Consultancy - Business Skills Development at International Potato Center

The Assignment: Working in close collaboration with county governments, CIP supports potato marketing cooperatives and seed multipliers to develop into functioning businesses through the Accelerated Value Chain Development (AVCD) project, potato value chain.

Under the AVCD project, the Consultant will be responsible to develop training modules and train potato cooperative members and seed multipliers in basic business skills to manage their enterprises, and support them to develop business plans. The assignment is to cover skills specific to each enterprise: cooperative or seed multiplier, including costing production, projecting income, managing revenue, marketing, and group collection centers and input sourcing.

The responsibilities of the assignment are to:

• Consult with project staff on the business skills to develop among the potato cooperatives and seed multipliers;
• Develop and submit a business skills training module covering general skills, and those specific to potato cooperatives and to seed multipliers;
• Develop and submit a training plan to deliver the training modules and support business plan development;
• Deliver the training as per the training plan;
• Support the potato cooperatives and seed multipliers to finalize their business plans;
• Submit the business plans;
• Submit a final brief report describing the training and observations with clear reference to which skills were developed, and the follow up for CIP and project partners to ensure the training is put into practice.

The successful Consultant will have:

• In depth understanding of the business/accounting capacities needed to develop farmers and agricultural cooperatives into professional businesses;
• Proven experience training farmers and cooperatives in business skills, specific experience with farmers involved in seed production as a business is an asset;
• Excellent writing and communication skills.

Conditions: The consultancy contract will be for the duration agreed upon to prepare the training module, deliver the trainings and finalize business plans. The number of days will be determined upon finalizing the training plan.