Urban Food Systems Analyst at Food and Agriculture Organization

Contract Type: Personal Service Agreement

Duty Station: Nairobi

Organizational Unit: FAO Representation Office in Kenya

Duration: 10 months when actually employed

Eligible Candidates: Kenyan nationals

Anticipated start date: April 2017

Background

Under the current demographic trends, the mandate of FAO is facing challenges of paramount importance: how to supply nutritious and healthy food to city dwellers/users equally across all sectors. In the past decades the attention of development partners, including FAO has mainly focused on the supply side in the rural areas. While this remains a vital element of an overall strategy for enhancing the food and nutrition security, it is however not sufficient to address the particular intrinsic factors associated with food security in cities. This is a real concern, recognized at international level, given the urbanization rate encountered today, with estimates indicating that two thirds of the world’s population will live in cities by 2050. The New Urban Agenda (NUA), that is the new global political commitment to the sustainable development of towns, cities and other human settlements for the next two decades, adopted during the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III), held in Quito in October 2016, clearly recognizes the centrality of food and nutrition security and food system planning. The current food system urgently needs changes, warranting alternatives in a way that produce sustainable, inclusive and environmentally friendly solutions to the emerging food needs in cities.

Within this framework, FAO is going to implement the NADHALI Project “Developing Sustainable Food Systems for urban areas: Pilot Works in Nairobi (Kenya), Dhaka (Bangladesh), and Lima (Peru)” that has the goal of supporting the responsible authorities in urban areas on developing food system planning as key pillar for “making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable” [SDG Goal11] and “Ending hunger and achieving food security and nutrition [SDG-Goal 2]

Reporting Line

The general objective of the assignment is to develop and pilot-test a tool for food system rapid appraisal for cities (Rapid Urban Food System Appraisal Tool – RUFSAT) aiming at creating evidence on food systems and supporting decision making towards their greater sustainability. The tool will provide insight about not only the actors and their activities within the urban areas, but also about the “city food shed” and about the smallholder producers given their importance for an integrated sustainable development. In addition, the consultant will assist in establishing the Multi-Stakeholders Food Systems Planning Platform (MFSPP) at local level, disseminate the RUFSAT tool, and seek feedback from members for finalization.

Under the overall supervision of the FAO Representative in Kenya and direct supervision of the Project/MFSPP Coordinator, the consultant will have data collection, analysis, dissemination and reporting responsibilities and developing a user-friendly tool for use by urban food systems stakeholders. He/she will be involved in work being developed by other consultants, by local governments focal points and will be equally responsible for the project’s deliveries. The consultant in general will work in collaboration with other officers and consultants that are involved in different activities related to the project. The consultant will work particularly in close collaboration with the national Project Coordinator and the NADHALI Rome Coordination and Technical Unit as well as with the Multi-stakeholders Food Systems Planning Platform.

Specific Tasks

The specific key tasks of the consultant’s assignment are the following:

• Liaise with Local Governments and establish a local supporting team to the eventual collection of data.
• Support finalization of an initial draft of RUFSAT, and lead adaptation to local needs
• Secondary data analysis (static and time-series) including estimation of products flows and their sources, food insecurity levels, institutional markets, intra-city production and processing, formal and informal channels, health status, retail and food services, demography, urban poverty, slums, urban sprawl and general city-region overview.
• Collaborate with the Project Coordinator to undertake a rapid qualitative analysis of the community food environment and gap analysis and secondary data analysis on food system (from production to consumption)
• Identify priority areas (food distribution, food waste etc.…), their root causes and potential upgrading solutions.Apply food value chain or market systems analysis for some prioritized products or markets.
• Combine the undertaken analysis with the rapid qualitative analysis on the community food environment (developed by the MFSPP Coordinator)
• Conducting the data collection (geo-referenced) and analysis (including the spatial analysis) for consumers and other food related actors within selected areas.
• Disseminate the RUFSAT tool to MFSPP and seed feedback for finalization of the tool.
• Supporting the Multi-stakeholders Food Systems Planning Platform (MFSPP) on developing the preliminary food system action plan (vision, mission, strategy, focus areas etc....)
• Work closely with the Project/MFPP Coordinator and the Rome Coordination and Technical Unit in drafting the methodology for the Rapid Urban Food System Appraisal Tool – RUFSAT
• Provide reports as requested.
• Support the Project/MFSPP Coordinator in the organization of regional seminar for presenting the project results.

Minimum Requirements

Academic Qualifications

• Degree in economics, agribusiness, or pertinent discipline with expertise in data collection and spatial analysis with considerable knowledge of food environment issues. Postgraduate degree preferred.

Technical Competencies and Experience Requirements

• At least 5 years of working experience on data collection and spatial analysis at urban level with International Organizations, preferably UN.
• Previous experience in food value chain analysis
• Understanding the local context and familiarity in working with local governmental institutions.
• Demonstrated capacity to speak and write fluent English and the Kiswahili language
• Experience in collecting and analyzing gender and nutrition issues in food value chains will be an added advantage