The Ugandan Jobline

Job Title:    Programme Policy Officer (Nutrition)

Organization: United Nations World Food Programme (WFP)

Duty Station: Uganda

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 United 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.

Job Summary:  The Programme Policy Officer (Nutrition) will provide leadership as nutrition activity lead for Karamoja Area Office in addition to supporting policy and nutrition programme activities that effectively meet nutritional needs of the people that WFP serves in Karamoja Region.

The Nutritionist will be dedicated to all aspects of WFP nutrition programme portfolio in Karamoja to facilitate its smooth-running and ultimate success and will play a pivotal role in ensuring a high level of coordination, collaboration and joint implementation with the WFP cooperating partners, DLGs, and other partners, to achieve effective implementation.  The nutritionist will also monitor WFP’s partners performance to ensure maximum programme impact.

The incumbent is expected to operate with a high degree of independence and to manage junior staff to ensure that programme and policy objectives are achieved in full.  He/she will be involved in a wide variety of programme and policy activities and analytical work, some of which may be of a considerable complexity in addition to contributing to performance improvement, and ensure the effective and efficient deployment of nutrition assistance programmes and use of allocated resources.

Key Duties and Responsibilities:  

Strategy

• Actively contribute to the development of nutrition projects and activities, plans and processes, ensuring alignment with wider nutrition policies and guidance.
• Research and analyse a range of policy and operational issues to inform the development of policies, programmes and activities.
• Lead the Area Office context analysis and nutrition portfolio strategy definition.
• Develop and update Area Office strategy and ensure the sustainability of the programme outcomes.
• Ensure the Area Office nutrition strategy complements and integrate other programme activities to support the development of advocacy and communication strategies that complete the nutrition strategy.
• Promote WFP nutrition policies, guidelines and protocols.
• Collect and update information on nutrition indicators, actors and activities in Karamoja sub-region for analysis and identification of gaps and needs, potential areas of scale-up, partners or stakeholders and priority activities.
• Identify potential funding and partnership opportunities to scale up nutrition and support development of donor proposals.

Programme Design, Management and Implementation

• Provide project management support to specific and defined nutrition activities, ensuring a co-ordinated approach with other programmes that complies with WFP standards and procedures.
• Ensure that the nutrition programme activities are implemented with the utmost quality, and are well harmonised across different programmes and bases, and that implementation of planned activities is done in a timely manner.
• Ensure that cross-cutting issues (gender, social and behaviour change communication, social protection, accountability to affected populations, etc.) are well-integrated and mainstreamed in nutrition activities, in coordination and consultation with Area Office programme activity leads.
• Manage changes to the nutrition programme scope, schedule and costs and ensure required amendments are executed in a timely manner.
• Develop and coordinate data gathering, analysis and monitoring systems to ensure generation of evidence of impact of the nutrition programme and that rigorous quality standards are maintained.
• Provide high quality input into data analysis and report writing, including publication of manuscripts and other nutrition knowledge management products.
• Develop lessons learned by documenting good practices and success stories.
• Track and analyse data to provide input into reporting activities and contribute to the preparation of accurate and timely reporting on nutrition activities that enables informed decision making and consistency of information presented to stakeholders.
• Support the development of donor reporting and updates as needed.
• Support the capacity building of WFP staff, partners and district local governments to prepare for and respond to nutrition needs.
• Ensure close activity oversight and monitoring of WFP project areas, distribution sites and centres.
• Conduct due diligence of cooperating partners technical and financial reports to ensure high quality.
• Identify high risk areas requiring special attention and/or support from the Country Office.
• Guide and supervise junior staff, acting as a point of referral while ensuring development of a cohesive, innovative and high performing team.
• Act in an assigned emergency response capacity as required to meet emergency food assistance needs.

Partnership and Coordination

• Participate in coordination meetings with external stakeholders in the Karamoja Nutrition and Health sector, working group and/or task forces. If needed, expand to other sectors such as Food Security, WASH, etc.
• Support the identification of potential partners and partnership negotiations to ensure a collaborative and holistic approach to meeting nutrition needs of the people in Karamoja.
• Develop and sustain liaison with international and local NGOs, UN agencies, civil societies, communities and people that we serve, other partners and media engaged in the field of food security.
• Liaise with internal and external counterparts to ensure effective collaboration, monitor ongoing projects and highlight potential risks to nutrition programme delivery.
• Coordinate with Country Office (CO) team on guidance and direction for the wider WFP Uganda nutrition programme, programme shift, and policy.

Budget & Fund Management

• Monitor nutrition programme activity budget spending in line with spending plan and ensure diligence in funds utilisation including timely spending and value for money.
• Ensure high quality financial reporting and compliance, including spot checks and audits as appropriate.
• Support and review CP expenditure plans, invoicing and financial reporting

Qualifications, Skills and Experience:

• The applicant for the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) Programme Policy Officer (Nutrition) job should hold an advanced University degree, or University degree with experience and training/courses, in one or more of the following disciplines: Nutrition, Public Health, Food Technology, Medicine or other relevant field.
• Ten years (or equivalent in years) demonstrated post graduate experience in implementation of nutrition, public health, food security programmes in the deep field and in a leadership role. Experience developing partnerships in nutrition and working with multiple stakeholders with varying viewpoints and agendas.  Experience with Behaviour Change Communication for improving nutrition outcomes.  Additionally, extensive experience implementing technical programmes especially in the areas of community development, decentralisation processes, capacity strengthening including policy discussions and decisions.
• Experience in monitoring and evaluation tools and processes, reporting and budget management. Experience in undertaking situational and risk analysis to inform effective nutrition programme delivery and strategy direction.
• Experience in leading teams to ensure effective delivery of objectives.
• Demonstration experience and knowledge of complex emergency operations including design and delivery of development programmes.
• Demonstrated experience in vendor, government, partner negotiation in support of broad functions or requirements.

Competencies:

• Knowledge of Nutrients: Ability to utilise knowledge of vitamins and nutrients to understand the causes of malnutrition, the relationships between the different types of malnutrition, ability to articulate the UNICEF conceptual model in additon to a clear understanding of nutrition-sensitive programming and food systems thinking.
• Situation Analysis and Evidence Assessment: Ability to appropriately interpret the nutrition situation and data, analyse primary causes of malnutrition, define limitations to the analysis (e.g. seasonality) and prepare an overview of the food security and nutrition situation in Karamoja sub-region drawing in strong data analytics, monitoring and
• Knowledge of Public Health: Posses foundational knowledge of the core public health sciences (i.e., biostatistics, epidemiology, social science, environmental health, and prevention of chronic and infectious disease and injury) in order to assess Karamoja sub-region health situation.
• Knowledge of Food Systems: Ability to analyse how food systems influence the diets of vulnerable groups and identify how and where food systems may contribute to specific nutrient gaps.
• Applying Programme & Policy Standards: Ability to leverage nutrition knowledge to provide technical advice to governments to design and implement nutrition programmes in Karamoja that follow international and WFP agency standards and guidance. Understanding and prior experience working in the region is an asset

NB: Female applicants and qualified applicants from developing countries are especially encouraged to apply. WFP has zero tolerance for discrimination and does not discriminate on the basis of HIV/AIDS status.

How to Apply:

All suitably qualified candidates who wish to join the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) are encouraged to apply online at the link below

Click Here

Deadline: 2^nd December 2021

For more of the latest jobs, please visit https://www.theugandanjobline.com or find us on our facebook page https://www.facebook.com/UgandanJobline

Related Jobs