WRI Africa’s Food Program aims at transforming food systems in Africa to address food and nutritional insecurity for a growing population while driving economic development, increasing their resilience to climate change while pivoting away from potential future emissions, having positive impacts on biodiversity, and generating greater equity outcomes for women, children youth and other vulnerable groups. WRI Africa’s Food Program is anchored on four strengthening principles: i) Producing nutrient dense foods that address food and nutritional insecurity, generating jobs for youth, women and other marginalised groups, while keeping within planetary boundaries on nature and climate, (ii) Reducing food loss and waste (FLW), including evidence generation and building partnerships with public and private sector partners to promote the Target-Measure-Act approach, (iii) Restoring degraded agricultural lands to increase productivity while generating essential ecosystems services for agriculture such as soil health, water and biodiversity that is important for pollination and other ecosystem services; iv) Protecting remaining natural ecosystems from conversion to agriculture and degradation.
Job Highlight:
As a Senior Crop Data Analyst, you will contribute to WRI’s Food Program research work on jurisdictional crop-type mapping, yield monitoring, food gap analysis and sustainable yield increase methods. You will collect geo-located field data on crop-types, yields and uses (for example, local markets and exports) in a priority landscapes and countries (aligned with WRI Africa strategy). You will work with remote sensing partners to use data to develop wall-to-wall time series maps of crop-types, yields and uses. You will further assist the Senior Associate on running and developing a research consortium on crop-type mapping. You will help collect spatially relevant data for priority geographies (for example, rainfall and temperature). You will also be able perform spatial analysis guided by the Senior Associate on crop-type mapping, change and crop decline. You will lead from our WRI Africa Food team and linked to WRI’s Land & Carbon Lab, which works on monitoring all forms of land cover and land use, including monitoring of croplands around the world. You will be reporting to the Director of Vital Landscapes.
Research and analysis (80%):
- Develop a work plan for collecting crop-type, yield and use data for priority geographies and countries, aligned with the WRI Africa strategy
- Develop a work plan for collecting other data associated like climate data, soil data, precipitation data, and temperature data
- Perform field data collection (geolocation of crop-types and yields) and rapid rural appraisals in priority geographies and countries
- Collect relevant data from national research institutions, ministries and other government offices, research partners, and NGOs
- Conduct data cleaning and enter the data into a GIS database so it can be used for analysis
- Support colleagues in the food team in conducting data analysis from the database to answer specific research questions, including through other methods such as desk reviews and quantitative geospatial analysis
- Summarize findings on diverse topics such as: crop-type mapping and remote sensing, yield mapping, and methods
- Support production of written and graphic content for research reports, internal briefs, blogs, presentations, and press releases
- Support editing, peer review, and production process to publish research and communication outputs
- Support the Senior Associate in engagement of targeted decision makers
- Support policy teams to ensure country’s NDCs sections on agriculture and food systems is aligned with both mitigation and adaptation goals
- Help develop the WRI Africa food strategy with all aspects related to yields, nature and climate
Program development and administration (20%):
- Convene and work with different partners to gain their collaboration on all areas relevant for this work
- Work closely with Food team and Land and Carbon lab team to develop crop type analysis
- Contribute to concept notes, funding proposals, and donor reports
- Support development of workplans and related internal systems and procedures to ensure timely execution of activities and delivery of outputs
- Collaborate with external partners and WRI colleagues across programs and countries.
- Education: You have a completed bachelor’s degree in Geographic Information Sciences, Geo-Statistics, Remote-Sensing, Geography, or a related area
- Experience: You have 6+ years of relevant full-time work 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 in project management and implementation
- Experience working with farmers, government officials and researchers in the field
- Experience of remote sensing, photo interpretation, and earth observation technologies and methods, statistics and spatial statistics, and sampling design
- Experience in spatial analyses, GIS software, and photo interpretation
- Experience working with Excel in an advanced capacity
- Experience with Google Earth Engine, Python, or command-line is desirable
- Ability and willingness to work in the field in Africa and travel internationally
- Languages: Verbal and written proficiency in English. Working knowledge of French would be desirable.
- A competitive salary
- Access to the WRI global network with the opportunity to exchange with and learn from passionate colleagues working at the cutting edge of their fields across Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America and the US.
- The chance to have an impact and to develop your career within a mission driven organization with access to varied learning and training opportunities.
- A workplace that strives to put diversity and inclusion at the heart of our work.
- The opportunity to join and get involved in different working groups and affinity groups to shape the future of WRI.
- Long-term commitment to hybrid working model with flexible working hours.
- Generous leave days that increase with tenure.
