- Role: Food Scientist
- Venture: Matunda Hub
- Location: Soroti, Uganda
About Matunda Hub
Matunda Hub is a start-up social enterprise based in Soroti, Eastern Uganda with a mission to support rural and urban youth to develop (fruit) agribusinesses in Uganda through entrepreneurship skills, capacity building in value addition, access to shared agro-processing facilities and equipment, technology, seed capital, coaching, mentoring and networking through existing and developing new community structures.
Matunda Hub facilitates fruit sector development and creates a platform for stakeholders to make it easy to interact and find their position in the community to effectively and positively contribute to a socially and economically healthy environment.
Moreover, Matunda Hub is currently developing its own fruit-related product line (dried fruits, fruit powder etc) to offer a market to fruit farmers, reach financial self-sustainability and create jobs in the region.
About You
At Matunda Hub, we envision a world where every young person in Uganda has the opportunity to be employed or self-employed to pursue a decent living. As a start-up, we believe in and build upon innovative and disrupting approaches to solve social and economic problems, such as unemployment, poverty and skills redundancy, as a key to impact and change. We are therefore looking for a hands-on, creative and open-minded candidate to support our social enterprise.
Responsibilities
As a Food Scientist for Matunda Hub, your responsibilities will include:
- Developing and formulating new food/ fruit products and develop new and better ways to preserve, process, package and deliver them.
- Evaluating the nutritional content, value, flavour and texture of fruit products.
- Testing samples for particular fruits/foods for moulds, yeast and bacteria.
- Ensuring that the fruit value addition process adhere to governmental, consumer, industry and international standards where applicable.
- Researching and developing alternative environmental friendly and low-cost fruit processing methods.
- Investigating and setting standards for food safety and quality.
Sound exciting? Here’s who we are looking for.
Skills & Qualifications
- The ideal candidate holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Food Science, Biochemical, Nutrition, Microbiology or other relevant food-related qualification.
- Practical experience in food processing, preservation, packaging and distribution and/or food safety is an added advantage.
- Previous exposure and experience with research and analysis of nutritional food content and value.
- Meticulous attention to detail, particularly with regard to health, safety and hygiene.
- A highly motivated individual who can lead development of processed fruit production and value addition is a plus.
- Knowledge of the agricultural sector and more specifically fruit processing is highly desirable.
- Some practical experience in working with both very small, small and medium sized companies in a development setting would be an added advantage.
- Excellent IT, analytical and numerical abilities and a good level of communication proficiency.
- Entrepreneurial mindset is a plus: flexibility, open-mindedness, problem solving skills and creativity.
