The incumbent will support research, stakeholder engagement, capacity building, policy analysis, enabling environment technical assistance, and knowledge dissemination, with a focus on enabling responsible scaling of climate-smart solutions, including solar energy systems for agriculture.
Responsibilities:
Support the design and implementation of research on solar energy systems for agriculture including irrigation, cold storage, drying, and agro-processing technologies.
Contribute to data collection and analytical work including policy and private sector analysis, stakeholder mapping, and enabling environment assessments to guide scaling of solar solutions for agriculture.
Conduct analysis to identify policy, institutional, knowledge, and financial constraints and opportunities for scaling solar innovations in agriculture.
Support IWMI’s provision of technical assistance to government institutions, private sector, regulatory bodies, and implementing partners to identify, prioritize, and address regulatory and policy bottlenecks that hinder the scaling of water innovations.
Engage with government, private sector, farmer groups, and development partners to gather insights and strengthen partnerships for responsible scaling of solar solutions in agriculture.
Assist in capacity building and training for stakeholders and piloting solar innovation bundles and institutional models through diverse modalities such as living labs, Hackathons and public-private partnerships.
Contribute to the communication of research work through preparation and dissemination of working papers, policy briefs, technical reports, journal publications, conference papers, posters, brochures, and presentations at policy forums.
Perform any other related duties as may be required.
Requirements:
Master’s degree in political science, innovation systems, agricultural economics, water resource management, environmental studies, development studies, human geography or other related field.
Experience:
Minimum of 5 years of relevant work experience post-graduation, ideally in agri-food systems research involving water management and (or) renewable energy.
Minimum of 2-3 years of experience in applied research, preferably in innovation systems or scaling of climate-smart solutions.
Demonstrated ability and experience in literature review, data collection, data analysis, and generation of high-quality outputs, i.e., reports and scientific publications.
