Reports to: Proposal Writing Officer
Location: Cairo, Tunis, or Beirut

Main purpose of position

The incumbent will provide administrative and coordination support to project proposal development at ICARDA with the aim to ensure quality and competitiveness of proposals in alignment with donor requirements and institutional needs.

About ICARDA

The International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) is a treaty-based international non-profit research organization supported by CGIAR.

ICARDA’s mission is to reduce poverty, enhance food, water, and nutritional security, as well as environmental health in the face of global challenges including climate change. We do this through innovative science, strategic partnerships, linking research to development and capacity development that take into account gender equality and the role of youth in transforming the dry areas. ICARDA works in partnership with governments, universities, civil society, national agricultural research organizations, other CGIAR Research Centers, and the private sector. With its temporary Headquarters in Beirut, Lebanon, ICARDA operates in regional and country offices across Africa, Asia and the Middle East. For more information: www.icarda.org All CGIAR Centers are currently engaged into a reform process (“One CGIAR’”) that will help ICARDA and CGIAR achieve better impact through more strategically integrated research, unified governance, an integrated structure and new research modalities across participating Research Centers. This transformation is supported by CGIAR donors who have committed to increased funding as a result of these reforms.

Main responsibilities

• Support the management of the full-cycle of proposal development, from idea generation to submission to donor, to ensure in-house established procedures and proposal quality-control mechanisms are followed.
• Work with colleagues to meet proposal deadlines by establishing priorities and target dates for information gathering, writing, review, and approval, and coordinate requirements with contributors.
• Contribute to the administrative support of the design, writing, editing, formatting, and ensuring high-quality of competitive project proposals including drafting supporting documentation, letters and gathering administrative information.
• Support scientists to develop high-quality concept notes/proposals through, among other things, organizing the gathering of input, and supporting the development and articulation of the project rationale, comparative advantage of ICARDA, log frames, measurable outputs, outcomes and related activities.
• Support the response to administrative requests from donors and partners by gathering input and documentation from institutional databases, corporate service staff and research teams as needed.
• Support the drafting and review of documentation, letters and proposal summaries in Arabic.
• Ensure ICARDA’s in-house database on project proposals is up-to-date, ensuring data and information is current and accurate and providing input to monthly update reports.
• Supporting ongoing identification of donor intelligence for new funding opportunities and develop and provide targeted guidance to proposal writing teams and involved support functions (e.g. Finance) and follow up to ensure the full compliance of the concept notes/proposals with donors’ criteria and requirements.
• Review, edit and format technical progress and final project reports to ensure information is presented in a concise and coherent manner in ICARDA format and that it complies with donor requirements.
• Support development, drafting, contribution to, and edit of documentation requested by One CGIAR if needed. This can include, but is not limited to, the solicitation of information from research staff and colleagues both in ICARDA and in One CGIAR.
• Other responsibilities and duties assigned by the Head of Partnerships and Resource Mobilization and Proposal Writing Officer.

Requirements

Education, qualifications, and experience

 Essential qualifications and competencies

·        University degree or certification in international development, or other related field or undergraduate degree plus relevant experience and interest.

·        Minimum of 3 years of relevant experience.

·        Excellent command of the English language and Arabic.

·        Proven experience in international agricultural research, universities, not-for-profits, international development, or any other relevant field.

·        Proven experience or desire to learn project proposal development, coordination and monitoring and evaluation.

·        Computer proficiency in MS Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) and databases.

·        Excellent time-management skills, attention to detail and ability to deliver when facing multiple projects with tight deadlines.

Desirable qualifications and competencies

·        General knowledge of international donors and investors, and their funding interests will be a plus.

·        Project Management certification or other equivalent.

·        Experience implementing research for development projects in the field.

·        Degree or certification in agriculture.

·        Command of French language.

·        Relevant experience in project implementation and management.

·        Knowledge of CGIAR or similar entity.

Benefits

Terms of appointment, salary, and benefits

This is a nationally recruited position for which ICARDA offers an attractive compensation package including a competitive salary, medical insurance, 30 days of annual leave, five months’ maternity leave, 15 days’ paternity leave. The successful candidate will be offered an initial contract of 3 years, renewable subject to satisfactory performance, continuous need of the position and availability of fund. The first year will be probationary period.

ICARDA is committed to increasing women’s representation in its workforce and strongly encourages applications from qualified women.

ICARDA will acknowledge all applications received but we apologize in advance as due to the large number of applications only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.