Synthesis Company Limited
Internship Opportunity Various Positions-blantyre Office And Districts Based
Synthesis agriculture company Limited is a private company that specializes in agri-marketing,
research and training, seed multiplication, unlimited extension services, implementation of
innovative irrigation, water supply and engineering works, agri-business and financing. The
company was established with an aim of promoting the agriculture sector, creating jobs for the
youth, inspiring farmers and the retired through production, marketing and value addition. We
have clear strategies for using collective innovations, technologies and knowledge in market
developments as a way of delivering sustainable services to our clients, which makes us better
over our competitors.
Synthesis agriculture is therefore looking for dedicated professional Christians to be considered
for internship positions below.
1. Agri-business Development Officer
Synthesis agriculture wishes to recruit highly qualified and start up experienced persons to fill
the post of Agri-Business Development Officer.
Purpose Of The Position
The incumbent will be responsible to handle and manager dy to day Agri business programs,
trainings, facilitates and development of relationship between farmers and company,
coordinate and provide management of the field officers.
Key Resposibilities
- Coordinate farming programs and farm visits activities to help ensure that extension services are performed in accordance with the protocol, institution policy standards.
- Provide ongoing support to the farming community and in particular company farmers.
- Managing, Mobilizing and organizing agri business trainings in line to company policy and protocol.
- Work closely with quality assurance and compliance officer facilitating farm visit and extension services program.
- Developing and implementing farming calendar, spray program from time to time in compliance with company policy.
- Ensure proper training of farmers, cooperatives, research personal and maintain documentation of trainings.
- Lead the preparation for study monitoring and evaluations.
- Attend weekly study specific team meetings, department and all staff meetings.
- Screen all laboratory results when received, interpret and follow protocol procedure.
- Prepare farm visits weekly reports and update the managing Director and other stake
holder. - Plan and Carry investigations, developing data collection tools, farm visit report book,
training materials and standard operating procedure necessary around issues related to
but not limited to protocol requirement. - Ensure all financial expenditure related to study, training and extension services are
properly managed and tracked.
Required Qualification, Skills And Competencies
- A bachelor’s degree in agriculture general, or agronomy, agriculture extension and at least one year’s experiences in coordinating and managing farmers (Those with experiences in Watermelon, Soybean and Groundnuts farming will have added advantage).
- Experiences with extension services programs.
- Experience developing and maintaining organized agri record systems.
- Possess in depth knowledge of good farming practices and farm management.
- Strong problem solving and critical thinking skills.
- Strong attention to details and good teaching abilities.
- Ability to multi-ta and thrive in a detail-oriented environment.
- Superior computer skills with word processing, database operations, spreadsheet and data analysis in STATA and SPSS
- Strong interpersonal communication skills and excellent in organizational skills,
- Ability to work independently with minimum supervision.
2. Accounts And Administrative Assistant-internship-blantyre Office
Purpose Of The Position
The purpose of the post is performing multi-faceted activities that influence decision making,
control of operations as well as management planning to accomplish company’s financial and
administrative objectives. It is expected of the accounting administrative assistant to aid the
management department in planning and attaining objectives through a formal system of
accumulation and reporting of data.
Key Responsibilities
1. Prepare precise data entry as well as formulate, draft, type and prepare letters, memos and other documentation as needed
2. Work on monthly bank statement reconciliation for all entities and review and analyses the expenditure of organizations against the approved budgets.
3. Dispatch mails to clients and manage registry and file all statements
4. Set up of weekly meetings and conference rooms for attendees of meetings and conferences
5. Attend to clients and phone calls and make provision for back-up voicemail assistance to the cooperate office
6. Deposit funds in the bank, and prepare book journal entries affiliated with such deposits
7. Organize meetings, and communicate periodically with members of staff and other personnel
8. Ensure that payments requested are in accordance with relevant financial rules, regulations and procedures with adequate budget provisions and ensure that payments request are supported with appropriate documents.
9. Organize travel arrangements, planning and programming of meetings.
10. Prepare budgets and maintain monthly cash flow forecast and making sure salaries, allowances are prepared in time and taxes are computed and remitted in time to MRA.
11. Ensure accounts payable and receivable are properly reconciled and that payments and disbursements are received in timely manner.
Competencies and Key Requirements:
- Highly organized and self-motivated, with an ability to anticipate, effectively prioritize
and progress workload. - Adopt a growth mindset approach to new projects / building new capabilities / in the
face of change. - Appetite to learn new tools and technologies to unlock capacity for team and leaders –
anticipating needs, utilizing best practice tools and technology to drive effectiveness. - Be creative and proactive in finding solutions to issues faced by the leaders you support and develop and apply an understanding of the function to your work.
- Continually demonstrate high standards and accountability in terms of planning, quality and accuracy of work outputs to meet challenging timescales.
- Utilize exceptional interpersonal skills to build and sustain excellent relationships across a diverse range of cross-functional networks, face to face and virtually
- Demonstrate a high level of integrity, compliance and confidentiality at all times.
- Ability to work well under pressure and meet deadlines.
- Willingness to perform a variety of duties/tasks including often going above and beyond the day-to-day requirements to ensure a smooth running of business activities.
- A good problem solver with a positive nature.
- Able to forge strong relationships across the administrative community to leverage experience and provide cover as needed
- Excellent time management skills and ability to multi-task and prioritize work.
Academic Qualifications
1. Minimum of Diploma in accounting, Business administration or any related field
2. Experience with Computer and accounting systems
3. Basic knowledge of QuickBooks online and offline
4. Those with addition agriculture background will have added advantage
3. Agriculture Field Officer-(12 Posts District Based)
Reporting to: Agri- Business Officer
Location: Kasungu, Mzimba, Rumphi, Mchinji, Salima, Lilongwe, Ntchisi, Dowa, Blantyre,
Mulanje, Chikwawa, and Zomba District
NB; Only those present in the districts shall be considered and make sure you indicate your
district in the cover letter.
Purpose Of The Position
The Agriculture Field Officer (AFO) will support the effective planning and implementation, monitoring and reporting of the Agriculture Projects in their District.
S/he will provide technical backstopping and support to individual smallholder farmers, and producer groups to promote and expand capacity in crop production (both rain fed and irrigation), post – harvest handling, value addition and marketing
Key Responsibilities
i. Mobilize individual smallholder farmers and producer organizations to contribute resources
and participate in crop production, post-harvest reduction and value addition and marketing of selected commodities including watermelons, Banana, garlic, beans, soya beans, ground nuts, sunflower and horticultural crops;
ii. Prepare and conduct producer organization profiling and capacity assessment to identify needs including training and input needs
iii. Conduct trainings to individual small holder farmers and clubs in sustainable agricultural practices, small scale irrigation, aggregation/collective marketing etc iv. Organize and facilitate field days to demonstrate sustainable agricultural technologies.
v. Develop and or improve comprehensive training materials for effective delivery of training to the individual smallholder farmers and producer organizations;
vi. Implement timely participatory and pragmatic training in crop production, postharvest handling, value addition and in accordance with the training curriculum agreed and validated with the individual smallholder farmers and smallholder producer organizations;
vii. Support individual smallholder farmers and smallholder producer organizations to establish strong formal legal, governance and operational committees to improve their performance and institutional capacity;
viii. Conduct regular crop performance monitoring and provide technical production advice to producer groups
ix. Come up with and document project success stories, and lessons learnt etc.;
x. Networking with other stakeholders within the Community Transformation Programme and from other projects in the impact area; xi. Contribute to the development of weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly work plans and reports.
Competencies and Key Requirements:
i. Experience in community mobilization and sensitization/training in the fields of agriculture and strong technical knowledge in agricultural production (Banana, Watermelon, Ginger, Garlic, soya beans, groundnuts, sunflower, sugar beans and horticultural crops) with an emphasis on enhancing produce quality.
ii. Proven knowledge of and experience in support and training of small-scale farmers in enhancement of produce quality, post-harvest handling, and produce bulking, collective marketing and market information.
iii. Good writing and reporting skills with attention to detail and data accuracy. Experience in working with data and databases highly valued.
iv. Competence in Microsoft office (MS Word, MS Excel, MS Power point).
v. Fluent command of English and Chichewa
vi. Good command of IT, using email, internet, and search engine
Academic Qualifications.
i. A minimum of a Diploma in Agriculture, Agronomy, Horticulture, Irrigation Technology or related area;
ii. Have at least 1 year experience in the field of agricultural production and farmer organization;
Method of Application
Eligible candidates meeting the required qualifications and experience should send their application with Cover letter, detailed Curriculum Vitae (CV), copies of certificates, name, addresses and telephone numbers of three traceable referees with their working contacts and emails.
Applications should be received not later than Tuesday 20th September, 2022 to the following address.
The Executive Director
Synthesis Company Limited
Eber House
Blantyre
Email: recruitment@synthesislimited.com
Only shortlisted candidates will be acknowledged.