National Land Cover and GIS Specialist (TCP/SFW/4008)

Organizational Setting

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) contributes to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals 2030 through FAO’s Strategic Framework 2022-31 by supporting transformations to a more efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable agri-food system, for a Better production, Better nutrition, Better environment and a Better life, leaving no one behind.

The FAO Sub-Regional office for West Africa (SFW) is responsible for developing, promoting and implementing FAO agreed strategies to help countries and sub-regional organizations address food security, nutrition, agriculture and rural development priorities in West Africa. The Office has a multidisciplinary team of technical experts, in agriculture, forestry, fisheries, land and water, and pastoralism, who provide technical support to the 15 member countries of ECOWAS in their fight against poverty and the promotion of food and nutritional security; as well as to a wider 17 member countries of the Inter-State Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS) in strengthening the resilience of the Sahel countries.
The TCP/SFW/4008 project, titled “Enhancing Regional Technical Capacities for Sustainable Land Monitoring and Development”, was designed to strengthen the capacity and knowledge for land monitoring using a common framework in West Africa.

The post is located in Accra, Ghana.

Reporting Lines

The incumbent will work under the overall guidance of the FAO Representative, the direct supervision of the Assistant-FAOR and the technical guidance of the Technical Officer of the Geospatial Unit in the Land and Water division (NSL). When activities are carried out in country, the incumbent will be required to work in close collaboration with the FAO Representation in the relevant country of assignment and the FAO Sub-regional Office for West Africa (SFW).

Technical Focus

Land Cover/Geographic Information Systems/Remote Sensing.

Tasks and responsibilities

• Assist in the regional coordination of land cover land use related activities under the project Enhancing Regional Technical Capacities for Sustainable Land Monitoring and Development (TCP/SFW/4008) for activities to be implemented in Ghana.
  
• Under the technical guidance from the international land monitoring expert, provide technical support to sharing knowledge and expertise in the fields of GIS and Remote Sensing and assist organizing and implementing the regional project activities, including organizing meetings with regional experts and the regional workshop, the field data collection under the LoA with the service provider;
  
• Ensure appropriate documentation and archiving of all technical documentation and project related information for archiving, reporting, monitoring and evaluation of project activities;
  
• Provide support to international consultant in undertaking a need and gap assessment on land cover and land use by collecting the existing datasets, organizing meetings with national partners and stakeholders in support to national and international statistical requirements as well as specific sectoral purposes e.g., land restoration, planning, land suitability;
  
• Support organizing regular meetings with international consultant every two weeks or every month with national and regional stakeholders to develop/enhance technical networks on land cover;
  
• Support raising awareness and knowledge sharing among regional decision makers on use of land monitoring for sustainable development by engaging national / regional stakeholders;
  
• Provide support in organizing training/workshops at regional and national level in collaboration with stakeholders on for the implementation of West African land cover reference system;
  
• Provide technical assistance for national land cover legends development according the regional schema;
  
• Support the design and development of the training programs and materials along with international consultant on the land cover for West Africa;
  
• Contribute to the development of technical guidance documents on land monitoring (including field, remote sensing and analysis);
  
• Support the design of the field data collection sample strategy to conduct field data collection and train the surveyors with the international consultant;
  
• Provide daily support in the field data collection campaign in Ghana;
  
• Provide support in satellite imagery classification into land cover according to the national legend of Ghana;
  
• Provide daily support to the project technical working group for land cover land use data preparation;
  
• Provide technical support to develop land cover dataset for Ghana (based on available free imagery and geospatial tools and platforms including SEPAL/GEE).
  
• Populate FAO Land Cover Legend Registry (LCLR) with newly created national and local land cover products to ensure data availability and sharing.
  
• Assist in any other tasks under the project.

CANDIDATES WILL BE ASSESSED AGAINST THE FOLLOWING

Minimum Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Agricultural, GIS, Geography, Environmental Sciences or a closely related technical field. Master's degree is an asset.
  
• At least 5 years of relevant experience in spatial data handling and analysis, satellite data processing and management, GIS and remote sensing applications; and
  
• Working knowledge of English (level C). Knowledge of French is an advantage.
  
• National of Ghana

FAO Core Competencies

• Results Focus
  
• Teamwork
  
• Communication
  
• Building Effective Relationships
  
• Knowledge Sharing and Continuous Improvement

Selection Criteria

• Work experience in programming languages such as R and Python for GIS/RS; 
  
• Work experience in international organizations and in projects supporting developing countries 
  
• Work experience on satellite image analysis, geospatial data and metadata management and processing 
  
• Work experience on cloud-computing platforms (e.g. SEPAL, Google Earth Engine) 
  
• Work experience on batch-scripting for data processing, geo-statistical packages for automatic classifications 
  
• Work experience on capacity development and knowledge transfer on GIS/RS 
  
• Familiarity with the tools of FAO’s Land Cover Classification System (LCCS) standard 
  
• Preferably limited knowledge (level B) of French and English.
  
• Capacity to report results to different audiences.
  

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION