National Project Coordinator Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)

Organizational Setting

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that leads international efforts to defeat hunger and malnutrition.  The main aim of the FAO country offices, which are headed by an FAO Representative, is to assist governments to develop policies, programmes and projects to achieve food security and to reduce hunger and malnutrition, to help develop the agricultural, fisheries and forestry sectors, and to use their environmental and natural resources in a sustainable manner. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) contributes to the achievement of the 2030 Agenda through the FAO Strategic Framework by supporting the transformation to MORE efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable agri-food systems, for better production, better nutrition, a better environment, and a better life, leaving no one behind.

The Scaling up Climate Resilience Agriculture Project in Agro-ecological Region I & II (SCRALA) project supports the Government of Zambia to strengthen the resilience to climate change risks of vulnerable smallholder farmers in the country’s Agro-Ecological Regions I and II. These regions are facing increasing risks as a result of climate change, primarily variability of rainfall and increased frequency of droughts, which have direct impacts on the agricultural production in these regions.
Within the two Agro-Ecological Regions, smallholder farmers in the five provinces (namely, Eastern, Lusaka, Muchinga, Southern and Western) will be directly targeted by the project, specifically including the following 16 districts: Mambwe, Nyimba, Chongwe, Luangwa, Chirundu, Rufunsa, Chama, Mafinga, Kazungula, Siavonga, Gwembe, Namwala, Shangombo, Senanga, Sesheke and Mulobezi. The direct beneficiaries will represent approximately 946,153 people.

The project aims to increase the resilience to climate change risks of smallholder farmers in target Agro-Ecological Regions. The project will make targeted interventions to capitalize on opportunities to strengthen and promote viable climate-resilient value chains relating to smallholder agriculture in the target regions, specifically targeting value chains that are gender sensitive and provide viable economic opportunities for women.

There are three inter-related project outputs:

1) strengthening capacity of farmers to plan for climate risk;
2) strengthening resilient agricultural production and diversification practices (for both food security and income generation); and
3) strengthening farmers’ access to markets and commercialization of introduced resilient agricultural commodities.

FAO will contribute to the Output 2: Resilient agricultural livelihoods are promoted in the face of changing rainfall, increasing drought and occasional floods. With better planning for and management of climate risk, farmers will be supported to be in an improved position to adapt to climate change by managing water more sustainably, introducing new agricultural practices, adopting new varieties of crops and pursuing alternative livelihoods. This will be built on the successful model of farmer field schools, which provide local, context-specific centres where farmers can share experiences with other farmers and continue to receive technical support from extension workers and other experts. Learning centres of excellence will also be established at the district level to promote scaling up and enhance replication to other camps throughout the district.

Reporting Lines

Under the overall supervision of the FAOR, direct supervision of the Assistant FAOR (Programmes) and the technical guidance of relevant technical units in FAO and in close collaboration with the National Project Coordinator (NPC) of the Ministry of Agriculture, UNDP project Manager, District Agricultural Coordinators, FAO Lead Technical Officer (LTO) and other project staff and partner agencies.

Technical focus

• Establish and/or strengthen existing farmer field schools in each of the target camps across the 16 districts
• Train trainers of trainers (extension staff) to facilitate experiential learning by communities on adaptive practices and
• Establish demonstrations for adaptation options to enhance experiential learning in each Farmer Field School and Centres of Excellence
• Establish and/or rehabilitate a learning Centre of Excellence in each of the 16 target districts
• Technical contribution to monitoring activities for CSA interventions, including development of tools and methodologies
• Ensure stakeholder engagements
• Represent FAO Zambia in technical Working Groups on climate change and resilience as well as other institutional coordination mechanisms
• Regularly participate in Technical Working Groups on CSA/Climate change as well as other institutional co-ordination mechanisms

Tasks and responsibilities

The incumbent will perform the following:

• Provide the day to day management of the project for effective project activity implementation at field level including budget tracking.
• Coordinate the collection of relevant primary and secondary data from the district and community levels as and when required;
• Support implementation of the project activities at the district and community levels with a landscape approach;
• Facilitate broader replication of successfully tested adaptation practices and technology options within the farming communities;
• Liaise with the project team at the national level and district level implementation task groups on day to day activities and provide feedback to all necessary project partners, consultants and other project staff;
• Establish effective partnerships with the Government, local authorities, bilateral and multilateral donors, NGOs, civil society, and other UN agencies to support resilience and climate adaptation work among the farmers
• Support in developing strategic engagement document for the FAO Zambia Office through consultations with the key stakeholders in the climate change arenas relates to sustainable agriculture development.
• Represent FAO in sectoral coordination mechanisms, such as the Cluster Advisory Committees, Co-operating Partners Group related climate change, resilience and climate smart agriculture
• Contribute to the preparation of accurate and timely reporting on programme and activities that enable informed decision making and consistence of information
• Liaise with internal counterparts to ensure effective collaboration, and monitoring of climate change and adaptation related projects
• Perform other duties as required

CANDIDATES WILL BE ASSESSED AGAINST THE FOLLOWING,

Minimum Requirements

• A bachelor’s degree in the field of agriculture or equivalent with field/on-farm experience on planning, implementation and monitoring of field demonstrations, climate change adaptation programmes/activities and project management.
• 5 years of experience in conducting field trials/demonstrations and field level project management is preferable.
• Working knowledge of the English language [i.e. spoken and written]
• Zambian National