Job Description

Swisscontact is a leading partner organisation for the implementation of international development projects. The organisation promotes inclusive economic, social, and ecological development to make an effective contribution towards sustainable and widespread prosperity in developing and emerging economies. With this objective in mind, Swisscontact offers the chance to economically and socially disadvantaged people to improve their lives on their own initiative. The independent, non?profit, and private foundation was established in 1959 in Switzerland. The organization strengthens the competencies of people, improving their employability, increases the competitiveness of enterprises, growing their business, and fosters social and economic systems, promoting inclusive development. In Nepal, Swisscontact is registered as an International Non-Governmental Organisation that started its operations in 1991 with the initiation of the Training Institute for Technical Instruction programme. Currently, Swisscontact Nepal has five development programmes across all seven provinces, with a wellfunctioning country office that employs over 50 national and international staff members.

The UK Government’s Foreign, Commonwealth Development Office’s (FCDO) Commercial Agriculture for Smallholders and Agribusiness (CASA) programme seeks to change how investors, donors, and governments view and invest in agribusinesses that work with smallholder supply chains. In doing so, CASA will increase economic opportunities for smallholders by:

1. Demonstrating the commercial viability of small and medium-sized (SME) agribusinesses with significant smallholder supply chains and attracting more investment into these businesses.
2. Deepening the smallholder impact of existing investments made by Development Finance Institutions (DFIs, notably colonial development corporation [CDC]), and impact investors.
3. Enabling poor smallholder farmers to engage with and trade in commercial markets; and,
4. Researching and communicating the case for successful engagement with smallholder-linked agribusiness.

CASA has three components, two of which (Components A and C) are managed by NIRAS-LTS in partnership with Swisscontact and centre for international and bioscience international (CABI). CASA’s component B is separately implemented by Technoserve and focuses on technical assistance and investment promotion for larger Agri-enterprises on the global development stage.

Component A demonstrates high impact projects in the target countries; Malawi, and Nepal, and previously Uganda, to (a) mobilise investments for partner agri-businesses (which can include commercially minded farmer associations and cooperatives) for expanded outreach to smallholders; and (b) improve access to markets for smallholders. The ultimate target group for CASA is the ‘missing middle’ of ‘stepping-up’ smallholders1 – i.e., those that wish to engage in commercial agriculture but are largely not engaged to date (including 40% living on less than US$2/day and 50% women).

Component C is a learning and knowledge-sharing component that will aim to leverage knowledge gains from Component A projects and other research to inform donors and investors about the merits of investing in agribusiness SMEs with significant outreach to smallholders.

Roles and Responsibilities

The Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) STTA will work closely with the Monitoring and Results Measurement Manager, Market Managers, Market Analysts and consultants to coordinate all field level M&E activities.

Specifically, the M&E officer will:

1. Gather progress data from the implementing partners, feed the information into the programme’s M&E database and support the market managers in updating and populating the project workbooks.
2. Make frequent field visits to monitor on-going activities and document progress on what is working well/not working through observations and short interviews with the programme’s beneficiaries.
3. Update MRM manager/ programme on activity progress against work plan.
4. Work with the MRM manager in designing and implementing various research studies across the different sectors. Specifically, the M&E STTA will support with the training of field enumerators for mini studies to ensure the research objectives and all the data points to be gathered are clearly understood, partake in the pre-testing of the tools, assist in overseeing data collection and quality control, and help in the processing of the data for meaningful analysis.
5. From time to time, the M&E STTA will conduct rapid qualitative assessments with the beneficiaries to gather feedback for informed decision making. This will involve field visits/random calls with the beneficiaries.
6. The M&E STTA in close collaboration with the market managers will support in gathering of success stories from the project beneficiaries to feed into the programme’s communication products.
7. Ensure the partner data are fed into the online monitoring system and all the data submitted in hard copies are correctly keyed in for synthesis and reporting.
8. Review project documents including the log frame, annual targets and indicators and coordinate with the project team to ensure the delivery of these targets. Support the program team during the Concept note and business plan phase to develop attribution strategy and to ensure interventions deliver on log frame targets.
9. Document and provide feedback to subsequent activities, and promote knowledge management on results, performance and lessons learned.
10. Support the program team in developing the annual and quarterly report.

Requirements and Expertise

1. At least 3 years practical work experience in the field of monitoring & evaluation.
2. Salient experience in interviewing skills especially in qualitative research.
3. Proven experience in data management and use of Microsoft Excel and other online databases.
4. Previous experience in the target sectors is desirable.