Background:
The Vines Project, implemented by CRS Uganda, is a five-year (2020-2025), $13 million Food for Progress project that will make Uganda the world's next leading supplier of high-quality vanilla. Vines will leverage the expertise of CRS and its partners to enhance the production of safe, pure vanilla and develop sustainable market links with US vanilla companies, directly transforming the lives of 16,200 farmers, 836 supply chain actors and create 15,820 new jobs to reach 32,856 vanilla stakeholders. The Vines strategy reflects best practices in sustainable development and will leave Uganda with a robust vanilla farming community resilient to the boom/bust nature of the market and a cadre of private sector agricultural extensionists to support more sophisticated production, processing, and marketing needs.

Job summary:

The Senior Project Officer Agro-forestry will lead all field activities related to the coordination, collaboration, training, and monitoring of project agro-forestry approaches, good agricultural practices, and climate smart adaptations to increase the production, productivity, and quality of Ugandan vanilla, and other income diversification crops. The specialist will lead the analysis of farming systems and implement the capacity building of farmers in key areas such as soil and water management, diversified agroforestry systems among others. This position will report to Project Manager Agroforestry. Your technical, training, and collaborative skills, as well as vanilla and other crop value chains’ knowledge will ensure that CRS delivers high-quality programming and continuously works towards improving the impact of this project.

Roles and Key Responsibilities:
•Lead the implementation of technical, coordinating, collaboration, monitoring, and reporting activities among all Vines project partners - in line with CRS program quality principles and standards, donor requirements, and good practices.
• Lead the training, coaching, monitoring, and coordination in all project activities related to agro-forestry, good agricultural practices, and climate smart adaptation while promoting farm and income diversification practices among target farmers.
• Ensure documentation of key learning from the project activities throughout the project cycle. Support accountability through participation in project evaluation activities following MEAL Policy. Proactively identify issues, report them to inform adjustments to plans and implementation schedules.
• Participate in the strengthening of partnerships relevant to Vines project, applying appropriate application of partnership concepts, tools, and approaches.
• Identify capacity needs and technical assistance needs of partner organizations and contribute to capacity strengthening and required interventions to support quality project implementation.
• Assist with preparation of trends analysis reports, learning agenda and disseminate results.
• Coordinate research related activities for the project agroforestry component.
• Work closely with other project components to enhance and implement the project’s sustainability plan, including working with the Government stakeholders within districts and at Central Government level.

Basic Qualifications:
•Bachelor’s degree in agriculture, Horticulture, or a related field. A master’s degree in related fields would be an added advantage.
•Minimum of 3 years of work experience in technical or management positions in the field of Agriculture, preferably for a donor funded, time-bound project.
•Proven understanding of agro-forestry approaches and good agricultural practices.
•Experience in value chain projects or programs.
•Experience in private sector engagement and vanilla value chain would be an added advantage.

Preferred Qualifications:
• Relevant technical experience, especially for USG or other public donors, a plus.
• Experience in farmer trainings, coaching and capacity building related to Agroforestry, farm diversification, good agricultural and climate smart practices.
• Experience working with stakeholders at various levels and strengthening community partnerships.
• Experience analyzing data and contributing to evaluation reports.