Supply Chain Country Capacity Strengthening Officer At World Food Programme

Grade: SC10

Vacancy Number: 165582

Contract type: Service Contract (SC)

Duration: 12 months with possibility of extension

Duty Station: Bangkok, Thailand

Section / Unit: Supply Chain

Background:

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), as the world’s largest humanitarian agency, is well known for its ability to deliver food assistance rapidly to people in need. Historically, WFP has implemented this assistance directly. In some country contexts, this ‘doing for’ approach continues to remain relevant. Increasingly, however, many national governments/partners – particularly in the Asia-Pacific region – are aware that strong and sustained national capacities are critical to addressing the multiple causes of hunger and are striving for self-sufficiency in delivering assistance to their population. Here, WFP’s ‘value-added’ is in the ‘enabling of’ governments through institutional capacity strengthening, leveraging WFP’s extensive global operational and technical experience in food and supply chain systems to support national actors in strengthening their national level food systems and supply chain systems. WFP’s framework for institutional capacity strengthening – called Country Capacity Strengthening, or CCS – recognises that without supportive laws, policies, strategies and procedures (enabling environment), well-functioning organizations (organizational domain), and educated, skilled people (individual domain), state and non-state duty bearers cannot effectively plan, implement and review their efforts to deliver intended products and services to their target groups. Effective institutional capacity strengthening must therefore address all three domains, recognising the interdependencies between them. To deliver on the above, the WFP Regional Bureau for Asia & the Pacific (RBB) is recruiting a “Supply Chain Systems Strengthening Officer” (the incumbent) to support catalysing and sustaining the paradigm shift from doing to enabling.

WFP’s Supply Chain (SC) CCS efforts span ten areas of engagement (National safety net implementation (SC aspects); Increased access, availability and distribution of safe, nutritious, diverse, and more economically viable commodities; Small-holder farmer access to markets; Value chains analysis (SC perspective); Food safety and quality (FSQ) assurance systems; National production capacity of fortified and nutritious foods; and Private-sector supply chains for availability of essential commodities; National emergency preparedness and response (EPR) (from a SC perspective); National logistics clusters/working groups; and Improved health supply chain systems). The incumbent will work and advise on the CCS approach across all the ten areas of engagement, with a specific focus on activities related to national Food Systems strengthening. The incumbent will work closely with the Supply Chain CCS Advisor. Whilst the Advisor will focus on the development of strategic aspects of SC CCS, the incumbent will focus mainly on operational support to Country Offices in the RBB region. The Supply Chain CCS Officer will work under the direct supervision of the RBB Supply Chain Capacity Strengthening Advisor and under general supervision of RBB Head of Supply Chain. The incumbent will further work closely with relevant technical focal points in RBB such as FSQ, School Feeding, etc.

Accountabilits / Key Responsibilities:

Support to the RBB Office:

• Work with RBB Supply Chain (SC) technical focal points across the ten engagement areas, such as Logistics, FSQ and EPR on enhancing the CCS approach and activities in relevant technical domains.
• Maintain a mapping of potential, current and past SC capacity strengthening activities in the region and across all ten engagement areas to ensure that previous experience can be capitalised on, opportunities can be identified and to help with advocacy and overall visibility of SC CCS.
• Manage the preparation and dissemination of timely analytical and critical CCS reports, publications, and a variety of information products or proposals for internal or external use.
• Establish and maintain a CCS ”community of practice” across the region to ensure that available knowledge, experience and lessons learned from Country Office-level is shared and available across the region. Ensure cross- fertilization of knowledge and support the scale-up of innovative approach across the region.

Support to Country Offices (COs) (in collaboration with RBB SC colleagues and relevant SC experts):

• Proactively provide strategic guidance to CO as they develop the institutional capacity strengthening aspects of their five-year Country Strategic Plans (CSPs) to: ensure capacity strengthening approaches are clearly and appropriately articulated and aligned with WFP’s corporate Theory of Change; actively promote cross functional collaboration so that supply chain strengthening perspectives are prominent in documentation (CSPs / Activity workplans); and are supported by appropriate resource mobilisation proposals.
• Provide support to CO-based officers as they work with their national counterparts to (i) identify where capacity strengthening approaches can be usefully employed; (ii) formulate a capacity outcome statement (COS) tailored to national contexts and strategies; and (iii) carry out key components of the capacity strengthening toolkit (e.g., stakeholder mapping, capacity needs mapping, entry-point identification and implementation, etc.).
• Conduct SC CCS support missions across the region to support with overall CCS rollout, Capacity Needs Mapping and/or sensitizing CO staff for CCS.

QUALIFICATIONS

Education: Bachelor or master’s degree in either Supply Chain Management, Business Administration, Engineering, Agriculture, International Development, International Relations, Social Research Methods or other field relevant to international development assistance or equivalent professional experience.

Experience:

• At least 7 years (5 years for candidates with master’s degree) of relevant professional experience related to national capacity strengthening, Supply Chain Systems and/or Food Systems on operational and/or strategic level;
• Critical thinking skills are necessary.
• Strong understanding of ‘systems thinking’ concepts as applied to capacity strengthening approaches and contexts, and an ability to explain the concept and its relevance to others.
• Excellent written and verbal communications skills; good research and analytical skills;

Knowledge and Skills:

• Knowledge of current thinking and development in country capacity development and effective knowledge transfer models, concepts and principles relevant to humanitarian/emergency contexts
• Knowledge of key national and regional contexts and issues in the Asia-Pacific region ;
• Demonstrated data collection and analytical writing skills, including ability to analyse and consolidate quantitative and qualitative information to understand national capacities across a wide range of policy and programme areas and identify gap and needs, as well as WFP’s entry points.
• Good operational, analytical and problem-solving skills;
• Demonstrated ability to produce high-quality written outputs and ability to present in English; moderate to proficient computer literacy.

Language:

• Fluency and accuracy in both oral and written communication in English.
• Working knowledge of another regional or UN language is an asset.