Programme and Policy Officer (Resilience, Ecosystems & Community Infrastructure), SC-8

The World Food Programme (WFP) is the world’s largest humanitarian organization, saving lives in emergencies and building pathways to resilience, stability and sustainable food systems for people affected by conflict, climate shocks and environmental degradation.

Across Eastern and Southern Africa, climate variability, advancing land degradation and chronic water scarcity continue to erode the foundations of rural livelihoods and food security outcomes—particularly in drylands, where arid and semi‑arid landscapes are highly exposed to climate shocks and where food insecurity is recurring. Degraded ecosystems, weak watershed management and insufficient community infrastructure reduce the capacity of households and local institutions to absorb shocks and recover sustainably. These pressures disproportionately affect food-insecure populations, including women, and pastoral communities, whose food security depend directly on fragile natural resources.

Yet degraded land, and drylands in particular, also hold significant potential. With the right investments in land restoration, water harvesting, and community infrastructure, these landscapes can recover rapidly, rebuild productive capacity, strengthen food and nutrition security, and generate inclusive livelihood opportunities. WFP’s resilience programming leverages this potential to transform vulnerability into long-term, climate-smart development gains, with the objective of reducing acute food insecurity, malnutrition and dependence on humanitarian assistance.

WFP’s resilience and livelihoods portfolio increasingly emphasizes land restoration, regenerative land management practices (including but not limited to soil and water conservation), community infrastructure, and nature-based solutions as core strategies to stabilize degraded landscapes, reduce acute food insecurity, and strengthen adaptive capacities in line with WFP’s Strategic Objective 2 (SO2) to reduce humanitarian needs.

The SC8 Resilience, Ecosystems, and Community Infrastructure will help strengthen the design and implementation of food for assets (FFA) field-level activities, , support participatory planning, and provide technical guidance for watershed management, water harvesting systems,  rangeland regeneration, and small-scale community infrastructure to ensure that asset creation contributes to improved food security outcomes and reduced reliance on humanitarian assistance. The incumbent will work closely with programme teams (such as nutrition, homegrown school feeding, adaptive social protection), engineering colleagues, government extension services, and cooperating partners to ensure high-quality, inclusive resilience interventions - at scale. The role contributes to enabling vulnerable populations to better anticipate, absorb and recover from shocks, thereby preventing the escalation of food security crises and supporting sustainable recovery pathways.

Given that the Team also covers interventions aimed at nurturing skills for livelihood opportunities, the Officer will also provide technical and programmatic support to their design, quality assurance and roll-out across Country Offices (COs).

The role is primarily focused on providing technical support and capacity strengthening to Country Offices. Working under the supervision of the Team Lead Resilience & Livelihoods, the incumbent will perform the following responsibilities:

1. Support Country Offices on Food for Assets, ecosystem restoration, community infrastructure, Soil and Water Conservation (SWC)

• Support field officers, partners and practitioners in the design of ecosystem restoration and community infrastructure interventions at watershed level, ensuring alignment with food security objectives and resilience outcomes for vulnerable populations, applying regenerative design principles to restore the hydrological cycle, soil health and fertility.

• Provide hands-on technical guidance on regenerative land management practices as part of resilience-building interventions aimed at improving food security and reducing vulnerability to shocks. This includes half-moons, contour bunds, terraces, zai/tassa pits, infiltration trenches, stone bunds, check-dams / gabions, soil sedimentation dams, and other good practices in Natural Resource Management (NRM).

• Support alignment of activities with socio-environmental assessments and nature-based solutions.

• Support Country Offices in developing planning and reporting templates, and technical guidelines tailored to country contexts.

• Support technical bootcamps and field trainings on watershed restoration, SWC, and community infrastructure.

• Provide on-the-job coaching to Cooperating Partners (CPs), field monitors, and community groups.

• Support development of practical training materials, manuals, and field guidance linked to FFA and resilience programming objectives.

• Facilitate community planning using community-based participatory planning or similar methodologies.

• Support in technical backstopping to Field Offices on design, targeting, sequencing, and monitoring of resilience activities ensuring alignment with food security and nutrition objectives and outcomes.

• Support the integration of natural resource management, land restoration, and ecological regeneration within food systems, school feeding, nutrition, social protection, and climate services to strengthen resilience and reduce food insecurity and malnutrition.

• Provide technical inputs on linkages between community assets, post-harvest management, and market-based solutions with a focus on improving food security and resilience outcomes.

• Review partner proposals, workplans, and designs for technical coherence.

• Support organization of regional meetings, bootcamps, workshops and webinars with COs to review progress on ecosystem restoration, community infrastructure and livelihood skills interventions, strengthen collaboration and improve knowledge-sharing across the region and within the Global HQ Livelihoods, Infrastructures and Regenerative Practices team.

• Support coordination of annual FFA and livelihood skills interventions planning and reporting exercises with COs, ensuring coherence of planning figures, quality control, and timely updates in collaboration with global focal points.

• Contribute to the country-office planning and reporting process together with COs and the global team, ensuring high-quality and timely submissions.

• Conduct regular field monitoring missions to assess progress and quality.

• Support monitoring and evaluation (M&E) and field teams to collect biophysical, GPS/GIS and geospatial monitoring data.

• Document lessons learned, cost-efficiency insights, and case studies, including contributions to reducing food insecurity and humanitarian needs.

• Contribute to evaluation exercises, donor reporting and evidence products.

• Strengthen coordination across WFP units including engineering, Vulnerability Assessment and Mapping (PRGF), nutrition, school feeding and social protection.

• Support engagement with local authorities, line ministries and community structures to align with national watershed and natural resources management plans.

• Contribute to the development of partnerships with universities, applied research institutions and NGOs for nursery development, seed sourcing and restoration.

• Support MoUs, expert rosters and capacity-building partnerships as needed.

• Enhance collaboration with the Asset Impact Monitoring from Space (AIMS) tool (remote sensing analysis) and support the use and integration of AIMS services across the region.

• Work closely with the Environmental and Social Safeguards (ESS) team to ensure that ESS  are mainstreamed and applied throughout the ecosystem restoration, community infrastructure and livelihood skills interventions project cycles.

• Provide technical inputs to concept notes and donor proposals related to ecosystems, SWC, NRM, and community infrastructure.

• Prepare technical annexes, maps, and evidence for donor visibility.

• Support additional field missions, emergency-related infrastructure work, or cross-unit collaboration as required, including in support of emergency response and early recovery efforts.

• At least 2 years of progressively responsible experience in programme implementation related to food security, resilience, disaster risk reduction, or natural resource management, including ecosystem restoration, watershed management, land degradation control, or related fields.

• Demonstrated field-experience implementing SWC structures, water harvesting, or community infrastructure, ideally through participatory approaches and community mobilisation.

• Experience supporting programme implementation and operationalizing programmatic policies related to food security, resilience, disaster risk reduction, and/or social protection, including asset creation and community-based approaches; Ideally with a focus on fragile, dryland and/or drought-prone contexts.

• Good technical understanding of resilience-building approaches, including natural resource management, land rehabilitation, community infrastructure, and their role in improving food security and reducing vulnerability. Experience in designing and conducting community infrastructure/land rehabilitation works would be a plus.

• Field experience with ecosystem restoration, community infrastructure and livelihood skills interventions planning and reporting processes, and contributing to regional knowledge-generation products, is an asset.

• Writing and oral communication, facilitation and training skills.

Advanced university degree (Master or equivalent) in Natural Resource Management, Environmental Science, Civil/Environmental Engineering, or related fields, or First University Degree with additional years of related work experience and/or trainings/courses.

Working knowledge of English (proficiency/level C) is a must. Intermediate knowledge or proficiency in French (level B or C) would be a plus.