JOB TITLE: Regional Smallholder Agricultural Market Support (SAMS) Advisor, Regional Bureau for Western Africa

Contract Type: Regular Consultancy / CST

Contract duration: 11 months

Duty Station (City, Country): Dakar, Senegal

ABOUT WFP

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. We are 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.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE OF THE ASSIGNMENT

WFP´s Pro-Smallholder interventions in RBD countries has been focused on advocating for the strengthening of smallholder agriculture and promotion of market development approaches to address food security. This includes supporting the linkage with the Social Protection programmes, promoting a more conductive policy environment, and encouraging governments to continue investing in technical support for smallholder farmers, generating public awareness and facilitated understanding of the potential of smallholder agriculture as a market for inputs as well as a supplier of food commodities.

Smallholder agriculture and market development approaches have also offered significant opportunities to increase resilience to natural disasters. Regional strategies to promote climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction looked at potential of smallholder agriculture to increase productivity and introduce farming techniques more adapted to new weather conditions in order to help rural communities to become more resilient towards natural shocks. Smallholder agriculture has also been linked with WFP’s activities in the areas of nutrition (e.g. for local production of fortified foods and or RUSFs) and school feeding (ensuring a strong percentage of commodities are purchased locally from small farmers)

From CSP mapping, 18 out 19 COs are implementing smallholder agricultural and market development activities fold under the third strategic outcome ‘’People have improved and sustainable livelihoods’’ with critical linkage with Food Assistance for Asset (FFA), Home Grown School Feeding (HGSF), Climate resilient, Cash Based Transfer (CBT) and related market opportunities and Nutrition sensitive interventions. This mainstreaming and expansion are largely a result of government interest in linking Family Farming with social protection systems.

ACCOUNTABILITIES/RESPONSIBILITIES:

The Programme Policy Consultant will report to the Senior Programme Adviser at the Regional Bureau while working closely with Country Offices in West Africa, as well as the PRO-F coordination unit at Headquarters based in Rome, Italy.

You will be responsible for the following duties:

· Project Design and Implementation

• Ensure that Pro-Smallholder Farmer initiatives in country offices are consistent with WFP policies, Executive Board decisions and other operational guidance. This will require working with various headquarters units, Regional and Country Offices to formulate or amend related policy, strategic planning, programming, evaluation guidelines and procedures to ensure they adequately address the new approach and activities.
• Provide technical support to Country Offices in the design and implementation of SAMS strategies or action plans, by promoting innovative solutions to some of the implementation challenges and seek for opportunities to enhance linkage between SAMS with School Feeding, resilience and livelihoods, nutrition, CBT and Gender programming.
• Assist RB Office to track the performance of the country offices initiatives, oversee the compiling and analysis of relevant information for results-based management, contribute to corporate planning processes with both policy and analytical inputs and ensure quality project development that maximize the impact on the reduction of Hunger.
• Lead the preparation of information notes to disseminate findings with special focus on increase awareness on the linkage between social protection and smallholder agriculture, and contribute to annual reports at country office, RBD and HQ level.
• Contribute to the design of, and participate in, country and regional level events, including conferences, workshops on strengthening coordination between social protection and smallholder agriculture initiatives with government and development partners counterparts.
• Be familiar with the Smallholder Agricultural Market Support (SAMS) approach on WFP Communities. Platform which driving at full speed towards achieving Zero Hunger lead the development of operational guidance for the implementation of the Smallholder Agricultural Market Support (SAMS) model in the region and thereby leveraging value chain development initiatives to strengthen local food. systems
• Coordination with Centres of Excellences for Post-harvest loss management and storage systems / build up capacity, on storage, Q&Q, equipment. We need to facilitate skill-transfer for leading smallholder farmers on primary processing and post-harvest loss management which is tailored to their specific crop/grain preferences and climate conditions,
• Country Strategic Plan (CSP) process: support Country Offices on CSP formulation and Budget Revisions

· Partnerships and Advocacy.

• Foster collaboration and cooperation with key stakeholders, including governments, RB regional bodies, private sector, NGOs and civil society, research and academic institutions and donors’ institutions to contribute to effective project implementation, and its scale up as a successful model to promote agricultural production, strengthen markets, to link Family Farming production with Social Protection/School Feeding Programmes and address food security.
• Provide guidance and technical support to governmental efforts link food demand for national/regional Social protection programmes to promote local agriculture production and commercialization by smallholder and market connections.
• Foster horizontal cooperation to promote innovative programmatic interventions that leverage local demand to promote smallholder agriculture and commercially viable value chains for food crops produced by smallholder farmers.

· Partnership, Donor relations and Reporting

• Act as focal point for donor relations related to Smallholder Farmers Access to Market regarding both existing and new potential donors.
• Liaise with Regional Bodies, to ensure effective collaboration, monitor ongoing projects and highlight potential risks to project delivery. Strong emphasis on RB relationship.
• Lessons Learned and Knowledge sharing.
• Support Country Offices in the process to monitor the impact of local procurement from smallholder interventions on linking Family Farming Production to Social Protection/School Feeding Programmes, raising agricultural production, promote agricultural markets and provide guidance on programme direction as necessary and integrate evaluation results into the overall planning, procurement, and programming processes.
• Ensure high quality documentation of SAMS lessons learned, best practices and build a body of knowledge, which will enable scale up, and integration of SAMS experiences in countries in the WAC region.
• Coordinate information exchange and technical cooperation between COs and other stakeholders in the region.

QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE REQUIRED

EDUCATION:

· Advanced university degree or university degree with experience and advanced courses/training in one or more of the following disciplines: agriculture economy and Agriculture Development, development economics, economics and international relations.

EXPERIENCE:

· Background in Agriculture Economy, Agriculture development and Social Protection:

· Accumulated inter sectorial 6 years’ experience at least to contribute to the design of models of intervention of institutional strengthening of institutions contributing to Food Security and Nutrition, particularly those in agriculture.

· Proven experience in developing initiatives that involve local procurement, particularly in developing capacities of national institutions with potential demand so they purchase more from local/national small producers/ providers.

· Knowledge and experience in developing of models for local purchases that generate local development would be an asset, linking family farming production to school feeding demand and of how to strengthen institutional capacities of ministries to support such efforts in an integrated, complementary, and collaborative manner.

· Extensive experience in policy, programming, food procurement, market development, external relations, donor relations, partnerships and/or monitoring & evaluation.

· Prior experience with WFP an asset.

· Programme development experience with specific skills in institutional and organisational strengthening, UN-Donor-Governmental coordination, aid/development effectiveness, and good analytical skills;

TECHNICAL KNOWLEDGE & SKILLS:

· Proven capacity to respond to changes in paradigm in government strategies and in partner institutions, particularly as they take a more decentralized and regionalized focus.

· Proven abilities to work with other UN agencies in a collaborative constructive manner, so that WFP initiatives can be developed in a complementary manner and add to other UN efforts.

· Good listening and interpersonal skills; strong communicator (especially in respect of written communication and general presentation).

LANGUAGE:

· Excellent command of French and ability to present information clearly and concisely in French.

· Fluency (level C) in English language.

WHY WORK WITH US?

This position is based in the Regional Bureau for Western Africa, Dakar, Senegal. It supports 19 country offices (CO) in their programme delivery and advocate for the integration of WFP corporate priorities (People at the centre, Organizational effectiveness, Triple Nexus and Digital transformation) into national policies and programmes.

The Regional Bureau core functions are to provide strategic guidance, technical support, and operational oversight. By providing guidance and policy support to COs, the Regional Bureau ensures clear communication at management level between HQ, RB and COs, in line with the realignment of HQ-RB responsibilities, including advisory support to improve the quality of programme implementation, positioning and fundraising efforts. Significant work of the Regional Bureau is around technical support provided to COs, notably to ensure the quality of project design, to facilitate the sharing of technical resources and enhance CO’s staff capacity. WFP Regional Bureau also advocates for assessing and recommending appropriate actions to strengthen the capacities of Governments and National actors involved in achieving SDG2, foster the linkages between national academics, research entities and WFP operations. The Regional Bureau works to strengthen emergency preparedness and response capacities across the region to strategically position WFP as the leading organization responding to emergencies.

This is an opportunity for an exciting and challenging position in a multi-cultural and interdisciplinary team, based in a unique location, on a topic with high relevance. In addition, we offer:

➡️Meaningful and impactful careers:

Our day-to-day work makes a difference in the lives of the people we serve

➡️Continuous learning and training:

We provide learning tools for our staff to continually develop their careers

➡️Multicultural and stimulating work environment:

We encourage gender and cultural diversity to make our teams stronger

Join us to make a difference, watch this video to know more about us!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnaxfnNKdsM&t=7s

DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS: 03 JANUARY 2022

Qualified female applicants are especially encouraged to apply.

WFP has zero tolerance for discrimination and does not discriminate based on race, sex, colour, ethnic group, age, sexual orientation, other affiliation, or HIV/AIDS status.

No appointment under any kind of contract will be offered to members of the UN Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ), International Civil Service Commission (ICSC), FAO Finance Committee, WFP External Auditor, WFP Audit Committee, Joint Inspection Unit (JIU) and other similar bodies within the United Nations system with oversight responsibilities over WFP, both during their service and within three years of ceasing that service.