Programme Policy Officer (Resilience & Livelihoods) at World Food Programme (WFP)

Programme Policy Officer (Resilience & Livelihoods)

Employer: World Food Programme (WFP)

Employment: Full-Time | Contract

Place of Work: Dollo Ado - Ethiopia

Posted date: 7 hours ago

Deadline: March, 25/2025 (15 days left)

WFP celebrates and embraces diversity. It is committed to the principle of equal employment opportunity for all its employees and encourages qualified candidates to apply irrespective of race, colour, national origin, ethnic or social background, genetic information, gender, gender identity and/or expression, sexual orientation, religion or belief, HIV status or disability.

ABOUT WFPThe World Food Programme is the world’s largest humanitarian organization saving lives in emergencies and using food assistance to build a pathway to peace, stability and prosperity, for people recovering from conflict, disasters and the impact of climate change.

At WFP, people are at the heart of everything we do and the vision of the future WFP workforce is one of diverse, committed, skilled, and high performing teams, selected on merit, operating in a healthy and inclusive work environment, living WFP's values (Integrity, Collaboration, Commitment, Humanity, and Inclusion) and working with partners to save and change the lives of those WFP serves.To learn more about WFP, visit our website: https://www.wfp.org and follow us on social media to keep up with our latest news: YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok.

WHY JOIN WFP?

• WFP is a 2020 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.
• WFP offers a highly inclusive, diverse, and multicultural working environment.
• WFP invests in the personal & professional development of its employees through a range of training, accreditation, coaching, mentorship, and other programs as well as through internal mobility opportunities.
• A career path in WFP provides an exciting opportunity to work across the various country, regional and global offices around the world, and with passionate colleagues who work tirelessly to ensure that effective humanitarian assistance reaches millions of people across the globe.
• We offer an attractive compensation package (please refer to the Terms and Conditions section of this vacancy announcement).

Job title: Programme Policy Officer (Resilience & Livelihoods), CST-I

Grade: Consultant Level 1

Type of Contract: Regular Consultant

Unit: Programme/Resilience

Duty Station (City, Country): Dollo Ado, Ethiopia

Duration: Eleven (11) Months

ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT

In Ethiopia, WFP is working with the Government and humanitarian partners to strengthen the resilience of people, communities, and systems and to chart a more prosperous and sustainable future for the next generation. Our interventions are highly contextualized and adapted to the specific needs of our beneficiaries, including smallholder farmers, pastoralists, agropastoral, refugees, and host-communities who are most vulnerable to climate shocks.

WFP-supported resilience-building interventions in the drought-prone lowland areas in Ethiopia specifically Somali Region are focused on supporting vulnerable beneficiaries with an integrated climate-smart packages through an integrated resilience model that aims at improving agricultural production and productivity through irrigated agriculture development along the riverine areas by establishing/rehabilitation of irrigation schemes, indexed insurance, hydroponics and drip irrigation, financial inclusion and services-through the Village Savings and Loaning Associations (VSLAs) and formation of Cooperative Organizations (RuSACCOs), market linkages for smallholders farmers. Other interventions include the nature-based disaster risk reduction, Anticipatory Action, restoration of degraded agricultural and range lands through water harvesting structures to support both crop and livestock, improved access to water through watershed management, fodder production, and other livelihood strengthening activities. We work with both pastoral and agropastoral beneficiaries, refugees and host communities supporting sustainable natural resource management while enabling restoration of degraded rangelands and agriculturally productive riverine areas to increase local productivity and strengthen market systems in support of diversified, nutritious diets. We simultaneously focus on strengthening capacities of national and local institutions for improved early warning systems, gender transformation, and climate resilient diversified food systems.

The purpose of this assignment is to ensure the availability of adequate in-house capacity and necessary technical expertise on climate change adaptation and resilience, with particular focus on agricultural production using innovative technologies for efficient use of resources in irrigated agriculture development, water harvesting for both crop and livestock, financial inclusion, agronomy, hydroponics, drip irrigation disaster risk management, as well as rangeland rehabilitation, community engagement and partnerships building to be able to better coordinate on-going initiatives and capacity strengthening actions as well as support the implementation and design of new and ongoing climate change adaptation and resilience building projects and programmes.

JOB PURPOSE: Under the direct supervision of the Head of Sub Office-Dollo Ado, the Programme Policy Officer (Resilience and Livelihoods) will be responsible for providing strategic guidance and operational support for the implementation of interventions aimed at strengthening (agro)pastoralist livelihoods and building resilience in Ethiopia’s drought-prone lowland areas.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES (not all-inclusive, nor exhaustive):

• Provide project management support, apply best practices, standards and innovative technologies that comply with WFP standards and processes to ensure that all resilience and livelihoods activities have acceptable standards, and all agricultural, natural resource management and agribusiness initiatives are of meaningful profitability to the targeted beneficiaries.
• Provide technical guidance in design, development, planning, implementation, and capacity building for agriculture and resilience in general. This includes but not limited to food security programming; Agronomy, water harvesting, irrigation, financial inclusion, post-harvest management, hydroponics farming, drip irrigation, demonstration plots development as learning and technology transfer centres for the farmers, household and community resilience; poverty reduction; rural economic development, agricultural development, agribusiness, or value chain development, Agri-nutrition
• Coordinate the implementation of WFP resilience projects in the Sub-office in liaison with the Cooperating Partner, the Area office and the Country office teams.
• Support men, women and youth to increase their knowledge and awareness on gender equality, women economic empowerment and women’s participation in project design, implementation and decision making to advance enterprise development, value addition and agro processing activities.
• Contribute to the collection, documentation and dissemination of relevant data and information related to agriculture, agribusiness, food value chains and systems, financial inclusion including for example, trends and developments, approaches, impacts, lessons and good practices.
• Contribute to preparation of accurate and timely reporting on outputs to facilitate informed decision-making and consistency of information presented to stakeholders including information for a database.
• Provide specialized analytical expertise, technical and operational advisory support to partners and stakeholders to enable the highest possible quality in design and effectiveness of activities related to (agro)pastoralist livelihoods-irrigation, water harvesting, fodder production ensuring integration of context relevant, evidence-based, climate-smart, environmentally, and socio-economically sustainable options that are more resilient to shocks and stressors.
• Enable synergistic approaches with external partners and other WFP programmes including Refugees, Relief, Nutrition and supply chain interventions to maximize impact.
• Undertake capacity gap needs assessment of the partners and organize capacity building programmes (workshops, training, exchange visits etc.) to address these gaps, especially focusing on resilience and livelihoods
• Support in building and strengthening partnerships with the Government and Local Authorities, the private sector players and other Humanitarian and Development Agencies operating in the area
• Support the implementation and scale-up of integrated resilience approaches, including but not limited to livelihoods support, leverage of local food purchases, finance and market access, post-harvest loss handling and climate risk management, as well as support to the government social safety net
• Contribute towards analysis of project proposals from Cooperating partners to enable effective decision making on project technical feasibility.
• Support in the promotion of agri-nutrition technologies and practices in liaison with the nutrition unit and other key actors and ensuring that nutrition sensitive interventions are mainstreamed in resilience programming
• Participate in the existing resilience and livelihood coordination platforms in the Sub-office while representing and positioning WFP as a partner of choice
• Reviewing the activity implementation reports submitted by the Cooperating partners (financial and narrative)
• Monitor the implementation of the projects through field visits and provide necessary technical support.
• Perform other related duties as required.

STANDARD MINIMUM ACADEMIC QUALIFICATIONS:

EDUCATION: University degree in Agriculture, Environmental sciences, Natural Resource Management, Climate Change Adaptation, Social sciences, Engineering, or other related subjects. Masters will be an added advantage.

EXPERIENCE: At least three (3) years of postgraduate professional experience and demonstrated technical expertise in the areas of irrigated agriculture, resilience strengthening, livelihood building, natural resource management, asset creation, water harvesting, drip irrigation and hydroponics. Experience in WFP-related programs is considered an asset.

DESIRED EXPERIENCES FOR ENTRY INTO THE ROLE:

• Understanding of community-based participatory planning approaches
• Ability to conduct capacity gaps needs assessments and design programmes to fill these gaps.
• Experience in working in arid and semi-arid parts of Africa, especially with the pastoralists and agro-pastoralists
• Experience and skills in conducting community engagement
• Skills and experience in partnerships management with government, cooperating partners and stakeholders
• Familiarity with Irrigation agriculture, water harvesting technologies for livestock and crop production, drip irrigation, natural resource management, agri-nutrition technologies, and other pastoral & agro-pastoral livelihood approaches
• Experience in working with communities, cooperatives and groups on enterprise development, gender and agriculture, agro processing and value addition
• Ability to develop proposals for funding
• Excellent communication skills - both written and oral in English
• Skills in workshop facilitation.
• Experience working with refugees and host communities in livelihoods and resilience building
• Strong organization and planning skills coupled with good interpersonal skills.
• Good analytical skills; resourcefulness, initiative, maturity of judgment, tact, negotiating skills;
• Ability to work in a team and establish effective working relations with persons of different national and cultural backgrounds.
• Ability to deal patiently and tactfully with people of different national and cultural backgrounds.

LANGUAGES: Fluency in both oral and written communication in English.