Nutrition Specialist (Knowledge management and social protection/nutrition), P-4, TA (364 days), Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office (ESARO), Nairobi, Kenya

Contract

This is a P-4 contract. This kind of contract is known as Professional and Director staff. It is normally internationally recruited only. It's a staff contract. It usually requires 7 years of experience, depending on education.

Salary

The salary for this job should be between 139,275 USD and 179,566 USD.

Please keep in mind that the salary displayed here is an estimation by UN Talent based on the location and the type of contract. It may vary depending on the organization. The recruiter should be able to inform you about the exact salary range. In case the job description contains another salary information, please refer to this one.

UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.

And we never give up.

For more about our programme, please visit the following website: www.unicef.org/esaro/

For every child, future.

There have been significant improvements in children’s survival, growth and development in Africa since 2000, including a 25% reduction in child stunting since 2000. However, these gains are at risk of sliding backwards as a resulting of a widespread food and nutrition crisis due to climate change, conflict and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Eastern and Southern Africa region is experiencing a triple burden of child malnutrition. The triple threats of undernutrition (stunting and wasting), micronutrient deficiencies, and overweight coexist – even within the same countries, communities, households and children. This undermines the health and development of children and prosperity of nations. Currently an estimated 28% of children in the ESA region are stunted, Currently an estimated 5% of children under 5 in the ESA region are wasted and 5% are overweight, while an estimated 11% of children aged 5-19 are overweight. Only 13% of children receive a minimum acceptable diet (State of the World’s Children 2021). Food, health and social protection systems across the region are weak and not providing at scale the nutritious diets, essential nutrition services and positive practices children need to grow and reach their full potential.

In line with UNICEF’s global nutrition strategy, ESARO is supporting country-level actions across five nutrition systems (food, health, WASH, social protection and education) to achieve results for children in six areas: early childhood nutrition, nutrition in middle childhood and adolescence, women’s and maternal nutrition, care for children with wasting, maternal and child nutrition in humanitarian action and partnerships and governance for nutrition. By 2025, UNICEF aims annually to reach 82 million children in ESAR with programmes to prevent all forms of malnutrition, at least 120 million children with programmes to detect and treat severe wasting annually, and 5 million school-age children with programmes for the prevention of anaemia, overweight and other forms of malnutrition.

ESARO’s knowledge management for nutrition agenda aims to contribute to these aims, by supporting learning across the workstreams to support improved programming and results for children. A growing area of work in the region is the development of nutrition responsive social protection systems to support the prevention of malnutrition. To support this aim ESARO is supporting country offices to learn from each other’s experiences of trialing and scaling up ‘cash plus’ programmes for nutrition, and supporting governments to develop/strengthen linkages between social protection and nutrition policies, programmes and systems. Another growing area of work in the region is nutrition in middle childhood and adolescence including in schools and in partnership with WFP. These actions aim to contribute to UNICEF’s results areas, and the meeting of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the region.

How can you make a difference?

The purpose of this role is to support the knowledge management for nutrition and social protection and nutrition workstreams within ESARO’s nutrition section, supporting also the education section on KM for school-based services. In terms of knowledge management, the purpose is to support the documentation of programme experiences and identification of lessons learned to contribute to the quality and impact of country nutrition programmes in ESAR and beyond. The role will also support learning and action in key areas of thought leadership in the region, including resilience programming, food systems, integrated school nutrition programming and more generally, integrated school-based programming cutting across different sectors. In terms of social protection and nutrition, the purpose of the role is to support countries to take up recommendations based on learning from existing ‘cash plus’ programmes in the region and support the design and scale up of linked social protection and nutrition programmes and systems towards improved nutrition impact. The purpose of this work is also to contribute towards global learning and guidance for leveraging the convergence of social protection and nutrition programming.

Duties and responsibilities :

1) Support Global Technical Team on Social Protection and Nutrition:

• Regularly contribute to GTT on social protection and nutrition
• Support the development of global guidance and tools on social protection and nutrition to support country-level programming.
• Support the documentation of country case studies of linked social protection and nutrition. programmes and identification of lessons learned and future opportunities
• Contribute to the global community of practice on social protection and nutrition

2) Support linked social protection and nutrition programming in ESAR countries:

• Provide technical assistance to countries in ESARO to scale up linked programmes
• Provide ‘deep dive’ technical assistance to countries planning linked social protection and nutrition programmes (such as Malawi, South Sudan and Angola)
• Document case studies of linked social protection and nutrition programmes in ESARO as programmes develop including identification of lessons learned and future opportunities
• Perform a scoping review of Humanitarian Cash Transfers (HCTs) and nutrition in ESAR, including challenges/ barriers and opportunities

3) Support school nutrition agenda in ESAR countries

• Document country case studies of school-based integrated programme for nutrition and synthesis of lessons learned, including those in partnership with WFP in Eastern Africa and in Southern Africa, including exploring the potential for framing these within a social protection and nutrition framework
• Support the development of an advocacy brief and technical brief on integrated school programme for nutrition together with WFP.
• Support the completion and documentation of landscape analyses on nutrition of school age children and adolescents and summary briefs for at least two countries (Zambia and Malawi and possibly others to be defines)
• Document the implementation of strategies to deliver an integrated package of social services through the school platform in selected countries and use this to complement and update an ESARO concept note/strategy paper

4) Develop knowledge products to support nutrition programming in ESAR

• Work with UNICEF country offices and partner agencies to document case studies of nutrition resilience programming in seven countries
• Work with UNICEF and WFP regional and country office colleagues to document progress on the UNICEF-WFP enhanced partnership framework in South Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia in the areas of wasting, school nutrition and nutrition resilience
• Technical support for the development of key thought leadership products including documentation, guidance and tools (such as on the ESAR Collaboration for Children stunting priority, food systems, climate change adaptations, resilience agendas and innovations
• Support the UNICEF Burundi Country Office to document national programming under the Government of Netherlands Grant

5) Act as regional focal point for knowledge management for nutrition for ESAR

• Provide information and technical support to countries on knowledge management for nutrition
• Contribute to regional knowledge management forums and complete the annual IMERP for nutrition
• Act as regional focal point for contributions to global nutrition knowledge products, such as UNICEF WINS and nutrition@unicef.
• Contribute to the Global Technical Team on knowledge management for nutrition
• Contribute to the shaping and design of nutrition evaluations
• Develop peer-reviewed papers from the knowledge on nutrition generated by UNICEF
• Support the dissemination of regional nutrition data and learning in multiple forums
• Coordinate ongoing updates of the UNICEF ESAR nutrition sharepoint site to provide a repository of nutrition information to support UNICEF CO nutrition and other sector teams
• Develop ESARO nutrition newsletter twice per year

Key Expected Results :

• Global guidance and tools on Social Protection and Nutrition
• Case studies on linked social protection and nutrition programmes in ESAR
• ESAR scoping review of HCT and nutrition linkages
• Set country case studies of school-based integrated programme for nutrition and synthesis of lessons learned.
• Advocacy brief and technical brief on integrated school programme for nutrition.
• Updated concept/strategy note on schools as platforms for integrated service delivery
• Set of country case studies of nutrition resilience programming and synthesis of lessons learned.
• Set of country case studies of examples of collaboration between UNICEF and WFP across three countries and synthesis of lessons learned.
• Thought leadership products on food systems and climate/nutrition
• Knowledge products for global KM streams
• At least one peer-reviewed paper per year
• ESARO nutrition newsletter twice per year

To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…

• An advanced university degree in public health nutrition, international development studies/ international relations or social sciences.
• At least eight years of professional work experience at international and national levels in public health nutrition including at least five years of professional experience creating knowledge products for nutrition (articles, case studies, peer-review papers, technical briefs, summary documents)
• Experience documenting examples and reviewing evidence of linked social protection and nutrition programmes and supporting guidance and programming in this area would be an asset
• Experience supporting the development of global, regional or national guidance would be an asset
• Fluency in English is required. Knowledge of a second UN and/or local working language of the duty station an asset

For every Child, you demonstrate...

UNICEF’s Core Values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust and Accountability and Sustainability (CRITAS) underpin everything we do and how we do it. Get acquainted with Our Values Charter: UNICEF Values

UNICEF competencies required for this post are…

(1) Builds and maintains partnerships (2) Demonstrates self-awareness and ethical awareness (3) Drive to achieve results for impact (4) Innovates and embraces change (5) Manages ambiguity and complexity (6) Thinks and acts strategically (7) Works collaboratively with others.

During the recruitment process, we test candidates following the competency framework. Familiarize yourself with our competency framework and its different levels: competency framework here.

UNICEF is here to serve the world’s most disadvantaged children and our global workforce must reflect the diversity of those children. The UNICEF family is committed to include everyone, irrespective of their race/ethnicity, age, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socio-economic background, or any other personal characteristic. We offer a wide range of benefits to our staff, including paid parental leave, breastfeeding breaks and reasonable accommodation for persons with disabilities. UNICEF strongly encourages the use of flexible working arrangements. UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF is committed to promote the protection and safeguarding of all children. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks, and will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.

Remarks:

UNICEF appointments are subject to medical clearance. Issuance of a visa by the host country of the duty station, which will be facilitated by UNICEF, is required for IP positions. Appointments are also subject to inoculation (vaccination) requirements, including against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid). Government employees that are considered for employment with UNICEF are normally required to resign from their government before taking up an assignment with UNICEF. UNICEF reserves the right to withdraw an offer of appointment, without compensation, if a visa or medical clearance is not obtained, or necessary inoculation requirements are not met, within a reasonable period for any reason.

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.