Junior Market Analyst

Title: Junior Market Analyst

Locations: Lalitpur, Nepal
Expected Assignment Period: August 2023 – March 2024
Persons Responsible: Market Manager

1. ABOUT SWISSCONTACT
Swisscontact, established in 1959 in Switzerland, 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. It 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. Swisscontact, registered as an International Non-Governmental Organisation in Nepal, has been operating since 1991 and is currently implementing six development programmes across all seven provinces of Nepal.

2. CASA PROGRAMME OVERVIEW
CASA is a six-year programme (2019-2024) funded by FCDO to increase economic opportunities for smallholder farmers by demonstrating the commercial viability of businesses with significant smallholder supply chains, and by attracting more investment into the sector. CASA is changing how investors, donors, and government’s view and invest in agribusinesses that work with smallholder supply chains. In doing so, CASA is increases economic opportunities for smallholder farmers by: –

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

Components A and C are implemented by a consortium led by NIRAS International, in partnership with Swisscontact, and Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International (CABI).

Component A focuses on catalytic interventions in the agriculture sectors of Ethiopia, Malawi, Nepal and Rwanda to support agribusiness SMEs to prepare for and secure investment and to bring more, poorer smallholders into commercial markets. A key element of the anticipated intervention portfolio is to support target SMEs to become attractive investment propositions, whilst strengthening aggregation and access to commercial markets and linkages at producer group level.

Component C operates at a global level, where the programme is designed to work with larger
agribusinesses to deepen their smallholder supply chains and engage more constructively with local communities. Component C is also designed to undertake evidence generation and learning activities. These bring together the experience from across FCDO’s and other concessional finance providers’ commercial agriculture programmes and research, in order to shape the debate on smallholder agriculture and influence the approaches of investors, donors and governments.

3. ASSIGNMENT BACKGROUND
CASA has completed 4 years of implementation and has entered its fifth year. Currently, CASA Nepal is implementing 12 projects in total, and it plans to implement at least 8-10 projects for the remaining of project period. For successfully achieving these deliverables, CASA Nepal requires consultants to support the programme team for duly implementing the projects and effectively monitoring them. The primary objective of this assignment is to provide support to CASA programme team and project partners to support the delivery of agreed interventions in one or more sectors responsive to programme needs. The consultant will work closely with the CASA programme team in supporting the implementation and monitoring projects. Apart from implementing and monitoring projects, the consultant will also be responsible to identify new intervention partners, develop and design new projects in coordination with programme team.

4. OBJECTIVE
The objective of the assignment is to provide support to programme team as required to ensure delivery of high impact interventions as required by CASA.

5. DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
Under the overall supervision of the CASA Country Manager and regular management of the Market Manager, the Junior Market Analyst will be responsible for supporting the project partner on day-to-day activities related to project planning, implementation, and reporting.

The specific duties are as follows:

• Support in design of the crisis response interventions including identifying and meeting with potential partners, developing the activities and negotiating role and responsibilities.
• Act as the focal person for the investor summit that includes managing the logistics, helping partners to develop presentations and coordinating with stakeholders/invitees.
• Support partner in day-to-day monitoring of project implementation activities, either alone or accompanying team members and others, ensuring quality control.
• Support partners in the development of key documents like, monthly, quarterly workplan including financial plan and information in coordination with relevant sector team members as per agreed ‘detail activity plans’ under ‘partnership (grant) agreements’, and review and verify the documents and information before submission to CASA.
• Assist partner in organizing various events such as meetings, workshops, conferences and seminars as may be required.
• Develop leads, explore other potential projects and opportunities to work with relevant private sector companies and industry associations, government agencies, Banking and Financial Institutions (BFIs) and other relevant stakeholders as per CASA guidelines.
• Maintain and update the pipeline of agribusinesses seeking third party investments.
• Contribute to periodic progress reports and outputs for relevant interventions in accordance with communication guidelines and needs; and,
• Complying with the Project Manual and other relevant requirements of Swisscontact.

6. DELIVERABLES
The required deliverables are:

• Monthly timesheet after completion of every month, within 10 days of the following month.
• Other deliverables as per the needs of the project.

7. ASSIGNMENT MANAGEMENT AND DURATION

• Duration
  Contract Start Date: August 2023
  Contract End Date: March 2024
• Assignment Days
  Up to 147 Workdays
• Reporting Lines
  The consultant will report to the CASA Market Manager.

8. REQUIREMENTS and EXPERTISE

• Education: Bachelor’s in management, Economics, Development studies, Rural Development or in other relevant fields.
• At least 1 year of RELEVANT work experience.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills in English and Nepali.
• Willingness to travel frequently to remote places (often solo and sometimes more than 50% of the working days in a month).
• Good knowledge of computer skills: MS Word, MS Excel, Ms PowerPoint.
• Willingness to take new assignments at short notice.

9. TERMS OF PAYMENT
As per Swisscontact norms and mutually agreed during the signing of the contract.

10. APPLICATION PROCEDURE
Please submit an Online Job Application Form clicking link below:
https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/c414afd8822544eebd194a7abe5076a1
Deadline: Latest by July 07, 2023.

Swisscontact Nepal shall not entertain any phone inquiries or other such solicitations for the position. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted for the selection process. Swisscontact Nepal reserves the right to reject any or all applications.

Swisscontact Nepal promotes workforce diversity and applies positive discrimination to candidates from discriminated groups (Women, Dalit, Janajati, Madhesi/Terai and other minority communities).