Nutrition and Food Security Specialist at Federal Ministry of Agriculture & Rural Development

Job Type: Contract (1 year)
Reporting and Location: VCDP National Office, Abuja

Summary

• The FGN/IFAD VCDP is desirous of engaging the services of Technical specialist and staff to facilitate VCDP and other IFAD Assisted programs implementation at the VCDP National Office.

Main Responsibilities

• The Nutrition and Food Security Specialist will be domiciled in the VCDP national office Abuja and will provide technical support to all IFAD-assisted projects in Nigeria.
• He/She will be will be responsible for the facilitation of nutrition mainstreaming in project interventions in IFAD project States.

Specific Duties

• Develop a nutrition strategy to guide nutrition interventions in the programme areas.
• Facilitate the analysis of nutrition gaps along the supply chain of priority commodities in the project locations.
• In collaboration with selected relevant institutes and/or private sector, facilitate the promotion of value-added products development and consumption among project beneficiaries.
• Facilitate periodic nutrition survey and report dissemination on Knowledge,Attitude and Practice (KAP).
• Organize nutrition publicity on project nutrition activities; facilitate the development and testing of appropriate campaign messages, tools and materials to promote nutrition education, social and behavioural change communication.
• Facilitate capacity building and training sessions on nutrition-sensitive agriculture for project staff, relevant institution and beneficiaries.
• In collaboration with other stakeholders and partners, facilitate the activities on Home Grown School Feeding Initiative, vegetable garden dhd integrated homestead food production.
• Establish and maintain working relationships with the line ministries (such as health, gender, education) to build synergy in nutrition- sensitive interventions in project areas.
• Provide nutrition monitoring indicators, track and document substantive data and information on nutrition-sensitive activities and maintain regular technical reports on nutrition outputs and outcomes. Work collaboratively with the technical specialists on gender and climate in documenting interface on nutrition outcomes. Undertake any other emerging nutrition activity as may be assigned by the NPC-VCDP

Qualifications and Experience Required

• Minimum of Master degree from an accredited institution in the field of Human Nutrition, Food Science or equivalent in a field related to Food Security. Possession of Higher Degree in relevant fields will be an added advantage.
• At least 5 years’ experience in, and demonstrated understanding of food and nutrition initiatives in rural development.
• Experience in previous implementation of related nutrition and food security programme is required.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English.
• Experience of interacting with a variety of internal and external stakeholders is desirable.
• Strong project coordination skills on nutrition, food security and gender is desirable.