Regional Director East Africa -Syngenta Foundation at Syngenta

Role Purpose

The Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture (“SFSA”) is an independent legal entity from the Syngenta Group. SFSA’s vision is a bright future for smallholder farming. Its mission is to strengthen smallholder farming and food systems by catalysing market development and innovation, while building capacity across the public and private sectors.

Syngenta Foundation East Africa Limited (“SFEA”) is the Kenyan charity based in Nairobi established by SFSA to further its mission in the region.
SFSA has Country and Regional Directors in its main countries and regions. As a key member of the SFSA leadership team, the Regional Director is responsible for helping develop, evolve and implement the strategic direction of the Syngenta Foundation in East Africa (with primary focus on Kenya) in accordance with its 2025 Strategy, taking SFEA to successively higher levels of impact and influence the context of East Africa. on agricultural transformation and modernization aligned with the targeted outcomes set out in the 2025 Strategy.
In pursuance of the 2025 Strategy, the Regional Director is also responsible for identifying and engaging local programme partners, delivering the regional strategy into programmes of work with a yearly plan and budget, measuring and achieving the objectives therein.
She/he is also responsible for managing relationships with key players in the agricultural industry (private and public), for managing and building team capacity and coordinating efficiently the country resources across Streams and supporting with fund raising.
The Regional Director is also responsible for promoting and ensuring local operations and staff compliance with Syngenta and SFSA policies and all local regulations.
Additionally, on a case to case bases, the Regional Director can be asked to provide limited support to SFSA programs outside his direct geographical area of responsibility.

Accountabilities

• Develop a country programme plan aligned with the 2025 Strategy in close coordination with the SFSA stream leads. This will include identifying opportunities to coordinate, integrate and drive efficiency and increased impact in East Africa (with primary focus in Kenya) across stream initiatives.
• Identify key players in the agricultural industry including donor organisations, NGO’s, governments and institutions and private enterprise and develop and maintain strategic alliances. Support the development and stewardship of Private Public Partnerships (PPP) and Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives.
• Efficiently manage, implement, monitor, and and report progress on the agreed East Africa Regional Plan, and be responsible for portfolio management of the agreed activities in the region.
• Lead the initial development of successful business models for existing and new investments that link small-holder farmers to agricultural and food value chains before handing them over the country stream representatives.
• Engage strategic partners to grow, replicate and scale-up successful models in East Africa (with primary focus in Kenya). Support synergies across Streams in the country.
• Lead and manage SFSA’s people development initiatives in the region in order to build capacity and competencies of the relevant SFSA team in East Africa.
• Help Stream Leads in recruiting streams’ staff in East Africa and manage career and succession planning.
• Prepare annual reports, and work closely with SFSA communication team to oversee preparation of case studies, lessons learned and other documents which can be used for external communication.
• Manage financial, HR and admin functions locally, coordinating with relevant support functions from SFSA and Syngenta, especially in managing the provision of local assistance in organising visits from SFSA teams outside of Kenya to the region, and adherence to the health and safety and security guidelines of all local staff and visitors. Ensure country team compliance with SFSA values and all SFSA policies (Finance, HR, Legal and Ethical, code of conduct, Health and Safety at work, Procurement, etc.) and all the requirements by the local authorities. The in-country stream representatives will be responsible for the visit and direct support of the visitors as part of the capacity building process.
• Seek efficiencies at operational level and help improve controlling and reporting
• Represent the SFSA as the contact person for strategic partnerships in East Africa and as board director of SFEA, which include ensuring that all registration, resolutions and other company documents for SFEA are kept up-to-date by the company secretary.

Qualifications

Critical knowledge

• Broad agricultural technical and/or agri-business skills with appropriate local experience across multiple segments of the grower base
• Knowledge of local agriculture and food sector stakeholders
• Ability to adapt and modify technologies to suit local conditions
• Solid economic, financial and/or commercial skills with a clear understanding of the local issues faced by the growers

Critical Experience

• 10+ years of experience in working in project management in relevant areas of agriculture/agribusiness with local government, NGO and/or private sector
• Sales, business development, partnership building and/or fundraising experience desirable
• Tertiary Agricultural or Horticultural qualifications desirable

Critical Technical, Professional And Personal Capabilities

• Multi-disciplinary technical and/or agribusiness experience across a range of crops
• Project development and team management skills
• Ability to work on project implementation with external partners. Ability to learn: quickly applying information, concepts and strategies
• Full compliance with local and international / Syngenta code of conduct and practises
• Strong connections in farming and food industry in the focus country

Critical Leadership Capabilities

• Ability to work in multicultural environments
• Strong written and oral communication skills
• Ability to lead and build team capabilities, disseminate information and expand learning’s across all country team members.
• Ability to work under time pressure, flexibly, and on multiple tasks Ability to manage and influence diverse stakeholders

Critical success factors & key challenges

• Ensure the local country team is aligned with the vision, mission, values and 2025 commitments of SFSA.
• An ability to identify areas of possible shortfalls in the technical and/or commercial capability of local teams and propose, develop and implement ways to address them.
• Manage the local team and programme budgets
• Manage relationships with diverse set of public, private (including Syngenta) and NGO stakeholders

Additional Information

• Willingness to travel locally and occasionally internationally.
• Minimum English fluency and fluency of local language.

Innovations
Employee may, as part of his/her role and maybe through multifunctional teams, participate in the creation and design of innovative solutions. In this context, Employee may contribute to inventions, designs, other work products, including know-how, copyrights, software, innovations, solutions, and other intellectual assets.