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Organization: World Resources Institute (WRI)
Country: Kenya
City: Nairobi
Office: WRI in Nairobi, Kenya
This position can be based in any of the following locations: Kenya, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, or Ethiopia.
About the Program:
WRI Africa’s Food Program aims at transforming food systems in Africa to address food and nutritional insecurity for a rapidly growing population while driving economic development, increasing their resilience to climate change while pivoting away from potential future emissions, having positive impacts on biodiversity, and generating greater equity outcomes for women, children youth and other vulnerable groups. WRI Africa’s Food Program is anchored on four reinforcing principles:
Producing nutrient dense foods that address food and nutritional insecurity, generating jobs for youth, women and other marginalised groups, while keeping within planetary boundaries on nature and climate,
Reducing food loss and waste (FLW), including evidence generation and building partnerships with public and private sector stakeholders to advance the Target-Measure-Act approach,
Restoring degraded agricultural lands to increase productivity while generating essential ecosystems services for agriculture such as soil health, water and biodiversity that is critical for pollination and other ecosystem services,
Protecting remaining natural ecosystems from conversion to agriculture and degradation.
Job Highlight:
As the Regional Lead for Sustainable Improvement of Food Productivity, you will lead the Food Program’s initiative on sustainable enhancing food productivity. This includes developing an overall strategy, developing new fundraising opportunities, leading the research program, overseeing technical staff, developing policies and leading engagement with jurisdiction policy makers to sustainable improve food production in order to enhance food security. You will oversee research focused on developing high resolution time series of crop type and yield data and use modelling in order to develop jurisdictional/country/landscape food gap analysis for WRI priority geographies in Africa (hereafter called priority geographies). You will, on the basis of this analysis, develop food security policies and strategies for the priority geographies and lead the engagement with these jurisdictions to influence jurisdictional policies. You will develop and build on partnerships and networks to ensure scalability to other African jurisdictions.
The position will be led from our WRI Africa Food team and linked to WRI’s Land & Carbon Lab, which works on monitoring all forms of land cover and land use, including monitoring of croplands around the world. You will report to the Director of Vital Landscapes.
What will you do:
Research and policy agenda (50%):
Develop a research strategy to address food security in Africa based on crop-type, yield mapping in priority geographies
Oversee research and technical analysis on time series crop-type mapping and yield detection in priority jurisdictions in cooperation with WRI’s Land & Carbon lab
Synthesize findings and develop quantitative food gap analysis for priority jurisdictions
Develop food security policies for priority geographies
Develop policies and best practices to sustainably close yield gaps and improve food security in WRI priority geographies while helping farmers to adapt to climate change
Assess scalability of the methods and data developed to other African jurisdictions
Assist Land & Carbon Lab to undertake annual monitoring of all forms of land cover and land use
Support the development and integration of the cropland data with other datasets within the land and carbon lab, and any other datasets within WRI
Ensure data is made available as open source/access for decision making in Africa
Lead the production of written outputs including research papers, reports, internal briefs, blogs, presentations, and press releases
Lead the editing, peer review, publishing of all research and communication outputs in this area of work
Support the monitoring and reporting of the “produce” elements of WRI Africa’s work, including working closely with the ‘managing of results’ team to develop and monitor the relevant crop/yield indicators.
Engagement and Partnerships (20%):
Develop and lead the engagement strategy for policy change on food security in focus jurisdictions/ countries.
Develop and lead engagement strategy on uptake of developed analysis and data on crop-type, yield trends, in priority geographies.
Cultivate new and help manage existing relationships to deliver on this work. This includes forming or joining coalition on research, and/or policy in priority geographies
Engage with jurisdictional government, research organizations, NGO and UN to support data collection on crop-type, yield, and important socio-economic and climate variables
Represent WRI in key events, increase the public profile of WRI’s work on enhancing productivity initiative, crop-mapping, yield detection and food gap analysis
Provide technical support to local and national partners to scale promising practices in WRI Africa’s priority geographies
Support policy teams to ensure countries’ NDCs sections on agriculture and food systems are aligned with both mitigation and adaptation goals.
Fundraising (20%):
Identify funding and cooperation opportunities
Lead proposals related to food gap and food security analysis and the deployment of geosciences and their application in monitoring of crop yields in Africa, including the resources (financial and human) required to do so
Lead and co-lead other proposals developed by WRI teams in this area of work, with an emphasis on Africa
Review other proposals developed by WRI Africa to integrate relevant strands of work on yield monitoring.
Personnel and program leadership (10%):
Lead and nurture a growing team of researchers under the enhancing food productivity program
Carry out day to day project management
Recruit and supervise staff in relevant work areas
Support the development of the WRI Africa food strategy with all aspects related to yields, nature and climate.
What will you need:
Education: You have a completed a PhD degree in agriculture, food security analysis in relation to sustainable land management practice
Experience: You have 8+ years of relevant, full-time professional experience
Demonstrated knowledge and expertise on issues related to food systems transformation in Africa, including international climate policy, and sustainability challenges related to land and natural resource management
Experience designing and managing complex, multi-partner projects in an NGO setting
Experience creating and communicating theories of change, results frameworks, and other components of a MEL for project donors, partners, and stakeholders
Experience with fundraising as a lead as well as part of a team
Experience with geoscience methods and tools for assessing croplands in Africa
A record of relevant publications
You are willing and able to travel internationally
Languages: You have verbal and written proficiency in English. Working knowledge of French would be desirable.
Potential Salary:
Salary is commensurate with experience and other compensable factors. WRI offers a competitive remuneration and benefits package.
How to Apply:
Please submit a resume with a cover letter by the 4 September 2023. You must apply through the WRI Careers portal to be considered.
What we offer:
A competitive salary
Access to the WRI global network with the opportunity to exchange with and learn from passionate colleagues working at the cutting edge of their fields across Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America and the US.
The chance to have an impact and to develop your career within a mission driven organization with access to varied learning and training opportunities.
A workplace that strives to put diversity and inclusion at the heart of our work.
The opportunity to join and get involved in different working groups and affinity groups to shape the future of WRI.
Long-term commitment to hybrid working model with flexible working hours.
Generous leave days that increase with tenure.
About Us:
Founded in 1982, World Resources Institute (WRI) is an independent, nonprofit global research organization that turns big ideas into action at the nexus of environment, economic opportunity, and human well-being. We are working to address seven critical challenges that the world must overcome this decade to secure a sustainable future for people and the planet: climate change, energy, food, forests, water, sustainable cities, and the ocean. WRI has a global staff of over 1,800 people with work spanning 60 countries. We have offices in Africa, Brazil, China, Europe, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Colombia and the United States, as well as a growing presence in other countries and regions.
The foundation of our work is delivering high-quality research, data, maps, and analysis to solve the world’s greatest environment and international development challenges and improve people’s lives. We work with leaders in government, business, and civil society to drive ambitious action and create change on the ground. Equally important, we bring together partners to develop breakthrough ideas and scale-up solutions for far-reaching, enduring impact. Our mission and values:
WRI’s mission is to move human society to live in ways that protect Earth’s environment and its capacity to provide for the needs and aspirations of current and future generations.
Our values are shared ideals that bind us together: Integrity, Innovation, Urgency, Independence, Respect.
Our culture:
WRI is committed to advancing gender and social equity for human well-being in our mission and applies this principle to our organizational and programmatic practices. W e are committed to providing equal opportunities in employment, we embrace all diversity and encourage women, the LGBTQ+ community, persons with disabilities, Afro-descendants, and Indigenous people to apply. Recognizing our strong commitment to gender equality, WRI has also been awarded EDGE certification.
Our team in Human Resources carefully reviews all applications.
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