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

ABOUT WFP

The World Food Programme is the world’s largest humanitarian organization saving lives in emergencies and using food assistance to build a pathway to peace, stability and prosperity, for people recovering from conflict, disasters and the impact of climate change.

At WFP, people are at the heart of everything we do and the vision of the future WFP workforce is one of diverse, committed, skilled, and high performing teams, selected on merit, operating in a healthy and inclusive work environment, living WFP’s values (Integrity, Collaboration, Commitment, Humanity, and Inclusion) and working with partners to save and change the lives of those WFP serves.

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WHY JOIN WFP?

• WFP is a 2020 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.
• WFP offers a highly inclusive, diverse, and multicultural working environment.
• WFP invests in the personal & professional development of its employees through a range of training, accreditation, coaching, mentorship, and other programs as well as through internal mobility opportunities.
• A career path in WFP provides an exciting opportunity to work across the various country, regional and global offices around the world, and with passionate colleagues who work tirelessly to ensure that effective humanitarian assistance reaches millions of people across the globe.
• We offer an attractive compensation package (please refer to the Terms and Conditions section of this vacancy announcement).

JOB TITLE: Programme and Policy Officer (Resilience, Ecosystems & Community Infrastructure)

TYPE OF CONTRACT: SC8

UNIT/DIVISION: PRGR Climate & Resilience

DUTY STATION (city, Country): Nairobi, Kenya

DURATION: 1 year renewable

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE OF THE ASSIGNMENT:

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).

ACCOUNTABILITIES/RESPONSIBILITIES:

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.

2. Field Presence, Bootcamps & Capacity Strengthening

• 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.

3. Support to Country Office Programming & Operational Backstopping

• 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.

4. Monitoring, Quality Assurance & Evidence Generation

• 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.

5. Integration, Partnerships & Coordination

• 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.

6. Support to Resource Mobilisation

• 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.

7. Other Duties as Assigned

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