Cluster Support in the Agricultural and Food-Processing Sector in Ethiopia

The backbone of Ethiopia’s economy is agriculture. It provides employment for about 68% of the working population and represents over 30% of the country’s GDP. A central goal of the Ethiopian Government is the structural transformation of the economy from low- to high productivity agriculture and industry. Hereby, the agricultural and food industry is considered to have great job creation and development potential. Nevertheless, the sector lacks productivity, innovative capacity, and investments that can trigger further economic growth and thus employment. Few businesses in Ethiopia’s agricultural and food industry are considered competitive on both, national and international markets. As a result, the job creating growth of companies in the sector is insufficient.

The project Cluster Support in the Agriculture and Food Industry in Ethiopia is part of the Special Initiative on Training and Job Creation of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). It aims to improve the employment and income situation in Ethiopia’s agro-processing sector by supporting micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in the agro- and food industry. The main objective is to increase the employment-effective growth of companies in this sector. The project’s target group consists of unemployed and underemployed people, with a special focus on women, employees and management of local and Ethiopian-based European and African companies in the agri-food sector, in particular MSMEs.

Tasks of the team leader

• Overall responsibility for the advisory packages of the contractor ;
• Ensuring the coherence and complementarity of the contractor’s services with other services delivered by the project at local and national level
• Design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of capacity development measures for local partners in work package 1 and 2.
• Taking cross-cutting themes into consideration (for example, gender equality)
• Staff management, in particular identifying the need for short-term assignments within the available budget, planning and managing the assignments and supporting local and international experts
• Ensuring that monitoring procedures are carried out
• Regular reporting in accordance with deadlines and agreed upon formats
• Responsibility for checking the use of funds and financial planning in consultation with the officer responsible for the commission at GIZ
• Supporting the officer responsible for the commission in updating and/or adapting the project strategy, in evaluations and in preparing a follow-on phase