WASCAL (West African Science Service Centre on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use) is a research and education-focused institution designed to provide knowledge and services to help tackle climate change challenges and enhance the resilience of human and environmental systems. It does so by strengthening the research capacity and infrastructure in West Africa related to climate change by pooling the expertise of eleven (11) West African countries and Germany. The West African countries include Benin, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, and Togo.
WASCAL has its Headquarters in Accra, Ghana, the Competence Centre is based in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso and 12 graduate schools (PhD and MSc. Programs) in 12 lead universities in and across West Africa.
WASCAL seeks to recruit a Post-Doctoral Scientist as Social Learning and Implementation Facilitator at its Competence Centre in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. The candidate will be required to service WASCAL by providing support to the project INTERFACES (Supporting Pathways to Sustainable Land Management in Africa), funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research BMBF under the guidance of the local project coordination team at WASCAL.
The project supports and coordinates outreach activities for four Research and Development (R&D) projects working on sustainable land management in Sub-Sahara Africa funded under the umbrella of BMBF’s Strategy, “Research for Sustainability”. INTERFACES will support collective processes, that enable and contribute to gender-responsive transformative change between all relevant stakeholders, such as the R&D projects, other scientists, policy-makers, and practitioners in Africa. The position is responsible to engage with the relevant stakeholders in Africa in collective and social learning processes and contribute to the implementation of research results. It involves a strong cooperation with the partners of INTERFACES and the other R&D projects.
The chosen candidate will work with a multidisciplinary team of experts from different African and German institutions to produce and disseminate the results of the INTERFACES project to all stakeholders in Africa.
This is a local position based in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso with possible regular travels in other African countries and beyond. The position is funded for 4 years, however the chosen candidate will be given an initial 1-year fixed-term contract, which is renewable for 3 additional (maximum) years pending successful performance and availability of funding.
Key responsibilities include, among other things:
Essential Duties:
- Establish and run dialogue forums with a broad range of stakeholders from science, policy and practice in West Africa using collective/social learning approaches.
- Establish gender-sensitive theories of change for achieving sustainable land management together with the stakeholders.
- Actively engage in science communication, results dissemination of the R&D projects and policy decision support in SADC, ECOWAS and beyond together with the partners (via the dialogue forums, workshops, and conferences).
- Contribute to capacity development activities.
- Collaborate with the German Partners, FARA and the other R&D projects.
- Lead and contribute to high quality scientific publications related to the project in peer-reviewed journals.
- Write project reports.
General Duties:
- Provide support to the INTERFACES coordination team.
- Support WASCAL’s fundraising initiatives and other activities.
Qualifications and background needed
- Experience and interest in science communication, including the organization and facilitation of workshops, at the science-policy-practice interfaces, ideally having worked with social learning approaches or similar.
- Experience in designing and working with Theories of Change.
- A PhD and MSc (or equivalent) in social sciences, human geography, or agricultural sciences with a socio-economic background, or in a related area.
- Good knowledge of Qualitative Research Methods, ideally of participatory action research.
- Being enthusiastic to drive change in a team, having very good intercultural skills and an independent and reliable way of working.
- Very good English communication skills, a good working knowledge of French is an asset.
- Willingness and fitness to travel within Africa and elsewhere.
- A working knowledge on gender-sensitive approaches and of the agricultural and land management sector in the Global South is an asset.
Application Procedure
Interested applicants should submit following documents to candidature@wascal.org by 20th December 2022: a cover letter (maximum 2 pages) outlining motivation, qualifications, and experience for the position (considering the background and desirable qualifications), a curriculum vitae, and the names and contact information of three references. Applicants must come from ECOWAS member countries. Only applications from candidates who meet the minimum qualifications will be considered.
Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.
For further information or questions, please contact us at da.s@wascal.org.