Senior Rural Development Advisor

Vacancy Announcement #185/2023

SeniorRural Development Advisor

Climate Change Cluster

Land Governance II ( LaGo 2 )

Contract duration: 31.03.2026

Application deadline: 10.11.2023

Duty station: Addis Ababa (with regular duty trips)

As an international cooperation enterprise for sustainable development with worldwide operations, the federally owned Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH supports the German Government in achieving its development-policy objectives.

In Ethiopia, GIZ has been working for more than 40 years in bilateral cooperation on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and on commission of the Ethiopian government and international donors.

The highlands of Ethiopia are characterized by a high fragmentation of agricultural production areas. The cultivation of fragmented mini plots is extremely inefficient and does not provide farmers with sufficient livelihoods. It also prevents the modernization of agriculture and the increase in agricultural productivity. Thus, fragmentation of plots undermines food security.

The project Land Governance II in Ethiopia supports the Ethiopian government in establishing participatory land consolidation as a key instrument of land governance. Besides piloting land consolidation in the highlands of Amhara and advising on a regulatory and institutional framework on national level, the project also supports the organizational and institutional development of land administrations as a prerequisite for land consolidation.

In Output 2 of the project, the project advises Ethiopian authorities to strategically address land fragmentation and integrate land policy instruments such as land consolidation and land clustering into the policy framework on national level. It also includes to create synergies with the agriculture sector as accompanying measures of land consolidation are made available to the smallholder farms involved and land consolidation is linked to the land clustering promoted by the Ministry of Agriculture. Together with state institutions such as BoL and LAUD, private sector and financial service providers are supported by the project to develop and offer appropriate service packages. In the pilot areas, planning processes for land consolidation are coordinated with the cooperative formation of the Land Clustering in order to test an integrated approach for future land consolidation. In addition, the potential and applicability of other instruments to reduce land fragmentation should be explored.

To help implement the activities in Output 2, a rural development expert shall be hired as a senior advisor.

Responsibilities

• Contributes to Output 2 of the Land Governance project.
• Advising partner institutions on strategies to tackle land fragmentation and the integration of related land policy instruments into overarching rural development approaches.
• Networking and creating synergies with other development projects as well as national flagship programs and strategies in rural development and agriculture (e.g., land clustering, SLM).
• Facilitation of a platform of private and public service providers to support the coordinated service provision in land consolidation areas (e.g agricultural mechanization services, access to land-certificate-based microfinance, cooperative structures)
• Supervising the development of three financing concepts for land consolidation.
• Supervising a study on the economic impact of land consolidation and other approaches to address land fragmentation.
• Conference and event organisation;

Other duties/additional tasks

• Contribute to monitoring and evaluation of the component as well as contributions to communication products of the project.
• Supporting the project management in strategy development.
• Other tasks as assigned by the superior

Qualifications

• Postgraduate university degree in the field of agriculture, geography or land administration.
• Business fluency in English and Amharic

Professional experience

• 20 years of professional experience in the areas of agriculture or rural development.
• 8 years of work experience in a land-related public sector institution.
• Professional experience and relevant expertise in advising and cooperating with public administrations in implementing flagship programs in rural development (e.g. SLM, ACC);
• Practical experience in the preparation of majority-based land consolidation is an advantage.

Other knowledge, additional competencies

• Ability for strategic thinking.
• Ability to explain complex topics in a comprehensive manner.

• Demonstrated skills of report writing and writing of policy briefs

• Demonstrated skills in community facilitation.
• Project management, advisory and networking skills.
• Authenticity, flexibility, willingness to learn and improve as well as performance and goal orientation.
• Availability for in-country duty travel to project sites.