Senior Associate, Food Program at World Resources Institute (WRI)

What will you do:

Research (50%):

• Develop strategy on crop-type, yield mapping and food gap analysis for Africa in priority geographies and countries aligned with the WRI Africa strategy
• Work closely with the Land and Carbon Lab and partners to refine approaches for classifying croplands and detecting net primary productivity during growing seasons using geospatial data and field data
• Develop yield and food gap analysis and give technical advice in order to support WRI’s efforts to sustainably close yield gaps in Africa while helping farmers to adapt to climate change
• Assess scalability of the methods and data developed to other African jurisdictions
• Collect and analyse available maps like the Africa soil maps, crop distribution maps, climate change maps, remote sensing data and Dynamic World tools, to understand crop-type and yields changes and extrapolated in space and time to determine trends
• Use these trends to determine location-specific crop yield gaps
• Assist Land & Carbon Lab to enable annually monitoring of all forms of land cover and land use
• Make maps, gap analysis and data available open source and open access for decision making in Africa
• Synthesize findings on diverse topics such as crop-type mapping and remote sensing, yield mapping, and methods
• Lead the production of written outputs including research papers, reports, internal briefs, blogs, presentations, and press releases
• Lead the editing, peer review, publishing of all research and communication outputs in this area of work
• Develop definitions of indicators to measure yield productivity, including methods, data sources, and means of verification, that is cross-scale, cost-effective and scalable across priority countries in Africa
• Support the monitoring and reporting of the “produce” elements of WRI Africa’s work, including working closely with managing for results team to develop and monitor the relevant crop/yield indicators
   

Engagement and Partnerships (20%):

• Cultivate new and help manage existing relationships to deliver on this work. This includes a coalition of partners in research and NGOs to focus resources on high resolution crop/yield mapping in a priority geographies
• Represent WRI in key events, increase the public profile of WRI’s work on the food and crop mapping
• Provide technical support to local and national partners to scale promising practices in WRI Africa’s priority landscapes
• Support the engagement of targeted decisionmakers with resulting yield gap monitoring information and solutions sets to inform farmer assistance programs. Share yield gap data as we well as best practices for scaling context specific crop yield boosting methods
• Support policy teams to ensure countries’ NDCs sections on agriculture and food systems are aligned with both mitigation and adaptation goals
   

Fundraising (20%):

• Identify funding and cooperation opportunities
• Lead proposals related to the advance the deployment of geosciences and their application in monitoring of crop yields in Africa
• Support the development and integration of the cropland data with other datasets within the land and carbon lab, and any other datasets within WRI, including the resources (financial and human) required to do so
• Lead and co-lead other proposals developed by WRI teams in this area of work, with an emphasis on Africa
• Review other proposals developed by WRI Africa to integrate relevant strands of work on yield monitoring
   

Personnel and program leadership (10%):

• Lead and nurture a growing team of researchers under the food program focusing on this area of work
• Recruit and supervise staff in relevant work areas
• Support the development of the WRI Africa food strategy with all aspects related to yields, nature and climate.

What will you need:

• Education: You have a completed master’s degree with demonstrated expertise in the application of geosciences, including GIS and remote sensing in agriculture, soil sciences, agroforestry and other sustainable land management practices
• Experience: You have 8+ years of relevant professional experience
• Demonstrated knowledge and expertise on issues related to food systems transformation in Africa, including international climate policy, and sustainability challenges related to land and natural resource management
• Experience designing and managing complex, multi-partner projects in an NGO setting, with experience creating and communicating theories of change, results frameworks, and other components of a MEL for project donors, partners, and stakeholders
• Experience with fundraising as a lead as well as part of a team
• Experience with geoscience methods and tools for assessing croplands in Africa
• A record of relevant publications
• You are willing and able to travel internationally
• Languages: You have verbal and written proficiency in English. Working knowledge of French would be desirable.

Please submit a resume with cover letter by the date of May 23, 2023.