies to generate demand and capacity building of local institutions;
• Lead the documentation of impact related success stories and publish research results in high impact peer reviewed journals and influence change among policy makers and stakeholders to support dryland crop livestock systems production, marketing and consumption;
• Lead the communication of research results to a diverse audience, including the science community, change agents, policymakers, the media, and farmers;
• Ensure a system for internal documentation of MEL data, development and maintenance of scientific data management system, where open data standards are met, including uploading data sets, with appropriate meta-data;
• Contribute to, and occasionally lead, the writing of grant proposals;
• Contribute to the design and evaluation of sound scaling methods for technologies and interventions by instituting a continuous process of reflection and learning and ensuring that lessons learned are documented and shared;
• Build, facilitate and inspire multi-disciplinary collaborative teams of researchers, and support overseeing research quality and portfolio development; achieving deliverables and outcomes;
• Performing other duties as assigned by the immediate Supervisor and Global Research Program Director – Enabling Systems Transformation.

Required skills

• Ph.D. degree in agricultural/applied economics, development economics, food economics, or related discipline with some experience in farm management economics and project monitoring, evaluation and learning. Specific training related to dryland farming systems is an added advantage.
• A minimum of 3 years’ hands-on career experience working within agricultural research in food systems interventions, preferably in the SSA region.
• Strong experience in statistical and econometrics analysis of survey data using STATA and other appropriate econometric software packages, and an understanding of farming systems in the SSA, particularly, WCA will be an added advantage.
• Experience in conducting quantitative and qualitative studies, farm household surveys and in the use of econometrics to analyze such data.
• Solid and up-to-date understanding of monitoring, evaluation, learning, impact assessment and scaling-up principles and methodologies with excellent track record in developing and implementing M&E frameworks in agricultural research and development context.
• Experience in identifying opportunities and constraints to technology adoption and food systems change.
• Good and/or promising record of high impact factor peer referred publications and citations.
• Familiarity with database development, storage and management is desired.
• Demonstrated strategic thinking and time management skills with good ability and demonstrated expertise to write, plan research, analyze data and complete timely reports.
• She/he must have strong communication skills: fluency in spoken and written English, along with a very good working knowledge of French, is required.
• Proven coordination/leadership skills, ability to work with multi-disciplinary teams with proven sensitivity to cross-cultural and gender issues and interact effectively with the Institute’s partners and service providers.
• Willingness to travel extensively in the WCA region and to other ICRISAT operational regions as needed.

General:

This is a contractual position for a period of 36 months.

How to apply:

Applicants should apply on or before 14 March 2025 with their latest Resume, and the names and contact information of three references that are knowledgeable about their professional qualifications and work experience. All applications will be acknowledged; however, only short-listed candidates will be contacted.

ICRISAT is an equal opportunity employer

Level of Education: Bachelor Degree

Work Hours: 8

Experience in Months: No requirements