The Market Development Lead – Eastern Kafue Nature Alliance will provide expert commercial market development support to the project’s primary target beneficiaries, being the local communities that depend on the landscape for their livelihoods and survival, and will engage closely with private market operators as key partners. The Market Development Lead works as a member of the project implementation team and as part of the broader TNC Zambia’s conservation team, ensuring close communication, collaboration and learning with peers across project and teams. Specifically, they will provide hands-on strategic guidance and technical oversight for all the project’s market development activities in the natural resources and sustainable agriculture sectors, developing and strengthening mutually beneficial commercial relationships among the private sector, local communities and small businesses, ensuring the meaningful participation of women and youth.

• Cultivates and develops partnerships with key stakeholders in the landscape, including communities, private sector actors and project implementing partners.
• Develops and maintains an information base on all formal and informal private sector activities of relevance within the project area and continually scans the market to identify potential opportunities for business linkage with rural communities.

• Works with private sector actors in the natural resources sector (e.g. consumptive and non-consumptive tourism operators, forest product aggregators and processors, carbon project developers, fish aggregators and processors) to develop commercial markets that stimulate the engagement of rural communities and small businesses in the sustainable management and utilization of natural resources, provide sustainable wealth opportunities for local communities, ensure equitable participation of women and men and incentivize the investment of private capital in the long term equitable growth of these markets while protecting the natural capital upon which they depend.
• Works with private sector operators in the agricultural sector (e.g. agricultural input, information and service providers, agricultural commodity and livestock buyers and processors) to develop and strengthen agricultural markets that stimulate the engagement of smallholder farmers and provide incentives for the adoption of climate smart and sustainable agricultural technologies and practices.
• Builds the capacity of small rural businesses and community-owned enterprises to engage and negotiate with private market operators and become increasingly innovative and sophisticated in their business dealings.
• Using a market-led approach, promotes the climate resilient diversification of smallholder agriculture by supporting the adoption of agrobiodiverse productions systems integrating multiple species, breeds or varieties, and integration of crop, livestock, poultry and tree crops.
• In coordination with livestock market operators, builds the capacity of traditional pastoral targeted communities in the roll-out of conservation-compatible sustainable livestock management practices and link participating livestock farmers to private input markets and output marketing opportunities.
• Works with tourism operators and agribusiness (e.g. suppliers of seed, irrigation technology and extension) to establish reliable supply chains for local fresh produce into the tourism industry.
• Undertakes basic economic evaluations of business models related to sustainable natural resource management.
• Oversees tracking of market development activities, ensuring activities and deliverables meet USAID requirements; identifying any implementation challenges and providing the necessary support to address them.
• Contributes to developing terms of reference for market development and private investment-related sub-awards and contract as well as reviewing reports submitted by relevant subrecipients.
• Coordinates  with the project’s monitoring, evaluation research and learning (MERL) staff to implement the MERL Plan, report on project activities, measure outcomes in accordance with project requirements and document key lessons learned from stakeholder engagements and community interactions.

• May require frequent travel to remote locations and evening and weekend hours.
• May work in variable weather conditions, at remote locations and under physically demanding circumstances.