Programme Policy Officer (Review of Partnership Agreements & Livelihood Strategy Dev't) CST II

Programme & Policy

Overview

Lead strategic review of partnerships to enhance food systems and livelihoods in Uganda.

You have:

• An Advanced/Masters Degree in International Affairs, Economics, Social Protection, Social Sciences, among other related academic fields.
• A minimum of 6 years progressively responsible professional experience in the humanitarian/nexus sector, with a minimum of 1 year working in WFP, is required.
• Deepened technical knowledge in the area of livelihoods and/or food/market systems programming in humanitarian contexts is required.
• Proven capacity to manage sensitive strategic partnerships for the design and set-up of joint projects is required.
• Proven efficiency and effectiveness in implementing new initiatives is required.
• Recent experience working with displaced populations (refugees or IDPs) is a plus.
• Experience of UN humanitarian reform and civil society engagement is a plus.
• The candidate must have strong references indicating that s/he has excellent people skills and can lead a diverse, cross-cultural, multi-organizational team to successfully complete a complex and sensitive task.
• Excellent (English) written and oral presentation skills are required.

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NOTE: WFP DOES NOT SOLICIT FOR FEES OR ANY FORM OF PAYMENT FROM JOB APPLICANTS

WFP is looking for talented people who are committed to joining our efforts to eradicate hunger. It offers unlimited opportunities to grow your professionalism, talent, and expertise. Start your journey to be a member of the world-wide effort to eradicate hunger. WFP has a policy of affirmative action for women.

ABOUT WFP

United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is the world’s largest humanitarian agency, fighting hunger worldwide. The mission of WFP is to help the world achieve Zero Hunger in our lifetimes. Every day, WFP works worldwide to ensure that no child goes to bed hungry and that the poorest and most vulnerable, particularly women and children, can access the nutritious food they need. In emergencies, WFP gets food to where it is needed, saving the lives of victims of war, civil conflict and natural disasters. After an emergency, WFP uses food to help communities rebuild their lives. On average, WFP reaches more than 80 million people with food assistance in 80 countries each year. The organization has the global footprint, deep field presence and local knowledge and relationships necessary to provide access to food and contribute to lasting solutions, especially in many of the world’s most remote and fragile areas.

Brief description of WFP in Uganda

WFP delivers food assistance in emergencies and work with communities to improve nutrition and build resilience. WFP provides life-saving food assistance and livelihood opportunities to refugees in Uganda. In addition, WFP assists the most vulnerable people in Karamoja with food and nutrition assistance. Finally, WFP works with smallholder farmers and links them to markets.

As Uganda strives to achieve Zero Hunger by 2030 and become a middle-income country by 2040, WFP is also assessing its relevance and repositioning its role in Uganda.

ARE YOU UP TO THE CHALLENGE?

We are seeking a qualified international consultant for the position of Programme Policy Officer (Review of Partnership Agreements & Livelihood Strategy Dev't) CST based in Kampala, with travel to the North, Southwest, and Midwest of the country. The selected candidate will be employed on a Regular Consultancy Contract (6 months).

ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT 1/2

Background

With over 1.5 million refugees, Uganda is the largest refugee hosting country in Africa. Thanks to Uganda’s progressive refugee policy, refugees can live in settlements, work, move around and access basic services provided by Government institutions. Uganda is also one of the first countries to aim at integrating the response to refugees with national sectoral plans through the Comprehensive Refugees Response Framework (CRRF). One of the overarching objectives of the CRRF is to promote self-reliance and ultimately reduce assistance needs. However, factors including the continuous influx of refugees from neighbouring countries result in consistently high levels of need (both in terms of numbers and level of vulnerability). At the same time, humanitarian funding is declining.

With a vision of delivering quality assistance with longer-term programming, WFP Uganda Country Office (UGCO) introduced a new strategic approach to partnerships with International and National Non-Governmental Organizations. Following the re-design of the partner selection process, WFP introduced three-year field level agreements (2020-2022) with all partners implementing General Food Assistance (GFA), and nutrition activities in the refugee context. Introduced in 2019, the approach looks at increased synergies with Cooperating Partners (CPs), considering their expertise, priorities, presence in the settlements and complementarity with other existing programmes.

One of the key drivers behind WFP’s strategic approach to partnerships is the desire to work with prospective CPs to broaden the remit of traditional GFA and Nutrition programmes through the inclusion of cross-cutting components into the overall design of the programmes. CPs were requested to incorporate cross-cutting activities into their value proposition, which is expected to amplify the impact of WFP’s activities in the settlement by generating an added value to the cash, food or capacity strengthening transfers delivered by WFP. These crosscutting activities drive the integration of WFP’s saving lives and changing lives agendas. WFP aims to leverage its partnerships, capacities as a leading food system actor and provider of humanitarian assistance to catalyze the transformation of the food systems in the contexts in which it works.

ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT 2/2

Background

Other key features of the new approach include the introduction of a co-design phase with WFP and the requirement for lead partners to work with a national NGO or community-based organisation (CBO), with a view to strengthening the capacity of the ‘co-partner’ to take on great responsibilities over the three-year period. This is consistent with the broader ‘localisation’ agenda.

The new approach to partnership with CPs has coincided with a series of operational challenges, including successive ration cuts and, more recently, ration prioritisation (resulting in revisions of CP budgets), adaptation to the risks stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic and periodic lockdowns, as well as restructuring within the WFP Uganda operation.

In the refugee hosting districts, the Office of the Prime Minister leads Development Response in Displacement Impact Program (DRDIP). Its objective is to improve access to basic social services, expand economic opportunities, and enhance environmental management for communities hosting refugees. DRDIP focuses on improving social and economic services and infrastructure; ensuring sustainable environmental management, livelihoods support programmes to increase the income-earning opportunities for host and refugee communities; and project management, policy support, and monitoring and evaluation. WFP Uganda works closely with DRDIP and District Local Governments (DLGs) to deliver Labour Intensive Public Work Programme (LIPW) initiatives that aim at strengthening the asset base of vulnerable households and deliver public goods. Agriculture and Market support programme on the other hand works with the district local governments and cooperating partners (NGOs) to strengthen the capacity of vulnerable smallholder farmers including refugees to participate in, contribute to, and benefit from economic participation in agri-food systems. WFP and partners use several modalities including training, technical assistance, and transfers to improve postharvest management and enhance participation in commodity marketing by supported smallholders and MSE. AMS is brought to locations where WFP provides humanitarian assistance and other changing lives initiatives. This is meant to result into better programme integration and leverage demands triggered as a result of humanitarian assistance. AMS is therefore implemented in the Karamoja sub-region and refugee hosting districts where WFP currently implement more than one of the general food assistance, nutrition, livelihoods, social protection, or school feeding programmes.

PURPOSE 1/2

Purpose

Under Strategic Outcome 1 of WFP’s Country Strategic Plan in Uganda, WFP provides food and nutrition assistance to refugees and victims of natural disasters in Uganda. WFP’s vision is to provide this assistance in a way that promotes the self-reliance of affected populations. This can be achieved through improved programme quality, with a focus on integrated programming with Agricultural Market Support (AMS), digital financial inclusion and other initiatives to promote sustainable livelihoods strategies. To that end, WFP is strengthening its capacities to support farmers to form organization to aggregate their production and capacities, and increased bargaining power and participation in and benefit from local and regional commodity markets. Increasingly, WFP is also looking to support Village Savings and Loans (VSLA) structures to ease formal and informal barriers to financial inclusion and promoting value chain financing.

With the overall objective to enhance the self-reliance and resilience of refugee and host communities, WFP Uganda intends to support sustainable food systems that deliver nutritious, affordable diets, drive gender transformation, support livelihoods and protect the environment.

Therefore, WFP Uganda has adopted multi-year partnership agreements (MYPAs) arrangements with its Cooperating Partners (replacing the traditional annual ones), in order to facilitate longer term, multi-year programming to produce better results and minimize transaction costs on both sides. This process is expected to enable linkages between and across the humanitarian and development nexus, which are fundamental to decreasing humanitarian needs.

PURPOSE 2/2

The primary responsibility of the consultant will be coordinating the strategic review of WFP’s MYPAs with a variety of International and National Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in Uganda. In doing so, the consultant will apply a “food system lens” (in line with WFP’s regional strategy) to the review, to seek opportunities for enhanced programmatic integration.

The primary recipients of the review will be WFP programme unit and other internal stakeholders. This role directly reports to the Deputy Country Director but is expected to liaise closely with various teams situated across the Crisis Response, Social Protection, Livelihoods and Agricultural Market Support Units, the Partnership Development Unit, the Analysis, Monitoring, Learning and Evaluation (AMEL) Unit, Field Offices and Cooperating Partners, with an intentional eye for opportunities to enhance gender programming and incorporate elements of climate adaptation. This position contributes directly to the Grand Bargain’s commitment to ‘increase collaborative humanitarian multi-year planning and funding’.

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES (1/3)

• Lead the 2022 review of Multi-Year Partnership Agreements (MYPA) signed between WFP and six International and National Non-Governmental Organizations in Uganda, which should enable WFP UGCO to:

  • Evaluate the validity of the MYPA approach with a view of benefits & challenges;
  • Advise UGCO programme unit on the continuation of this approach, given changes in the operation and envisioned needs in 2023-2025.

• Ensure that the review of the MYPAs reflects existing and on-going UGCO’s work on programme review and programmatic design since 2019, including:

  • The revised Country Strategic Plan (CSP) of WFP Uganda;
  • The approach papers (thematic programme design papers).

• Engage in cross-functional discussions required to review the MYPAs, including the budgetary, partnership, monitoring and evaluation functions.

• Lead on internal and external consultations relating to the MYPA review process, with the aim to collect and incorporate relevant feedback into the formulation of best practices and lessons learned.
• The review should document CP’s best practices to promote self-reliance, resilience and livelihoods, even when not directly financed through the MYPA. Emphasis should be given to best practices that have potential to be scaled up. The review should document existing evidence generated by CPs on self-reliance and resilience and its strength, to provide an overview of programme-led knowledge available

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES (2/3)

• Identify opportunities and entry points for partners to embed a food systems approach in the livelihood and self-reliance support provided
• Ensure that the review contributes to further strategic thinking on food systems, resilience and livelihoods, and generate useful lessons for those separate exercises. In particular. Thus, the review should apply the food system approach as developed by WFP Regional Bureau in Nairobi (RBN) to look at the possible integration of different livelihoods interventions to promote more sustainable diets, livelihoods and environmental practices.
• Formulate recommendations for revised field level agreements after the end of the MYPAs in December 2022 and support WFP UGCO in identifying other potential partners if needed. Recommendations should answer the following questions:
  • What complementary programmes had the most impact on the food security outcomes of refugee communities?
  • What lessons learned can be transferred from one region or partner to another?
  • What should be the core activities of focus for the remaining period?
  • How can the tracking of these activities be improved going forward?

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES (3/3)

• Formulate recommendations for better integration of different UGCO to promote self-reliance and resilience of refugees.
• Facilitate design of joint programmatic intervention that brings together livelihoods programming, access to financial services and agriculture market support
• If relevant, coordinate the engagement of CPs in a new co-design phase. During this phase, WFP and (selected) CPs will build on current programmes, to explore additional, mutually complementary programming opportunities and innovative ways to leverage each other’s comparative advantage and increase the impact of their respective operations.

QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE

• An Advanced/Masters Degree in International Affairs, Economics, Social Protection, Social Sciences, among other related academic fields.
• A minimum of 6 years progressively responsible professional experience in the humanitarian/nexus sector, with a minimum of 1 year working in WFP, is required.
• Deepened technical knowledge in the area of livelihoods and/or food/market systems programming in humanitarian contexts is required.
• Proven capacity to manage sensitive strategic partnerships for the design and set-up of joint projects is required.
• Proven efficiency and effectiveness in implementing new initiatives is required.
• Recent experience working with displaced populations (refugees or IDPs) is a plus.
• Experience of UN humanitarian reform and civil society engagement is a plus.
• The candidate must have strong references indicating that s/he has excellent people skills and can lead a diverse, cross-cultural, multi-organizational team to successfully complete a complex and sensitive task.
• Excellent (English) written and oral presentation skills are required

DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS

18 March 2022

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All employment decisions are made on the basis of organizational needs, job requirements, merit, and individual qualifications. WFP is committed to providing an inclusive work environment free of sexual exploitation and abuse, all forms of discrimination, any kind of harassment, sexual harassment, and abuse of authority. Therefore, all selected candidates will undergo rigorous reference and background checks.

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.

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Potential interview questions

Added 4 years ago - Updated 1 year ago - Source: wfp.org