MONITORING EVALUATION AND LEARNING SPECIALIST (MEL) (VARIOUS POSITIONS)

Organizational Setting

The Regional Office for Africa (RAF), located in Accra (Ghana), is responsible for leading FAO’s response to regional priorities for food security, agriculture and rural development through the identification, planning and implementation of FAO’s priority activities in the region. It ensures a multidisciplinary approach to programmes, identifies priority areas of action for the Organization in the region and, in collaboration with departments and divisions at headquarters, develops, promotes and oversees FAO’s strategic response to regional priorities. RAF also advises on the incorporation of regional priorities into the Organization’s Programme of Work and Budget and implements approved programmes and projects in the region, monitors the level of programme implementation and draws attention to problems and deficiencies.
One of the RAF priorities for the 2023-24 is to ensure an integrated approach to Monitoring Evaluation and Learning (MEL) within the region with the aim of upgrading the quality, availability and consistency of data and evidence on the results achieved in the region. To achieve this, it is essential to ensure an adequate level of capacities and qualified human resources for Monitoring Evaluation and Learning (MEL) at regional, sub-regional and country levels.
RAF operates through four sub-regional offices located in Senegal (SFW), Ethiopia (SFE), Zimbabwe (SFS) and Gabon (SFC) and covers 47 countries. The positions in subject aim at reinforcing the capacity for MEL at FAO RAF country office level.

Reporting Lines

The MEL specialists located in RAF country offices will work under the overall supervision and responsibility of the FAO Representatives, the functional supervision of the Assistant FAO Representative Programme, the technical supervision of the RAF M&E Officer and in close collaboration with technical and programme leads, as well as with the relevant national counterparts.

Technical Focus 

The MEL specialist/s will be responsible for generating quality evidence on results achieved through FAO projects and programmes implemented in the countries in the RAF region, in various areas of FAO’s mandate to inform adaptive programming and organisational learning. This will entail the: i) development and operationalization of frameworks, tools and processes needed to systematically collect and analyse performance-related data; ii) capacity development on MEL of internal and external actors; iii) monitoring of the quality of programme implementation; iv) implementation of the country-level learning agenda and learning roadmaps.

Tasks and responsibilities

•    Design, develop and implement country-level MEL systems at project and programme levels (including results frameworks, theories of changes, etc.) in alignment with corporate, regional, sub-regional and country MEL and information priorities.
•    Support mainstreaming of MEL in project/programme formulation stage, including theory of change development, log frame design, budgeting for MEL, MEL plans development
•    Support the formulation and monitoring of the CPF indicators including baseline and target setting.
•    Support management and project managers to identify priority Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and realistic targets at project, programme and CPF levels to promote a programmatic approach to monitoring and evaluation, and to ensure their alignment with national, sub-regional and regional priorities/frameworks and/or relevant KPIs.
•    Conduct periodic data collections and analyses, in line with the established data needs, learning priorities and/or KPIs.
•    Compile, manage and curate relevant country-level results-based datasets.
•    Contribute data for internal and external reporting.
•    Facilitate the dissemination and use of monitoring data to inform programme development, adjustment or review.
•    Contribute to organisational learning by developing subject-matter analytics, lessons learned compilation and briefs/reports.
•    Develop capacity of FAO staff and implementing partners in M&E methodologies and practices.
•    Perform any other duties, as requested.

CANDIDATES WILL BE ASSESSED AGAINST THE FOLLOWING

Minimum Requirements

•    University degree in social sciences (sociology, anthropology, political sciences, international relations, research methods or alike) and/or data sciences (statistics, survey methods or alike) and/or evaluation.
•    Specific training in MEL and/or demonstrated qualified and relevant experience in setting up and operationalizing monitoring and evaluation systems in food security and livelihoods programs and/or in food security analysis/vulnerability assessments mapping in the NGO and/or IO/UN context:
–    At least two years for the Junior MEL Specialist.
–    At least five years for MEL Specialists
•    Working knowledge (level C) of English and/or French, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese or Russian is required.

•    Only nationals of the Africa region will be considered for the posts in the specific countries of respective residence/nationality (Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Eswatini, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, South Soudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe).

FAO Core Competencies

•    Results Focus
•    Teamwork
•    Communication
•    Building Effective Relationships
•    Knowledge Sharing and Continuous Improvement

Technical/Functional Skills

•    Excellent mastery and knowledge of principles and current approaches to MEL.
•    Working knowledge of one of FAO official languages (English, Spanish, French, Arabic, Russian, and Chinese) is desired. Working knowledge of Portuguese will be considered an asset.
•    Demonstrated understanding of data and information needs for program management and decision making, as well as of the project cycle management
•    Demonstrated experience in quantitative and qualitative research methods.
•    Demonstrated experience in facilitating MEL-related capacity building initiatives.
•    Experience in using softwares (e.g. such as PowerBI, Tableau, STATA, SPSS, NVivo, CommCare, Survey Monkey, Survey CTO, Kobo, ODK, MS Dynamics 365 and Visio, Pictochart, Infogram) is highly desirable.
•    Advanced use of MS Excel is highly desirable.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION