Job Description

With over 70 years of experience, our focus is on helping the most vulnerable children overcome poverty and experience fullness of life. We help children of all backgrounds, even in the most dangerous places.

Come join our 34,000+ staff working in nearly 100 countries and share the joy of transforming vulnerable children’s life stories!

Employee Contract Type:

Job Description:

Livestock Specialist- EMERGE

The Role:

The Livestock Specialist- EMERGE will provide technical support on strengthening the livestock related components of the project, especially on animal health and production, pastures and fodder management, value addition, cooperatives development and marketing. The Livestock Specialist will support the programs efforts to ensure enhanced food security and resilience among pastoral and agropastoral communities by promoting sustainable livelihoods strategies and practices.  S/he will provide technical assistance on water and improved rangelands management for resilient livestock production; strengthen animal health services, strengthening the integration of the production systems and guide on appropriate investments in food safety and value addition for animal products.

The Livestock specialist will guide the sectoral assessment to define needs/opportunities to guide interventions in different project locations.  S/he will develop/consolidate harmonized technical approaches in livestock production, health, nutrition and marketing. This means s/he will be responsible for technical support to consortium including documentation of lessons and supporting the M/E function. The Livestock Technical specialist will facilitate the development of partnerships with private sector to lower barriers for entry into markets and promote business growth in pastoral value chains while enhancing collaboration among private, public and community level actors. 

S/he will inventory pasture, waterpoint, marketing and animal health points to support pastoralist to understand better their market system, navigate conflict dynamics, and find entry points to participate and/or grow their enterprise. S/he will link with existing market system mapping/coordination platform to identify opportunities for livestock actors.  Underlying this will also be the need to work with and support government in developing/strengthening policies and regulatory framework to support and guide the livestock sector. S/he will serve as the focal point with the federal Ministry of Livestock, forestry and Range and Southwest State Ministry of Livestock, ensuring that program interventions integrate government-promoted quality standards and government is facilitated to monitor program interventions.

Key Responsibilities:

Provide technical leadership for Livestock Development

• Provide technical guidance on all livestock production thematic areas covering climate-smart livestock production skills including but not limited to; veterinary care, livestock nutrition and pasture management, rangeland management, integrated crop /livestock production systems livestock breeding, livestock market system and value chain development systems and similar themes.
• Responsible for preparing technical specifications of livestock inputs, equipment and other supplies envisaged in projects’ documents, contributing to developing procurement plans and participating in technical evaluation of bid offers for supplies.
• Assist partners and state authorities in planning/deploying training, extension, guidelines development programs for efficient animal health and production.
• Support the introduction and maintenance of new technologies aimed at equipping farmers groups with skills, early warning, market and other information;
• In partnership with Resilience & Livelihoods Technical Advisor, develop/contextualize various assessment, participatory analysis tools, monitoring checklists and reporting formats; 
• Provide technical and professional support to the federal and state level focal persons in supporting the formation, strengthening of, linkages to private sector and certification/formalization for producer groups/associations and supporting Community based Animal Health initiatives

Training and Capacity Building

• Contribute to the development of guidelines and training modules on livestock health and production to be the integrated curriculum for facilitators and participate in facilitators' training to ensure proper identification of relevant livestock activities at community levels
• Plan, organize and conduct capacity building sessions for staff, program participants and partners on good animal production practices as required ensuring optimum use of projects inputs.
• Contribute to the production of technical training manuals and related capacity building materials, coaching and mentoring on animal production; health, marketing and value addition
• Initiate and provide business development services to strengthen private vet drug shops including Community Animal Health Workers (CAHWs) owned;
• Support producer groups in formation of Livestock marketing associations and linking them to local and international markets;
• Develop a community-of-practice with consortium members and implementing partners to mobilize evolving best practice, promote cross-learning, and provide mentorship guidance;
• Facilitate community-of-practice with Livestock Marketing Association, develop key contact registry, sharing program information mechanism, etc.;

Monitoring Evaluation and Learning

• Document good practices and lessons, testimonies, and stories for program learning from field visits, surveys, and assessments that have been done;
• Produce progress reports with detailed qualitative and quantitative data to clearly show the status of planned activities against the project outcomes;
• Participate in community consultations to determine the need for livestock production and animal health
• Support the M&E Advisor to Develop and implement monitoring and evaluation frameworks to assess the impact of the livestock interventions;
• Conduct regular field visits to assess activity implementation progress, provide technical advice, mentorship, and feedback for improvement;
• Preposition relationship with livestock training institutions, public and private institutions and co-create ideas to enhance technical approaches;
• Ensure that key learnings are documented to build up an evidence base of effective/less effective approaches for improving livestock production;
• Capture stories of success/challenges to share with communications and MEAL to further create awareness of promote learning;

Coordination, collaboration and integration

• Establish linkages with appropriate national and state authorities, and other stakeholders and support area coordination mechanism for livestock interventions;
• Develop and maintain relationships with stakeholders including government (National/Regional/District), UN, learning institutions and private sector in Southwest state and Somalia;
• Serve as super-user for CARE-led/WV-implemented ART livestock market/movement tracking system, integrating insights into technical approaches and guidance to livestock sector actors;
• Map other UN/NGO partners and programs in target area and identify opportunities for program recipients to benefit from other programs and document these layering initiatives (SomReP, BRCiS, WFP, IOM, USAID-funded market-systems strengthening initiatives;)
• Spearhead the establishment of partnering framework agreements with key private and public sector actors to enable collaborations;
• Represent World Vision professionally at federal and state levels
• Facilitate government engagement and involvement in tool development, assessment/planning processes, monitoring trips, etc.;
• Ensure appropriate and continued coordination and joint-planning with other USAID funded programs and promote private sector engagement in the area of agricultural value addition, inputs supplies and agricultural technology and share best practices.
• Establish and maintain key relationships with counterparts at USAID, peer organizations, research and other institutions;

Experiences and Qualifications

• Minimum of Bachelor’s degree, in Animal Science, Veterinary Science, Range/livestock Management, Agriculture or equivalent
• Minimum of 4 years of relevant work experience of which at least two years should be in the areas of animal production, animal health, feed/fodder production management, and experience working with pastoral and Agro-pastoral communities.
• Experience in animal resource management and good knowledge of the livestock sector in Somalia.
• S/he should have practical experience in livestock production and value chain development
• Experience in the area of animal science, production, animal feed, and rangeland management.
• Knowledge of Pastoral/agropastoral production systems, Animal health and production is desirable
• English language proficiency, Somali dialect preferred.

Working Environment:

• The position is office based in Baidoa with frequent travel to field sites in Baidoa and Hudur and some travel to Mogadishu

Skills Required

Follow us on social media