Rural Finance Officer at Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) November, 2017

The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) has been implementing the international Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)- assisted Value Chain Development Programme since 2014 in six (6) participating States of Anambra, Benue Ebonyi, Niger, Ogun and Taraba and in five (5) Local Government Areas each in all the States. In keeping with the provisions of the financing agreement between IFAD and Federal Ministry of Finance, the FMARD is implementation the programme through the national programme management unit.

Based on the progressive increase in workload of Staff and the need to further improve on Programme implementation, part of the credit will be applied to engage the services of an additional officer to enhance technical assistance at the state level.

Applications are therefore invited from suitably qualified candidates for the positions below:

Job Title: Rural Finance Officer

Location: Taraba, Ogun, Niger, Ebonyi, Benue, Anambra

Objectives

• The primary goal of VCDP is to reduce poverty and sustainably enhance accelerated economic growth, whilst the specific programme development objective (PDO) is to increase the incomes and enhance food security for 45,000 rural poor households engaged in the production, processing and marketing of rice and cassava in the targeted LGAs of the six targeted States are enhanced on a sustainable basis.

Duties and Responsibilities

• Provide technical leadership to operationalize the programmes financial, inclusion vision and objectives for direct beneficiaries and potential financial service providers;
• Lead the preparation and negotiations of performance-based agreement with financial service providers intervening in the implementation of rural financial services;
• Guide programme partners and service providers on the identification, planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the programme financial services activities including the promotion of financial inclusiveness;
• Facilitate the mainstreaming of proven rural financial inclusion models in VCDP
• Supervise and verify the quality of rural finance-related services delivered by partners and service providers:
• Lead the technical preparation of the programmes periodic progress reports in the area of rural financial services clearly assessing implementation progress; achievement of outputs based expected development outcomes; and recommendations on the way forward;
• The officer shall work with other staff of the programme for preparing the Annual Work Plan and Budget for the sub-component;
• Ensure implementation of the recommendations of  supervision and follow-up missions in the areas of rural financial services;
• Undertake any other duty assigned by the National Programme Coordinator;
• Provide technical support and facilitate linkages FOs and financial service providers (FSPs) to access financial services
• Develop and maintain relationships with potential financial institutions;
• Train and build financial capacities of farmers’ organizations to increase their capacity to mobilize savings and manage credit effectively;
• Support financial institutions to create awareness to farmers and VC actors on micro and agricultural insurance.