About the job
DRC is seeking a highly motivated and experienced Anticipatory Action (AA) Project Manager, based
in Mogadishu, to lead and coordinate anticipatory action programming in Somalia. The position will
serve as the Project Manager and national lead for the AHEAD project, providing strategic, technical,
and operational leadership to ensure high-quality implementation and alignment with DRC’s global
AA strategy.
Your main duties and responsibilities will be:
1. Management and Coordination
- Serve as the national technical focal point for Anticipatory Action (AA), ensuring alignment with
DRC’s global AA strategy, country priorities, and donor requirements. - Coordinate closely with national, regional, and global AA teams to integrate anticipatory action
across DRC’s broader programmatic strategies and contribute to cross-fertilization of learning. - Facilitate awareness, understanding, and uptake of AA approaches across sectors and among
key stakeholders, including government authorities, UN agencies, local partners, and community
structures, with specific emphasis on the reliable use of the AHEAD displacement forecasting - Actively engage in existing AA coordination platforms and technical working groups (including
National Technical Working Groups on Anticipatory Action) and support the establishment of new
coordination mechanisms where needed, promoting harmonized AA approaches and implementation standards. - Ensure strong visibility and representation of DRC’s AA portfolio within humanitarian coordination
platforms, including the Humanitarian Country Team (HCT) and relevant clusters, seeking formal
endorsement of AA frameworks by the HCT or equivalent body - Serve as the field focal point for AA activities in Mogadishu, Belet-Hawa, and Jalalaqsi, ensuring
coherence between national strategy and field implementation.
- Implementation and Technical Oversight
• Lead the design, development, and implementation of anticipatory action plans, including
readiness actions, anticipatory actions, trigger mechanisms, and evidence-generation
frameworks, using a localization-focused and a participatory and bottom-up approach.
• Oversee anticipatory action systems strengthening, including early warning systems, trigger
development, and operational AA plans, in close collaboration with duty bearers and in-country
partners, ensuring implementation adheres to critical humanitarian principles, including
impartiality and neutrality.
• Provide technical leadership and operational oversight for all AA project activities, ensuring timely,
high-quality, and compliant implementation in line with approved project plans and donor
requirements. This includes integrating conflict sensitivity throughout the program cycle to ensure
a ‘do no harm’ approach and mitigate the risk of unintentionally fueling conflict.
• Supervise the rollout of anticipatory and protection activities, ensuring strong community
engagement, accountability, protection mainstreaming, and quality assurance, guided by Age,
Gender, and Diversity Mainstreaming (AGDM) principles
• Coordinate closely with emergency response and preparedness teams to ensure anticipatory
actions are fully integrated into broader emergency preparedness and response frameworks and
linking AHEAD to existing development and peace frameworks.
• In the event of trigger activation, lead or support operational oversight of AA implementation,
ensuring rapid delivery and robust monitoring and evidence generation.
• Systematically consolidate, triangulate, and analyse information on shocks using data from
monitoring networks, social media tracking, and partner updates to support early warning, trigger
activation, and anticipatory planning, including contributing to H2R (Hard-to-Reach) analyses to
inform access strategies for vulnerable segments. - Capacity Building, Technical Support, and Learning
• Provide ongoing technical assistance and capacity strengthening to DRC country teams and local
partners on anticipatory action concepts, including forecast-based planning, anticipatory finance,
and operational delivery.
• Work closely with the Evidence, Knowledge, and Learning (EKL) team to ensure that data, risk
analysis, and displacement forecasting models are effectively applied to AA decision-making and
contribute to evidence-based adaptive programming.
• Support global and regional analysts to monitor and analyze disaster risk and displacement data,
ensuring that triggers and forecasts remain relevant to evolving field realities and integrating
community-level indicators to ground truth AHEAD model predictions with local observations.
• Capture, document, and disseminate lessons learned and best practices from AA
implementation, contributing to national, regional, and global learning, advocacy, and policy
influence including developing resources and tools for replication by local organizations - Business Development and Advocacy
• Contribute to the development of funding proposals and concept notes for anticipatory action
initiatives in collaboration with country teams and donor engagement units.
• Represent DRC in national and, as required, regional AA forums, advocating for anticipatory action
as an effective and cost-efficient humanitarian response approach, using robust evidence
generated from pilots regarding cost-efficiency and benefits on humanitarian needs (food,
protection)
• Work closely with advocacy and policy teams to influence national policies and promote the
institutionalization of anticipatory action within government systems and humanitarian planning
frameworks, promoting AA as a clear contribution to AUC’s wider peacebuilding and conflict
management agenda where applicable
• Secure further financing for the pooled anticipatory action fund established under AHEAD,
leveraging the seed funding to expand pre-arranged anticipatory finance capacity - Reporting, Communication, and Coordination
• Ensure timely, accurate, and high-quality reporting on AA activities in line with donor,
organizational, and internal requirements.
• Maintain strong communication with field and country focal points to track progress, address
implementation challenges, and ensure alignment across locations.
• Provide regular technical guidance and support to field teams and partners, ensuring clear
understanding of AA objectives, triggers, and implementation responsibilities. - Budget Management and Accountability
• As Program Manager, monitor expenditures against approved budgets for assigned projects,
proactively mitigating risks related to over- or underspending.
• Liaise with support functions, including Finance, Supply Chain, and Human Resources—to
ensure timely availability of information for Program Monthly Meetings and decision-making.
• Hold overall responsibility and accountability for quality delivery of AA project outputs, ensuring
compliance with donor rules and DRC standards, and escalating risks and challenges to the
Senior Management Team as required. Ensure adherence to fraud and corruption mitigation
strategies, including conducting due diligence on local partners.
