MSF Eastern Africa is looking for an Anthropology Unit Lead
Do your skills and experience not precisely match the requirements? At MSF EA, we strive to create a safe, diverse and inclusive workplace, recognizing the need to increase access to professional opportunities for historically underrepresented groups. If you’re interested in this position but your experience doesn’t align perfectly with the selection criteria, we encourage you to apply anyway. You might be the ideal candidate for this or other positions.
Firmly committed to safeguarding patients, community members, staff, and all those in contact with the organization from all forms of abuse, including sexual exploitation, abuse, and harassment (SEAH), we will take all necessary steps, through rigorous vetting processes, to ensure that confirmed perpetrators of abuse do not join the organization.
For this position, contact level with patients and children is categorized as Medium risk and will be monitored with this in regard.
Introduction
Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) is an international independent medical humanitarian organisation that provides assistance to people affected by conflicts, epidemics, and natural or human-made disasters and excluded from healthcare. We provide this assistance without discrimination, irrespective of race, religion, creed or political affiliation.
About MSF Eastern Africa
MSF Eastern Africa is the regional institutional office of MSF. It focuses on representation and networking, recruiting and supporting staff from the region, communications and fundraising, as well as working on other dossiers of importance to MSF such as Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), Data Protection, mutualization, training, medical operational support and environmental health.
Rationale/Objective for Position
The Anthropology Unit Lead is responsible for establishing and leading the Anthropology Unit within MSF East Africa. This role is central to building trust and acceptance with the communities we serve by designing programs, tools, and approaches that deepen understanding of social and cultural dynamics. By embedding anthropological insights into operations, the Unit Lead will strengthen MSF’s commitment to a more people‑centered approach, ensuring that humanitarian interventions are contextually appropriate, culturally sensitive, and ethically sound. The unit will play a transversal role to contribute to MSF becoming a more people‑centered organization.
This position will be hierarchically and functionally accountable to Executive Manager.
Tasks & Responsibilities
Strategic Responsibilities
- Actively participate in the development and review of the overall organizational strategy.
- Develop, review, and implement Anthropology Unit strategy.
- Contribute to organization-wide strategies and processes to advance MSFs thematic and operational priorities, its methodological approaches, and values for strong community engagement strategies.
- Providing socio-cultural and situational analysis to guide operational decisions, humanitarian access, and program design.
- Develop and Implement more people centric and community led approach systems and activities.
- Build knowledge within the movement to contribute to organization learning.
Technical and Operational Responsibilities
Anthropology Unit positioning, operationalization and management
- Positioning the Anthropology Unit as a technical support platform for MSF operational missions in the region.
- Develop and implement the Anthropology Unit framework and applicable approaches in relation to MSF field operations.
- Establish and build the structure and the capacities of the Unit.
- Identify key areas of interest and develop pertinent links and partnerships with operations across other MSF entities in the region and globally.
- Contribute to organizational decision-making through formal and informal engagement, especially through participation in leadership meetings and cross-organizational working groups.
- External networking and partnerships
Program development and operations support.
- Support and advise the operations teams during the conception, implementation and monitoring of medical and paramedical projects.
- Continuously consolidate information on local knowledge and practices during emergencies/crises to enable productive dialogue and accommodation between affected individuals, groups and communities, and field operation teams.
- Support the operations teams on context and security analysis and management.
- Organize, conduct, and facilitate field visits and intersectional forums wherever and whenever it is necessary across MSF units and sections.
- Contribute to missions and prepare mission reports for implementation and dissemination.
- Provide rapid social/situational analysis during emergencies, outbreaks, and humanitarian crises.
Build knowledge and learning promotion.
- Conduct field capitalization, operational research on thematic and emerging areas relevant to medical and paramedical projects/programs across MSF.
- Initiate and contribute to collaborative programs for enhancing innovation, new interventions, and leadership in emerging areas of humanitarian interest across the movement.
- Facilitate dissemination of research results, learnings and best practices through internal and external platforms including publication.
- Collect, analyze, and update cognitive material related to MSF missions in East African.
- Identify relevant stakeholders, actors in anthropology applied to the humanitarian context.
- Develop, plan, and facilitate trainings for the Unit’s and other sections as may be needed.
- Build, manage and update the Unit’s database.
- Assist in creating and refining research question(s) as base of developing rigorous concept note and study protocols.
- Ensure that the methodologies chosen are adequate and appropriate to the research question.
- Draft or review study documents to ensure adherence to MSF Ethics Review Board (ERB) guidance and requirements for ethical review.
- Provide technical support and guidance to Principal Investigator(s) and research team at large, strengthening their research skills.
- Provide editorial and writing support of OR outputs: assist in writing manuscripts, research or policy briefs, and other outputs related to OR.
- Data analysis: Provide direct support to ensure appropriate data management, solid data analysis, and theoretical interpretation of findings, including statistical analysis where applicable, based on reflexivity, positionality, and acquired theoretical knowledge on the specific topic.
- Support the sharing of research findings, both internally and externally, including publications and presentations at conferences/workshops.
Transversal and intersectional capacity strengthening and contribution.
- Formulate effective interventions for impactful responses while building local capacity for community engagement and local health promotion.
- Participate, support, advice and foster strategic engagement and partnership with other relevant Units, sections, and operational missions.
- Engage in transversal and intersectional information-sharing and lesson learning on key policy and strategy issues and contribute to building synergies across programmes and Sections.
Other Responsibilities
Ubuntu support:
- Offer support to the Head of Community Engagement in their implementation of the Community Engagement across the project portfolio. All support to be agreed with the Head of Community Engagement before any activities are delivered.
- field visits to Ubuntu projects as per request
Others:
- Lead, mentor, coach and supervise staff in the Anthropology Unit.
- Develop annual plans and budgets for the Anthropology Unit.
- Develop and supervise terms of reference for consultants and short-term experts as may be needed.
- Organize, contribute to, and facilitate thematic communities of practice in the region and across the MSF movement
- Ensure accurate integration of EDI & Safeguarding aspects into all policies and practices within the unit.
- Recognize, respond, and document any form of abuse or inappropriate behavior and alert the safeguarding unit of any suspected potential abuse.
- Compliance Assurance – Ensure that all data processing activities within the unit comply with relevant data protection laws and regulations in your area of operation, including the Data Protection Act, 2019 and support your team to receive necessary training in this area.
- Policy Adherence – Enforce data protection policies, procedures, and guidelines within the unit, ensuring that all team members are aware of and adhere to these protocols.
- Proactively participate in the individual performance management process including objective setting, performance monitoring and performance evaluation.
- Recognize and reinforce strong performance in the Anthropology unit; identify and encourage improvement where needed; and ensure quality and timely performance management process is carried out for the Anthropology unit.