Background
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) is the world’s largest humanitarian organization, with 190 member National Societies. As part of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, our work is guided by seven fundamental principles; humanity, impartiality, neutrality, independence, voluntary service, unity and universality.
Organizational Context
The food security crisis in the Horn of Africa and beyond continues to aggravate. Poor rainfall performance over the past three consecutive rainy seasons (since March 2016) have led to crop failure and pasture shortages and therefore exacerbated emergency food needs. An estimated 35 million people require emergency food assistance in 11 African countries. In particular, 14.3 million people remain currently Food Insecure across Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya, including 10 million severely food insecure and 5.4 million children are projected to be acutely malnourished this year. Furthermore, there are currently 2.6 million people displaced by drought and conflict in Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya; two million of whom are internally displaced persons (IDPs) and 600,000 refugees. A risk of Famine (IPC Phase 5) persists in East Africa given extended drought, heavy livestock losses, disease outbreaks, and persistent challenges with provision of life-saving humanitarian assistance, without which outcomes would likely be worse. This situation risks to further deteriorate as recent forecast continues to be alarming. In the end of September, FEWSNET issued an alert indicating high risk of a fourth consecutive season of below-average rainfall over the Horn of Africa during the between October to December 2017 and increased likelihood of La Niña between October 2017 and February 2018. To coordinate the response to this multi-layered crisis and multi-sectoral crisis, IFRC launched a regional appeal to complement and support the current country-level emergency operations related to the Food Crisis, mainly those focusing on drought and food insecurity. It aims to provide a structural framework for the country-level operations, enabling opportunities to support the country-level response activities by strengthening and scaling up operational support, coordination, communication, capacity building, security and safety for staff and volunteers. In this context, it is critical to support Red Cross/Red Crescent National societies to strengthen the quality of programming in food security and livelihoods and adopt more holistic and integrated responses to look at longer-term interventions that will improve community and household resilience to food insecurity.
Job Purpose
The Food Security and Resilience delegate will be part of the Regional Food Crisis team and will contribute to the overall achievement of appeals objectives and outcomes. S/he will work closely with colleagues of the IFRC Africa Regional Office, the IFRC Country Offices and the National Societies, with an overall objective of reinforcing capacities of staff and volunteers at all stages of the programme cycle from needs assessments, design and deliver effective interventions that address immediate and mid-term food security needs while strengthening resilience in the longer term.
Specifically, the Food Security and Resilience delegate will provide technical leadership to strengthen the quality of RCRC responses to the Food Crisis in Africa. S/he will promote the adoption of new approaches and way of working that contributes to improve the resilience of population affected by risk of hazards and extreme weather events.
In liaison with other organisations and partners, the delegate will be responsible for closely monitoring and analysing the evolution of context and needs in the region and issuing recommendations
Job Duties and Responsibilities
Technical and strategic support to NS
In close cooperation with the Technical Department in Geneva and the IFRC Livelihoods Resource Centre, the Delegate will:
- Monitor humanitarian trends related to food security situation in the region in order to orientate the priorities;
- Support NS & IFRC teams to conduct in-depth food security and livelihoods assessments, livelihoods analysis and market assessments at country level;
- Support NS & IFRC teams in the design of interventions that enable to protect, recover and diversify livelihoods before, during and after emergencies and foster economic recovery in the aftermath of disasters;
- Liaise with key stakeholders at regional and country level to ensure coordination but above all quality programming at country level through expertise sharing;
- Support NS to set up effective M&E systems, including data collection, analysis and management for baseline, monitoring of progress, measurement of outcomes and impact of FSL and resilience interventions;
- Support market-based livelihoods approaches and feasibility studies to encourage sustainable livelihoods diversification;
- Monitor regional trends relating to food insecurity and analysis and advice NS on any subsequent actions needed, in order to ensure timely and appropriate responses to food crises;
- Contribute to the design and planning of Federation food security strategies, policies and initiatives related to food security and resilience in Africa;
Capacity building and knowledge sharing
- Disseminate knowledge and guidance on sustainable approaches that promote the adoption of agro-ecological approaches, conservation practices (soil and water management), livestock management and health practices, pasture management;
- Draft lessons-learnt notes (or related material) based on technical learning from projects, and the development of best practices;
- In coordination with technical team in Geneva and the IFRC Livelihoods Resource Centre, support the implementation of training/coaching in topics related to Food security, livelihoods, or other relevant topics.
Coordination, Resource Mobilization and partnerships
In close cooperation with the Partnership and Resource Mobilization departments, the delegate will:
- Lead, in close collaboration with PRD, the development of technical project proposals, promoting appropriate innovative approaches to strengthen resilience;
- Co-ordinate and exchange information with NS working in food security in the region in order to help bring together learning, encourage their participation in relevant activities and to ensure consistency of approach;
- Build relationships and actively co-ordinate with other non RCRC food security actors in the region, including donors, UN, INGOs, government agencies, in particular those with whom IFRC has an MoU;
- Represent IFRC in relevant technical forums/clusters, including with national authorities and donors and develop awareness of NS to attend these forums/clusters at national level;
- Provide in-country support to team to secure adequate resource in terms of funding or HR, in order to carry out quality and up to scale programming.
Education
Master’s Degree in agriculture, agronomy, anthropology, international development, Natural Resources, Climate Change, environmental science, Disaster Management or relevant field – or BA with additional 5 years’ relevant field experience
Experience
Required
- At least 7 years’ experience management or disaster response in humanitarian, fragile or development operations
- Minimum 5 years’ experience technical experience specifically managing food security and livelihoods programmes in the field
- Demonstrated work experience with agriculture and pastoral livelihoods, value addition, resilience
- Demonstrated experience in monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems with specific application to livelihoods programming and impact measurement
- Demonstrated experience in designing and conducting field assessments (qualitative and quantitative) and baseline surveys
- Proven capacity building experience with NS or equivalent, delivering trainings and providing on the job training and coaching
Preferred
- Previous work experience working in Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASAL) or in drought-related operations
- Experience coordinating and advocating to external stakeholders including government, NGOs, UN and Donor organisations
- Knowledge and experience of RC/RC National Societies both as HNS and PNS
Knowledge, skills and languages
Required
- Familiarity with participatory approaches in food security and livelihoods (PRA, HES/HEA,field schools)
- Understanding of Disaster Risk Reduction, Early warning systems, agro-climatology, climate change adaptation
- Familiarity with basic Cash transfers or voucher programming
- Strong analytical skills in livelihoods and food security data and excellent written skills to communicate on the topic with various audience
- Excellent computer skills for quantitative and qualitative data analysis (particularly Excel, Word and databases)
- Willingness to travel extensively
Preferred
- Experience working in insecure environments
- Familiarity with ‘Do no Harm’ approach or similar
- Acquaintance with Federation DM tools (FACT, RDRT, ERU, VCA and others)
- Acquaintance with resilience processes and initiatives in Africa (AGIR, SHARE or similar…)
Competencies and values
Communication; Collaboration and Teamwork; Judgement and Decision Making; National Society and Customer Relations; Creativity and Innovation; Building Trust;
Comments
More Information
- Job City Nairobi
