Senior Scientist – Soil Science

ICRISAT is seeking a highly skilled expert with strong strategic and technical background and experience in agricultural soil assessment and management capabilities in Africa, with a focus on soil health strategy, soil assessments, and monitoring, sustainable management of soils, soil mapping, and scaling of best soil fertility and soil resilient practices. The successful applicant will be an important part of an innovative and technically excellent team helping deliver major projects. As a member of our team, the new incumbent will be involved in a range of predominantly office-based work, engaging with our experienced staff to deliver innovations, and will work closely with a wide range of other agronomy, landscape, water, climate, digital, geospatial and socio-economics teams to deliver holistic solutions to soil health and environmental problems. The position can be based in Nairobi, Kenya.

ICRISAT is a non-profit, non-political organization that conducts agricultural research for development in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa with a wide array of partners throughout the world. Covering 6.5 million square kilometers of land in 55 countries, the semi-arid or dryland tropics has over 2 billion people and 644 million of these are the poorest of the poor. ICRISAT and its partners help empower these disadvantaged populations to overcome poverty, hunger, and a degraded environment through better agricultural production systems.

ICRISAT is headquartered at Patancheru near Hyderabad, India, with two regional hubs and eight country offices in sub-Saharan Africa. ICRISAT envisions prosperous, food-secure, and resilient dryland tropics. Its mission is to reduce poverty, hunger, malnutrition, and environmental degradation in the dryland tropics. ICRISAT conducts research on its mandated crops of chickpea, pigeonpea, groundnut, sorghum, pearl millet, and finger millet in the arid and semi-arid tropics. The Institute focuses its work on drylands and on protecting the environment. Tropical dryland areas are usually seen as resource-poor and perennially beset by shocks such as drought, thereby trapping dryland communities in poverty and hunger and making them dependent on external aid. Please visit – www.icrisat.org

Responsibilities:

• Provide technical and strategic leadership on agricultural soil assessment and sustainable management of soils.

• Create a network and partnership with national and regional partners to support Africa Fertilizer and Soil Health Action Plan.

• Lead the soil fertility and soil health project activities in the region to ensure project objectives are achieved and contribute to ICRISAT’s Africa and global strategies.

• Act as a contact point for specific soil projects and partners in Kenya.

• Work closely with the ICRISAT scientists in the Resilient Farm and Food Systems (RFFS) program and initiate joint project activities with other clusters under the RFFS research program and get directly involved in the cross-cluster joint activities

• Develop and implement soil management practices by providing technical support to farmers, and stakeholders helping them adopt regenerative, nutrient management and climate-smart technologies to enhance soil health.

• Contribute to building the capacity of farmers and partners for effective project implementation and represent ICRISAT at conferences and workshops.

• Provide technical support to the ICRISAT soil team

• Collaborate with local communities, government bodies, NGOs, and international organizations to improve soil health and agricultural productivity.

• Prepare project progress reports including data analysis, project outcomes, and recommendations for future actions.

• Contribute to the publications based on the results of field activities related to soil fertility and soil health

• Provide technical guidance, constructive support, and mentoring to fellow staff and support their technical development.

• Interact with authorities, donors, and others to get ICRISAT better known and involved in research and development discussions.

• Contribute to resource mobilization through responding to calls and initiating proposals for unsolicited requests to donors.

Requirements:

• The candidate should have a PhD degree in Soil Science, with strong computational skills. The candidate should have at least 7 years of experience in soil science, agronomy, soil data analysis, and mapping.

Core Competencies

• Experience in the design and implementation of strategies in Africa aimed at improving soil health and agricultural productivity in response to soil degradation and climate change.

• Demonstrated expertise in research design, execution, data collection and analysis, data visualization, and scientific writing, particularly in areas of scaling and impact assessment.

• Demonstrated track record in research leadership and management in soil health and ISFM.

• Experience working with farmers to enhance the adoption of soil management and soil health and climate-smart technologies and practices that enhance soil health and resilience.

• Experience in Soil data analysis and Mapping, ISFM, and climate change.

• Strong evidence of collaboration with multi-stakeholders including policy makers in mainstreaming soil health issues in Africa.

• Evidence in resource mobilization and network with donors.

• Strong publication records in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

• Excellent communication skills and proven ability to manage and mentor staff as well as manage time and work as part of a team as well as individual working.

• Skill in data management and machine learning.

• Strong capacity to prioritize tasks, manage workload, show initiative, and operate effectively under pressure.

General:

This is a contractual position for a period of 36 months.

How to apply:

Applicants should apply on or before 20 November 2024 with their latest Resume, and the names and contact information of three references that are knowledgeable about their professional qualifications and work experience. All applications will be acknowledged; however, only short-listed candidates will be contacted.

ICRISAT is an equal opportunity employer.