Regional Crisis Adviser (East and West Africa) at British High Commission Nairobi

Main purpose of job:
British diplomatic posts overseas are at the frontline of a UK government response to an overseas crisis affecting British people and interests.  This role focuses on ensuring that they have the right plans and skills to be able to respond to a range of different crisis scenarios. Within your region you will be responsible for understanding the risks that different posts face and their overall preparedness and providing support and advice to help them improve their ability to respond. You will be expected to champion the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s (FCDO) clear crisis management methodology and training products, supported and directed by the FCDO Crisis Management Department in headquarters and working closely with our regional consular staff. 

Although this role is based at the British High Commission (BHC) in Nairobi, Kenya, you will need to be able to form close working relationships with the posts in your region, prioritising those with the greatest need for support and travelling to deliver training and advice. You will benefit from excellent learning and development opportunities, which will allow you to deepen your crisis management skills as well as a supportive network of colleagues both in HQ and our global network. 

Roles and Responsibilities:

You will be one of two Regional Crisis Advisers covering the Sub-Saharan Africa region (the other, based in South Africa, covers Central and Southern Africa).

Role:

• Crisis Preparedness: Develop a coherent approach to crisis management at British diplomatic posts across East and West Africa by supporting crisis preparedness, providing high quality guidance and training so that posts are well prepared to effectively respond to a crisis, in line with FCDO Crisis Management Department (CMD) policy and guidance.
• Crisis Response: To provide support and advice to posts experiencing or approaching a crisis to ensure the most effective response.
• Crisis Improvement: To maintain a good understanding of the crisis risks within your region, providing input to and quality assurance of post crisis management plans, highlighting key risks to Consular Regional Directors (CRDs) and CMD and applying lessons from crises and exercises. Maintain good relationships with both internal and external crisis management stakeholders in order to enhance regional risk assessment and horizon scanning.

Responsibilities:

• Network and Post Support: To prioritise crisis preparedness work in your region based on an understanding of risk and horizon scanning. To act as expert adviser to Post Crisis Management Committees making recommendations to ensure policy and guidance is followed by Posts. To encourage and help embed a ‘whole of mission approach’ to planning and crisis preparedness.
• Quality Assurance: To advise posts on development of their crisis management plans (CMPs), and crisis preparedness working to achieve a consistent quality across the region, merging local knowledge with central crisis management guidance. Work with CMD’s Preparedness and Risk Team to identify risks, capability and capacity gaps and to help posts take steps to improve their preparedness.
• Training & Exercising: Deliver effective crisis training in your region liaising closely with the CMD Training & Exercising Team and using the latest training approaches and materials. Identify any potential learning/skills gaps in crisis management techniques and work with CMD to address them. Help CMD to coordinate and prioritize regional exercises, and assist in the delivery of overseas training events. Support crisis managers to encourage colleagues to complete the crisis content of the International Academy’s foundation level. Champion the various learning methods to help promote and develop crisis management learning in region.   
• Stakeholder Engagement: To ensure good understanding of host country and regional crisis structures and maintain up-to-date liaison contacts.  
• Lessons Learned: participate in, and facilitate where appropriate (e.g. for locally managed crises), the crisis lessons learned process.  To identify, record and share best practice regionally. Working with CMD to ensure lessons learned are taken forward and incorporated back into CMPs across the region.
• Crisis Hub: act as a champion for our Crisis IT system ‘Crisis Hub’ and its transition to a new IT platform. Ensure relevant staff across the region keep their skills and access up-to-date to reflect latest developments of the Crisis IT system
• Crisis Response: working with CMD and the CRD provide advice and support to posts in crisis.

Resources managed

• Responsible for managing a regional travel budget

Essential qualifications, skills and experience  

• Excellent English language skills (written and oral)
• Understanding of and an ability to work in an international or governmental organization.
• Excellent inter-personal, communication and team working skills.
• Excellent organizational skills and a proactive approach.
• Resilience, with ability to work unsupervised and innovate
• Self-starter with strong time management skills - able to work to deadlines and targets and manage a sometimes heavy workload.
• Excellent IT skills (Outlook, PowerPoint, Word, Excel, MS Teams)