VACANCY TITLE Junior Program Officer, Africa Regional Office

LOCATION Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire or Rotterdam, The Netherlands

INTENSITY Full time 

ANTICIPATED START DATE As soon as possible

APPLICATION DEADLINE 31 01 2022; 5pm CET

ABOUT GCA

The Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) is an international organization that works as a solutions broker to catalyse action and support for adaptation solutions, from the international to the local, in partnership with the public and private sector, to ensure we learn from each other and work together for a climate resilient future. Adapting to impacts of climate change provides a “win-win” for livelihoods, food security, water supply, health, security and economic growth. The work of GCA elevates the visibility and political importance of climate adaptation and facilitates solutions, such as smarter investments, new technologies and better planning to become more resilient to climate-related threats. GCA is a rapidly growing organization with offices in Abidjan, Beijing, Dhaka, Groningen, and Rotterdam.

GCA has an ambitious 2020-2025 business plan with three pillars:

• Programs and Action: Food Security; Using Nature for more resilient infrastructure; Water for Urban Growth and Resilience; Climate Finance; Youth Leadership
• Knowledge Acceleration: Building adaptation knowledge globally through cutting edge products such as the State and Trends in Adaptation Report and the Knowledge Exchange Platform
• Agenda Setting and Advocacy: Formulating policy messages to move the global, regional, and local adaptation agendas forward.

GCA’s work program in Africa is of paramount importance. All the components of GCA’s Business Plan must succeed to support changing the momentum and pace of adaptation in Africa. Guiding GCA’s program in Africa is the Africa-owned and Africa-led Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program (AAAP), co-created with the African Development Bank Group (AfDB) to implement the vision of the Africa Adaptation Initiative to support African countries on key adaptation initiatives.

The AAAP is contributing to closing Africa’s adaptation gap and supporting African countries to make a transformational shift in their development pathways by putting climate adaptation and resilience at the center of their critical growth-oriented and inclusive policies, programs, and institutions. It is scaling up successful initiatives fundamental to African nations’ economic development, and prosperity for women and men. The four pillars of the are: Climate Smart Digital Technologies for Agriculture and Food Security, the Africa Infrastructure Resilience Accelerator, Empowering Youth through Jobs and Entrepreneurship, and Innovative Financial Initiatives for Africa.

The AAAP will contribute to closing Africa’s adaptation gap, support African countries to make a transformational shift in their development pathways by putting climate adaptation and resilience at the center of their critical growth-oriented and inclusive policies, programs, and institutions. It will scale up successful initiatives fundamental to African nations’ economic development, and prosperity for women and men. It will take promising ideas and early-state programs to a regional and continental scale by developing and scaling up science-based solutions. It aims to achieve a balanced regional coverage to promote socio-economic development and poverty reduction in African countries through prioritized regional and continental initiatives implemented over the short, medium, and long term, setting the first targets for 2025. The identified four pillars of the AAAP include the following: Climate Smart Digital Technologies for Agriculture and Food Security, Infrastructure Resilience Accelerator, Empowering Youth through Jobs and Entrepreneurship, Innovative Financial Initiatives for Africa.

ABOUT THE ROLE

Profile

GCA seeks a Junior Program Officer who will work directly with, and report to the Regional Director for Africa. The candidate will also provide administrative support to the running of the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program (AAAP) as well as to the different pillar leads of the AAAP Program in an administrative capacity.

Areas of responsibility

Operations

• Provide direct administrative support to the Africa Regional Director, setting up internal and external meetings, recording notes from key meetings with external partners, and having these records filed on GCA shared filing system
• Provide operational and administrative support for the AAAP including taking stock of program implementation updates, milestones, and overall program tracking in collaboration with the pillar leads

Programmatic Support

• Conducting basic research to inform the AAAP program as at when requested
• Providing research on topics as input to briefing documents, presentations, articles and blogposts for the Regional Director and the Program team leads as requested
• Produce weekly reports on the implementation of the AAAP

Information Management and Storage

• Collect and input data relevant to different pillars of the AAAP as needed and compiling and storing these in an efficient manner for use by the Regional Director or Pillar leads
• Drafting correspondence to partners and external stakeholders and preparing presentations under the direction of the Regional Director

Events and logistics Support

• Support in organizing regional meetings, events and workshops from the inception to the closing phases, including providing key research to inform the design of the meeting, administrative support to meeting participants including travel (for physical events) in liaison with the Finance teams, preparing letters of invitation and recording meeting proceedings as input to the reports
• Perform any additional tasks as requested