The organization

The Alliance of Bioversity International delivers research-based solutions that harness agricultural biodiversity and sustainably transform food systems to improve people’s lives. Alliance solutions address the global crises of malnutrition, climate change, biodiversity loss, and environmental degradation.

The Alliance works with local, national, and multinational partners across Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia, and Africa, and with the public and private sectors. The Alliance is part of CGIAR, a global research partnership for a food-secure future, dedicated to reducing poverty, enhancing food and nutrition security, and improving natural resources and ecosystem services.

About the position

The Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT is seeking a highly motivated research fellow to work closely with scientists in the CGIAR Climate Resilience Initiative (ClimBeR) and the Enabling Market Intelligence and Building Engagement (EMBE) project. ClimBeR seeks to transform the climate adaptation capacity of food, land, and water systems in six low- and middle-income countries, ultimately increasing the resilience of smallholder production systems to withstand severe climate change effects like drought, flooding, and high temperatures. The EMBE project seeks to support agribusinesses in service delivery to small scale farmers and enhance adaptation of smallholder agricultural systems through enhanced adoption of climate smart agriculture (CSA).

The research fellow will contribute to CIAT’s efforts to increase awareness about new technologies through supporting designing of training manuals on innovations such as index insurance and coming up with research-based strategies of effectively training farmers and scaling out of innovations aiming to help farmers adapt to the impacts of climate change. The Research fellow will also conduct impact evaluations of the various interventions under the initiative, support implementation of the EMBE project–especially on how games and gamification can be used to leverage on efficient service delivery to small-scale farmers and leading the research component of the project. Tasks under the EMBE project will include desk research, designing of data collection tools, and support conducting agribusinesses’ willingness to pay for customer data acquisition products (platforms). Other roles will include supporting the scientists in the Alliance Climate Action team in mobilizing resources.

Key Responsibilities:

• Contribute to capacity building and research efforts around financial climate risk management strategies such as index insurance for climate resilience of smallholder farmers.
• Contribute to impact assessments and evaluation of index insurance’s role in climate adaptation, climate resilience and effectiveness as a financial instrument for DRR and Loss and Damage.
• Support the design of programs and projects for the scale-up of uptake and use of index-insurance and micro-credit at a Macro (government sovereign coverage), Meso (Institutional, Bank portfolio coverage) and Micro level (Individual, association, community coverage)
• Support resource mobilization for the implementation of research innovations on climate risk adaptation.
• Support the development of training programs on financial climate risk management strategies, savings, credit, insurance for smallholder farmers.
• Contribute to the development of research on the impact of adaptation strategies such as bundling index insurance with financial and non-financial products (Credit, Savings, agro-advisories, farming inputs etc)
• Support in research on strategies for the integration of climate risk insurance for loss and damage and efficient use of loss and damage fund deployment through risk transfer.
• Contribute to the research on the integration of climate risk insurance as a mechanism for disaster risk financing and forecast-based finance.
• Lead the desk research component of understanding the types of farmers facing agribusinesses that could benefit from improved targeting and risk management data and models.
• Lead the targeting and risk modeling efforts with agribusiness collaborators.
• Co-coordinate efforts to understand willingness to pay for our data product among agribusinesses.

Requirements

Key requirements and experience:

• PhD or a Master’s degree in Economics, Applied/Agricultural Economics, or a related social science field, preferably with a concentration in Development, Agricultural or Behavioral Economics and with expertise in impact evaluation and/or applied micro econometric.
• Experience in conducting empirical field research in developing countries.
• Track record of implementing collaborative research with multi-disciplinary researchers.
• Proactive and reliable, with experience coordinating teams and managing a variety of tasks.
• Research interests aligned with the broad areas covered by CGIAR research (desirable).
• A good understanding of agricultural insurance, agricultural risk management, and CSA.
• Experience in games and gamification in the agricultural context.
• Experience in developing farmer training manuals, and farmers training.
• Strong programming skills in STATA or R including experience with data analysis and econometrics.
• Agricultural risk assessment and analysis.
• Project management and coordination.
• Excellent oral and written English.
• Experience in designing casual impact evaluations and solid understanding of causal inference and measurement challenges in applied micro-econometrics.

Terms of employment

This is an internationally recruited position and will be based in Nairobi, Kenya. The initial contract will be for up to two (2) years, subject to a probation period of six (6) months and is renewable depending on performance and availability of resources.

This position is graded at BG08 level on a scale of BG01 to BG14 (BG14 being the highest level according to the Alliance job classification framework policy). We offer a competitive salary and excellent benefits including but not limited to insurance, retirement plan, staff training and development, paid time off and flexible working arrangements.

The Alliance Bioversity-CIAT is committed to fair, safe, and inclusive workplaces. We believe that diversity powers our innovation, contributes to our excellence, and is critical for our mission. Recruiting and mentoring staff to create an inclusive organization that reflects our global character is a priority. We encourage applicants from all cultures, races, colors, religions, sexes, national or regional origins, ages, disability statuses, sexual orientations, marital status, and gender identities. Female candidates are strongly encouraged to apply.

Applications

Applicants are invited to visit https://alliancebioversityciat.org/careers to get full details of the position and to submit their applications. Applications MUST include reference number 103535:  Research Fellow as the position applied for. Application and CV should be saved using the candidate’s first name and last name for ease of sorting.

Applications closing date: 27^th March 2024

Please note that email applications will not be considered.

Only short-listed candidates will be contacted.

We invite you to learn more about us at:

http://alliancebioversityciat.org