From the Field

Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning (MEL) Analyst, Africa
Consultant Position
Applications Due by July 12, 2024

The World Poultry Foundation (WPF) is seeking a motivated and organized individual to support a diverse range of operational and administrative needs.

Location: Remote position.
Consultancy Duration:  1 year, with potential for renewal
Anticipated Start: February 2024
Anticipated Start: August 2024

About the World Poultry Foundation
The WPF is a U.S. based non-profit organization that creates access to poultry inputs for rural households with a focus on women and youth. We work through private companies to develop small poultry enterprises that generate income and provide protein for rural households. We also build capacity through educational programs and training workshops for farmers across the globe with an emphasis on technical training, nutrition, and gender programs for women. Our mission is to be a catalyst for improving lives globally through the sustainable production of poultry while empowering farmers in developing regions.

Program Overview – Africa Poultry Multiplication Initiative (APMI)
The African Poultry Multiplication Initiative (APMI) is a unique poultry value chain model that has been implemented in several African countries to catalyze a transformation of rural poultry production by helping to scale private sector delivery efforts, with a special focus on productivity and income growth for rural households. This program empowers rural women to improve the health, nutrition, and the overall livelihood of their households. The APMI also significantly increases overall household income through increased production and reliable offtake of maize and soybean for poultry feed production.

The World Poultry Foundation (WPF) provides technical assistance and guidance to private companies and their partners to: (a) establish a supply of improved genetics of low-input, dual-purpose chicken breeds; (b) scale rearing, multiplication, and day-old chick production systems to service rural communities; (c) establish brooding/mother units (BU’s) to properly rear, feed, and vaccinate day-old chicks to reduce early stress and mortality and improve the performance of the birds in the hands of small scale producers; (d) help the companies to recruit and train a network of technical support specialists to support the BUs; (e) enable networks of women smallholder farmer groups to purchase 28-day old chicks (DOCs) from the BU’s to raise them for meat and eggs, ultimately benefitting their households.

Poultry constitutes an important economic activity for rural farmers even at the subsistence levels. However, while most programs have initially focused on commercial poultry systems – which have largely failed to meet the demand and access needs of the population – the rural poultry activities have been largely ignored and sidelined. This means that rural poultry production operations, which are the ones that would benefit the most, are sidelined. Efforts by governments to increase the importation of poultry products from more productive countries like Brazil and the US is possible, but many do not have the foreign exchange resources to make it adequate, affordable, and accessible for the average household. Even with increased supply, the lack of reliable cold chain distribution systems prevents many of these rural areas from even having access to the products.

The APMI is focused on five main outcomes:

1. Increased poultry production and productivity through dual purpose breeds that act and behave similar to local indigenous breeds yet achieve higher outputs (meat and eggs). For example, local breeds will lay on average 45 eggs per year whereby the dual-purpose breeds will lay 160 -180 eggs under the same foraging conditions.
2. Increased rural household income: through the increase in productivity, the rural households can monetize the excess production, increasing household income.
3. Improved household nutrition through the consumption of high-quality protein (meat and eggs) and consumption of a more diverse diet, (from increased income, #2).
4. Empower women and youth – The goal of the APMI is that 75% of the beneficiaries of the program are women and youth (under the age of 24).
5. Rigorously monitor and improve – WPF has a robust M&E system to deploy in each country to help track progress towards these outcomes and provide insight on how to improve along the way.

Position Overview

The Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) Analyst is responsible for supporting MEL activities across WPF APMI subgrantees. The MEL analyst will report to the Director of International Program Development but will work closely with team members across the organization. The MEL analyst will maintain the WPF’s monitoring system, coordinating updates with partners and tailoring survey forms to each country context where we work. The MEL analyst will conduct detailed analysis of the data collected to understand progress towards targets and highlight trends in the data. This role will involve liaising both internally with our data team members as well as externally with our partners. The MEL analyst will also support the analysis of data collected from WPF impact evaluation activities, and tailor recommendations for our partners to implement based on findings from that work. Preference will be given to French-speaking applicants as the ideal candidate can also support training and coordination with French-speaking partners.

Responsibilities

• Work with WPF management to execute on measurement strategies to know if we are achieving our mission of poultry production resulting in income generation, improved household nutrition, and women’s empowerment to rural small-scale producers
• Maintain WPF’s data collection platform in CommCare for data collection across African countries where we work, updating where relevant to address our changing needs
• Analyze field data collected to understand trends, share learnings, and highlight issues that need to be addressed
• Maintain and update dashboards for use in strategy decision-making
• Support data analysis from WPF impact evaluation activities
• Design, coordinate and manage periodic phone surveys to monitor impact progress
• Support reporting on key progress indicators to donors

Skills

• Written communication/report writing
• Oral communication
• Fluent in English, with preference given to candidates also fluent in French
• Ability to work well on a team
• Ability to work with people from different cultural backgrounds
• Time Management
• Ability to work independently and in a remote setting
• Proficient in STATA, Access, or another data analysis program
• Proficient in CommCare or other ODK data collection platform
• Proficient in Excel, Word, and PowerPoint

Qualifications

• Understanding of MEL activities
• Understanding of data collection in rural areas
• Experience working in MEL, experience in an agricultural context a plus
• Ability to travel up to 30% of time
• Willingness to travel in rural areas
• 3-5 years’ experience in working in Africa
• Completion of A Level or high school equivalent education
• University degree in a relevant discipline, (e.g. ag economics, ag finance, ag marketing or agriculture business)
• Passionate about positively impacting small scale farmers in rural areas
• Demonstrated ability to work remotely with minimal oversight
• Ability to effectively communicate across diverse partners (senior management of subgrantee partners, field staff, CEO, Board of Directors, Ministry/Government officials, donors)
• Fluent in French

How to apply

All interested candidates should send a copy of their CV and a cover letter to [email protected]. Please include “MEL Analyst” in the subject line.