DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS25 August 2025-23:59-GMT+02:00 Central Africa Time (Lusaka)
WFP celebrates and embraces diversity. It is committed to the principle of equal employment opportunity for all its employees and encourages qualified candidates to apply irrespective of race, colour, national origin, ethnic or social background, genetic information, gender, gender identity and/or expression, sexual orientation, religion or belief, HIV status or disability.
ABOUT WFP
The World Food Programme is the worldโs largest humanitarian organization saving lives in emergencies and using food assistance to build a pathway to peace, stability and prosperity, for people recovering from conflict, disasters and the impact of climate change.
At WFP, people are at the heart of everything we do and the vision of the future WFP workforce is one of diverse, committed, skilled, and high performing teams, selected on merit, operating in a healthy and inclusive work environment, living WFP's values (Integrity, Collaboration, Commitment, Humanity, and Inclusion) and working with partners to save and change the lives of those WFP serves.
To learn more about WFP, visit our website: https://www.wfp.org and follow us on social media to keep up with our latest news: YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok.
WHY JOIN WFP?
WFP is a 2020 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.
WFP offers a highly inclusive, diverse, and multicultural working environment.
WFP invests in the personal & professional development of its employees through a range of training, accreditation, coaching, mentorship, and other programs as well as through internal mobility opportunities.
A career path in WFP provides an exciting opportunity to work across the various country, regional and global offices around the world, and with passionate colleagues who work tirelessly to ensure that effective humanitarian assistance reaches millions of people across the globe.
We offer an attractive compensation package (please refer to the Terms and Conditions section of this vacancy announcement).
BACKGROUND:
In July 2023, the World Food Programme (WFP) Zambia Country Office commenced a new five-year Country Strategic Plan (CSP), informed by, and aligned with national and United Nations priorities and global commitments under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It embraces the Governmentโs long-term Vision 2030; aligns with 16 key strategic areas of the 8th National Development Plan (NDP8); and contributes to the joint Zambia-United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (UNSDCF).
WFP Zambiaโs integrated and pragmatic CSP shifts away from unsustainable localized and micro-level interventions, to embrace more effective advocacy and engagement with national policies, systems, and programmes to achieve national impact on SDG2. Given the Governmentโs commitment to budget support for nutrition, social protection, and agriculture, despite the constraints in the countryโs fiscal position, WFPโs overarching strategy seeks to enable the government to meet its national priorities with better systems, expertise, and resources for implementation. This means a decisive shift of WFPโs country positioning towards the provision of innovative, sustainable, upstream technical assistance for nationally owned solutions.
Advancing the global WFP Strategic Plan (2022-2025), the CSP addresses both SDG2 and SDG17, and WFPโs Strategic Results 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. WFP will implement seven activities to achieve five Strategic Outcomes (SO). These SOs include: responding to crises and shocks, including support to refugees (SO1); addressing the root causes of malnutrition (SO2); building the resilience, enabling environment and market access for smallholder farmers, especially women and youth (SO3); supporting government institutions to provide social protection systems (including home grown school meals) and disaster preparedness and response and anticipatory actions (SO4); and improving access to supply chain services for humanitarian and development actors (SO5).
In view of the above and considering the increased funding portfolio for Social Protection, Disaster Risk Management (DRM), and School Feeding, the Country Office (CO) is scaling up its efforts to build resilient, inclusive, and shock-responsive systems. While social protection shall provides the foundation for long-term human development, DRM will help mitigate the impact of shocks, and school feeding will support human capital development.
REPORTING
Reporting to the Head of Programmes, the incumbent shall provide strategic leadership and technical expertise in the integration of social protection, disaster risk management (DRM), and school feeding across the Country Officeโs programmatic areas. The job holder will leverage global innovations and successful models to co-create localized frameworks and tools, enabling the Country Office to build resilient, inclusive, and shock-responsive communities that can withstand and recover from crises more effectively.
KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES
1. Strategic Integration and Technical Leadership
- Lead the integration of social protection, DRM, and school feeding across all CO programmatic areas.
- Support the integration of shock-responsive social protection (SRSP) approaches in national policies and anticipatory action & contingency frameworks, ensuring scalability during crises.
- Provide strategic advice to senior management on policy coherence between humanitarian response mechanisms and national SP systems, advising on appropriate entry points, sequencing, and system alignment.
- Draft technical briefs, concept notes, and policy papers to guide WFP and government positioning on SP reforms.
2. Systems Strengthening and Digital Transformation
- Support the design, enhancement, and use of social registries, Management Information Systems (MIS), and digital delivery mechanisms for SP programmes.
- Provide advisory support to the harmonization of data systems between humanitarian and government actors to improve efficiency, targeting, and interoperability.
- Guide efforts to strengthen feedback, grievance, and referral systems linked to social protection delivery.
3. Capacity Strengthening and Knowledge Exchange
- Facilitate capacity assessments and tailored capacity-strengthening plans for government and partners at national and subnational levels.
- Deliver technical trainings, workshops, and peer-learning sessions on policy, systems design, and humanitarian-development linkages in SP including SRSP based on global and south-south best practices.
- Promote Support South-South and triangular cooperation and exchanges by documenting and sharing Zambiaโs SP innovations and lessons learned.
4. Productive and Resilience-Building Social Protection
- Design and promote productive social protection and graduation-oriented pathways, leveraging WFPโs resilience, nutrition-sensitive, and school feeding programmes.
- Provide technical inputs to operational frameworks that combine social transfers with livelihoods, skills, and market access interventions for poor and vulnerable households.
- Contribute to joint assessments and targeting tools that integrate climate vulnerability and food insecurity data into SP programme planning.
- Support the development of monitoring and evaluation frameworks to track resilience and graduation pathway outcomes and milestones.
5. Partnership Building and Resource Mobilization
- Represent WFP in social protection technical working groups, policy dialogues, and donor coordination mechanisms.
- Foster strategic partnerships with government, UN agencies, NGOs, and research institutions to align SP investments.
- Contribute to the development of joint proposals, donor reports, and funding strategies to support SP system strengthening.
QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE REQUIRED:
- Advanced university degree in Social Policy, Public Administration, Economics, International Development, or a related field.
- Minimum 5 years of progressive experience in social protection system design, advisory support to government, digital systems (registries/MIS), and/or SRSP in a development or humanitarian context.
- Proven experience in designing and implementing integrated, multi-sectoral programs.
- Strategic thinking, policy analysis, government engagement, digital literacy, and excellent written and verbal communication.
- Desirable: Familiarity with adaptive and shock-responsive SP approaches, productive social protection, and national registry architecture.
Languages:
Fluency (level C) in English.
WFP LEADERSHIP FRAMEWORK
WFP Leadership Framework guides to the common standards of behavior that guide HOW we work together to accomplish our mission.
Click here to access WFP Leadership Framework
REASONABLE ACCOMMODATION
WFP is committed to supporting individuals with disabilities by providing reasonable accommodations throughout the recruitment process. If you require a reasonable accommodation, please contact: global.inclusion@wfp.org
NO FEE DISCLAIMER
The United Nations does not charge any application, processing, training, interviewing, testing or other fee in connection with the application or recruitment process. Should you receive a solicitation for the payment of a fee, please disregard it. Furthermore, please note that emblems, logos, names and addresses are easily copied and reproduced. Therefore, you are advised to apply particular care when submitting personal information on the web.
REMINDERS BEFORE YOU SUBMIT YOUR APPLICATION
We strongly recommend that your profile is accurate, complete, and includes your employment records, academic qualifications, language skills and UN Grade (if applicable).
Once your profile is completed, please apply, and submit your application.
Please make sure you upload your professional CV in the English language
Kindly note the only documents you will need to submit at this time are your CV and Cover Letter
Additional documents such as passport, recommendation letters, academic certificates, etc. may potentially be requested at a future time
Please contact us at global.hrerecruitment@wfp.org in case you face any challenges with submitting your application
Only shortlisted candidates will be notified
All employment decisions are made on the basis of organizational needs, job requirements, merit, and individual qualifications. WFP is committed to providing an inclusive work environment free of sexual exploitation and abuse, all forms of discrimination, any kind of harassment, sexual harassment, and abuse of authority. Therefore, all selected candidates will undergo rigorous reference and background checks.
No appointment under any kind of contract will be offered to members of the UN Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ), International Civil Service Commission (ICSC), FAO Finance Committee, WFP External Auditor, WFP Audit Committee, Joint Inspection Unit (JIU) and other similar bodies within the United Nations system with oversight responsibilities over WFP, both during their service and within three years of ceasing that service.
- Contribute to the development of joint proposals, donor reports, and funding strategies to support SP system strengthening.