VACANCY TITLE Junior Program Officer, Climate Smart Digital Technologies for Agriculture and Food Security

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 catalyze action and support for adaptation solutions, from the international to the local, in partnership with the public and private sector, to ensure shared learning and collaboration for a climate resilient future. Adapting to impacts of climate change provides a “win-win” for health, livelihoods, food security, water supply, human 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 centre 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 AAAP 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 Climate Smart Digital Technologies for Agriculture and Food Security pillar of the AAAP has as its objective, to scale up access to climate-smart digital technologies and associated data-driven agricultural and financial services to at least 30 million farmers in Africa, supporting agriculture and food security across 26 countries. It will provide support to investments in African agriculture by supporting the integration of smallholder farmers into digitally enabled agri food systems. Through its blueprint to scale up Digital Climate Advisory Services (DCAS) it seeks to empower millions of farmers and local agribusinesses to become more resilient. In parallel, it will implement proof of concepts in several countries to demonstrate how advisories and associated services can be scaled up to benefit millions of farmers as primary users.

ABOUT THE ROLE

Profile

GCA seeks a dynamic individual to fill the role of Junior Program Officer in the Climate Smart Digital Technologies for Agriculture and Food Security Pillar of the AAAP. The individual will report to the Lead of the Climate Smart Digital Technologies for Agriculture and Food Security Pillar. S/he, while working closely with other pillar leads and program colleagues, will play a key role in achieving the goal and objectives of the Climate Smart Digital Technologies for Agriculture and Food Security pillar.

Areas of responsibility

The Junior Program Officer for the Climate Smart Digital Technologies for Agriculture and Food Security pillar will conduct the following:

Programmatic Support

• Contribute to the technical conceptual development on data-enabled and digital technologies in programs and projects jointly implemented by GCA and partners that can accelerate adaptation for smallholders and contribute to resilient value chains (such as digital climate-informed advisory services and climate index insurance products).
• Work with AfDB’s Climate Smart Agriculture team and other partners (e.g. CIAT, Axa Climate, EIB, World Bank) to support the design and implementation of programs and projects of the Climate Smart Digital Technologies for Agriculture and Food Security pillar.
• Support downstream project implementation components of the Pillar in collaboration with project and program partners.

• Provide research on topics as input to briefing documents for the Pillar Lead as requested.

• Support the effective management of grantees within the Pillar.

Information Management and Storage

• Collect and input data relevant to the Climate Smart Digital Technologies for Agriculture and Food Security pillar as needed, compiling and storing these in an efficient manner for use by the Pillar Lead and others who may need them.

• Draft correspondence to partners and external stakeholders and preparing presentations under the guidance of the Pillar Lead.

• Prepare a weekly update on the status of the implementation of the programs and projects within the Pillar for the team, and other reporting tasks upon request.

Events and Logistics Support

• Organize meetings, events and workshops pertaining to the Pillar - including providing key research to inform the design of the meeting, administrative support to meeting participants including travel (for physical events) preparing letters of invitation and recording meeting proceedings as input to the reports.
• Perform any additional tasks as assigned.