Policy & State Capability Officer

Job title : Policy & State Capability Officer

The Policy & State Capability (PSC) Officer will be responsible for driving AGRA's government and public sector engagement efforts to ensure the successful implementation of the AGRA's Integrated Government Program in the country. This program involves all government related work across all AGRA's business lines, and across all our four routes to impact: primary value chains for end-to-end development, secondary value chains, national ecosystem strengthening and coordination and delivery of the country's CAADP 3.0 aligned with National Agrifood Systems Investment Plan (NAIP).

The role involves ensuring ïpolitical economy-smart' programming and involves building the capacities of governments and its related agencies to deliver their mandates. The role includes supporting governments on quality sector visioning/ strategies and facilitate implementation of key policies and flagship initiatives. This should be done in a way that strengthens the government's institutional capacity and supporting the government to align and mobilise development partners around its priority agri-food agenda, and with AGRA's work in-country.

It also requires fostering healthy coordination and mutual accountability between the government, private sector actors (including anchor firms and farmers) and non-state actors around the priority agenda. Hence the role must work very closely with all other programmatic officers in other business lines in the country team.

S/He should be able to work excellently with government and other public actors, while understanding the role of governments in developing inclusive market systems, and has an institutional capacity building lens and outlook.

S/He will serve as the lead person to guide, advise and lead the implementation of AGRA's overall government engagements in country, support agriculture line ministries to build their delivery capability, and drive the design and implementation of programs that translate strategic priorities into action.

Key Duties and Responsibilities:

• Co-own P&SC programs with the Country Director and Country Programs Lead and set annual workplans and targets.
• Lead in updating and implementation of AGRA's Integrated Government Programme in the country, to ensure it moves the needle on transformation impact and NAIP implementation in the country.
• Prioritize policies, programmes and flagship projects that are critical for AGRA's country change narrative in the country.
• Serve as the country focal point for P&SC and liaising with the P&SC team at the center to align positions, request technical support, and share lessons
• Be responsible for ensuring the country's approach to programming is politically-economy smart, by understanding the politics of government and the political economy between government and the private sector that shape market systems.
• Lead healthy intra-ministerial coordination and public-private coordination (especially with anchor firms and farms identified by IMTF, CASAR, GYI and CESSA teams) around the prioritized implementation of the NAIP.
• Support ministries, and agencies to co-design and prioritize impactful flagship initiatives under the NAIP, when they meet the flagship definition as per AGRA's flagship playbook
• Represent AGRA with the Country Director in policy dialogues and public forums and prepare briefs and talking points.
• Drive program advocacy and alliance building with government and development partners to align technical assistance and financing to agreed flagships.
• Convene public sector coordination platforms at national and provincial/county levels with clear terms of reference, schedules, and action trackers.
• Maintain operational partnerships with government to coordinate implementation of investment-linked initiatives.
• Ensure healthy implementation of the country's Integrated Government Program.
• Run country P&SC program delivery with the Country Programs Lead and team, managing workplans, budgets, procurements, risks, and reporting.
• Lead support efforts for relevant ministries to operationalize their work through formal sector working groups and coordination mechanisms.
• Drive performance measurement and tracking: policy and regulatory decisions issued, budget allocations secured and released, adoption of systems and standards, service-delivery outputs, and on-time implementation against milestones; running reviews and reporting results.
• Work with the Private Sector Delivery Officer to co-create solutions to address regulatory blockers for specific initiatives/transactions.
• Work very closely with the program officers from each business line in the country office to ensure their government-related needs are addressed in our integrated government programme.
• Monitor policy and market change and flag risks early to the Country Director and update the workplan.
• Apply AGRA compliance requirements in all government engagements and maintain accurate records and timely reports.

Key Qualifications and Experience required:

• Master's degree in public policy, public administration, economics, agriculture, agricultural economics, law, or a related field.
• Project management certification is desirable.
• Experience delivering policy and state capability programs with African governments in agriculture or allied sectors.
• Concrete experience supporting the actual implementation of government policies and programmes
• Proof/certification of high-impact projects/programs/flagships designed/coordinated
• Experience working on high-level events organized/coordinated with engagement of Government/Ministries, development partners and private sector actors.