Description
Location: Any Mercy Corps Country office in Africa
Program Department / Summary
Drawing on Mercy Corps’ global recognition as a leader in resilience and food security, Mercy Corps’ Africa Region pursues bold strategies to address interconnected and complex shocks and stresses that are preventing sustained improvements in food and nutrition security in chronically food insecure pockets in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel. We leverage our extensive portfolio of multiyear resilience and food security programs to integrate and advance innovative approaches in climate-smart agriculture, nutrition-sensitive market systems development, maternal and child health, community behavior change and more, grounded in resilience design and measurement. Our commitment to growing evidence and learning on what works for building resilience in fragile and complex environments is widely recognized by donors and policy makers for solutions that have lasting impact.
General Position Summary
The Senior Food Security Advisor is part of Mercy Corps’ Africa Region Technical Team. They drive technical excellence, evidence generation, learning and representation across a strategic portfolio of resilient food security programs and initiatives, and serves as the technical focal point for advancing Mercy Corps’ resilience and food security vision and approaches in line with the regional strategy. The Senior Advisor will work across Mercy Corps’ portfolio in Africa, with significant programming in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel, providing strategic leadership and deep technical program support in areas where Mercy Corps’ major resilient food security work is underway.
Mercy Corps’ resilient food security portfolio encompasses several complex, multi-year programs that include a wide range of technical approaches. The Senior Advisor will support integration of resilience in a number of sectors and cross-cutting thematic areas, such as agricultural systems, urban/rural livelihoods and economic recovery; nutrition security; natural resource management and climate change adaptation; peacebuilding; and gender and social inclusion. They will collaborate closely with program, country, and regional teams to advance program and country-level resilient food security objectives and prioritized work streams. Working with senior program leaders to identify strategic priorities and create support plans, they will proactively provide technical support — including direct oversight and leadership where necessary — on assessment, design and learning processes at different phases of the program cycle, applying Mercy Corps’ resilience framework. They help programs develop tailored resilient food security learning approaches and associated measurement plans to generate program evidence for adaptive management. They will drive evidence generation, synthesis and dissemination across the Africa resilient food security portfolio to advance learning and thought leadership, connecting program learning into Mercy Corps’ wider Africa vision.
In addition to dedicated program engagement, they will coordinate and implement technical initiatives that expand and advance Mercy Corps’ regional food security platform and influence, working closely with regional leaders and HQ technical teams. They will contribute to strategy development, coordinate and implement strategy design sessions, craft and lead capacity building for teams working on resilience and food security across the region, and facilitate the production of high-impact communications and thought leadership. They will support country leaders to represent Mercy Corps’ technical approach to resilient food security. They will also serve as a focal point to participate in strategic regional food security and resilience fora and contribute to new program development.
Essential Job Functions
PROGRAM QUALITY, TECHNICAL SUPPORT AND CAPACITY BUILDING (50%)
- Participate as an active, integrated member of the regional team providing technical support to a portfolio of food security programs in countries including those in humanitarian and complex crisis environments.
- Proactively engage with program managers and technical focal points to ensure the quality and impact of the design and delivery of complex multi-sectoral food security and livelihood programming across both humanitarian and development contexts, with a particular focus on ensuring innovative quality approaches in nexus programming.
- Support effective interventions in food security programs using integrated approaches and applying systems thinking.
- Help maintain standards of program delivery that apply agency priorities and comply with relevant regulations and requirements.
- Help the country and program teams gather, refine, develop and disseminate tools such as training presentations and manuals, teaching notes, best practices and lessons learned, program examples, and monitoring and evaluation tools. Ensure these tools reflect Mercy Corps’ approaches to resilience, gender and youth as central cross-cutting dimensions of food security.
- Support an increased focus on resilience and gender in food security, livelihoods and Markets in Crisis programs, promoting evidence for integration of resilience, Market systems development and Financial Inclusion.
- Provide support across a range of complex multi-sectoral food security and livelihood programmes and initiatives focusing on one or more food security and livelihood approaches, including poverty graduation and social protection. Other themes could include gender within agrifood systems, Food security and livelihood in conflict settings, climate resilient food security and livelihoods, agro-ecological approaches for sustainable food security and livelihoods, last mile food market systems, early warning and anticipatory action.
- Provide technical oversight to relief and long-term food security and livelihood interventions in the region (including to assessments, project implementation, budget management, project documentation) in line with global sector frameworks, country strategies and donor requirements.
- Lead and/or provide significant support to program start-up for complex multi-sectoral food security and livelihood programs to ensure a livelihoods approach informs integrated assessments and analysis frameworks, theory of change refinement, and design of work plans and detailed implementation plans.
- Work closely with country leaders and program managers to identify and set team and partner capacity-building priorities, and coordinate and deliver tailored capacity building support visits and training workshops to better design and implement food security and livelihoods programs.
. - Keep abreast of new thinking, research and innovations in food security synthesize, and regularly communicate findings for country teams.
REGIONAL STRATEGY, THOUGHT LEADERSHIP AND REPRESENTATION (20%)
- Collaborate with regional and HQ leadership to design and oversee the application of Mercy Corps’ strategic regional vision to enhance resilient food security and livelihoods.
- Contribute to research, evaluation, and innovation projects in the food security and livelihood field to expand the knowledge base, promote a learning culture and identify new / enhanced approaches to amplify impact. Coordinate implementation of a regional research and learning agenda on resilient food security & livelihoods that advances frontier areas of research and learning and promotes Mercy Corps’ regional food security profile and platform, in close collaboration with the Global TSU and Research and Learning Teams.
- Drive a culture of learning between programs, countries, and technical teams through consistent sharing of evidence-based best practices and lessons learned.
- Contribute to regional food security and livelihood knowledge management and communications and to raising our external profile regionally, regularly sharing out findings and updates through appropriate internal and external channels.
- Represent Mercy Corps as in appropriate donor, learning and policy forums. Support country teams to identify and participate in opportunities for external representation and thought leadership, including by developing talking points and presentations.
- Facilitate information flow to Resource Development, Policy and Advocacy and regional and technical teams to drive our positioning and increase external visibility in resilient food security and livelihoods. ● Work with the Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) team at regional and country level to ensure that monitoring and evaluation of food security programs is practical and reflects Global best practices.
- Support new and ongoing programs with best practice advice and assistance on assessment, implementation, research, and evaluation needs.
- Conduct assessments; write case studies, learning documents, short articles, and blogs; and develop internal and external dissemination plans for all products.
- Lead and facilitate Food Security and livelihoods community of practice within the region to share lessons, best practices and enhance program impact through better collaboration and networking
STRATEGIC PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT (30%)
- Working closely with country teams, develop or support high quality concept notes and proposals to increase funding for food security programs.
- Source and document new ideas and innovations from within country programs, private sector partners, researchers and academics and link them with appropriate implementing partners and funding sources to begin to scale up ideas that are proven in programs.
- Contribute to a strong and regularly updated network of technical experts and consultants that can serve as additional deployable resources for program development.
Supervisory Responsibility: None
Accountability
Reports Directly To: Technical Director – Africa
Works Directly With: Resilience Technical Support Unit; Regional Technical Team; Country Directors/Directors of Program; program managers and country program teams; regional and HQ technical staff.
Accountability to Participants and Stakeholders
Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically to our program participants, community partners, other stakeholders, and to international standards guiding international relief and development work. We are committed to actively engaging communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring, and evaluation of our field projects.Knowledge and Experience
- Bachelor’s degree in international development, Food Security, Nutrition, or relevant field
- Five to seven years’ experience in resilience, food security and livelihood development programming in Africa is required. Additional experience in early recovery and/or emergency programming is a plus.
- Demonstrated experience with the application of a resilience approach in fragile contexts preferred.
- Demonstrated experience in leading and/or facilitating complex multi-sectoral assessment design processes, and translating analysis into program approaches.
- Demonstrated experience using M&E to improve program learning and adaptive management.
- Strong representation, networking, and facilitation skills.
- Proven ability to synthesize and communicate complex subjects/topics effectively to multi-stakeholder groups.
- Demonstrated ability to transfer knowledge to diverse audiences through training, mentoring, and other formal and non-formal methods.
- Ability to work both independently and collaboratively with a diverse geographically spread team.
- French fluency strongly preferred.
Success Factors
The successful candidate will apply a strong combination of program leadership and relationship-building abilities with an outstanding ability to work independently and contribute to innovation, influence and impact across a set of complex contexts and multi-sector programs. Deep curiosity, commitment and openness to new practices, concepts, ideas and change for continuous improvement will serve the candidate well. Flexibility and public relations skills are integral success factors in this position.
The successful Senior Advisor will have a sincere interest to see big picture trends through various systems lenses and roll up his/her sleeves to put theory into practice in partnership with program teams. S/he will have interest and ability to travel and work in remote environments and awareness of and sensitivity to multicultural international development/humanitarian work. Finally, s/he will have an ability to train and facilitate dialogue among a diverse group of individuals with various skill sets and working styles through innovative capacity building and facilitative techniques.
Living Conditions/Environmental Conditions
The position is ideally in one of Mercy Corps’ country office locations in Africa. It requires frequent travel (approximately 35%) to multiple project sites, at times over extended periods (2-3 weeks). When in the field the team member will need to be able to work in remote settings and possibly over weekends and/or evenings as required by the schedule
Mercy Corps Team members represent the agency both during and outside of work hours when deployed in a field posting or on a visit/TDY to a field posting. Team members are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner and respect local laws, customs and MC’s policies, procedures, and values at all times and in all in-country venues.
Ongoing Learning
In support of our belief that learning organizations are more effective, efficient and relevant to the communities we serve, we empower all team members to dedicate 5% of their time to learning activities that further their personal and/or professional growth and development
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
Achieving our mission begins with how we build our team and work together. Through our commitment to enriching our organization with people of different origins, beliefs, backgrounds, and ways of thinking, we are better able to leverage the collective power of our teams and solve the world’s most complex challenges. We strive for a culture of trust and respect, where everyone contributes their perspectives and authentic selves, reaches their potential as individuals and teams, and collaborates to do the best work of their lives.
We recognize that diversity and inclusion is a journey, and we are committed to learning, listening and evolving to become more diverse, equitable and inclusive than we are today.
Equal Employment Opportunity
Mercy Corps is an equal opportunity employer that does not tolerate discrimination on any basis. We actively seek out diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and skills so that we can be collectively stronger and have sustained global impact.
We are committed to providing an environment of respect and psychological safety where equal employment opportunities are available to all. We do not engage in or tolerate discrimination on the basis of race, color, gender identity, gender expression, religion, age, sexual orientation, national or ethnic origin, disability (including HIV/AIDS status), marital status, military veteran status or any other protected group in the locations where we work.
Safeguarding & Ethics
Mercy Corps is committed to ensuring that all individuals we come into contact with through our work, whether team members, community members, program participants or others, are treated with respect and dignity. We are committed to the core principles regarding prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse laid out by the UN Secretary General and IASC. We will not tolerate child abuse, sexual exploitation, abuse, or harassment by or of our team members. As part of our commitment to a safe and inclusive work environment, team members are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner, respect local laws and customs, and to adhere to Mercy Corps Code of Conduct Policiesand values at all times. Team members are required to complete mandatory Code of Conduct elearning courses upon hire and on an annual basis.