Apply for the ICPAC Socio-Economic Data Analyst Internship Program (open to applicants from any IGAD member state)
Closing On: 30 Aug 2024, 17:00
Duty Station: Nairobi, Kenya- ICPAC Office
Introduction and Context
The Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) is one of the Regional Economic Communities (RECs) of the African Union Commission. IGAD was initially established in 1986as the Intergovernmental Authority on Drought and Development (IGADD) to coordinate themember states’ efforts in combating drought and desertification and promoting efforts to mitigate the effects of drought. It was later revitalized in 1996, expanded its mandate, and renamed Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD).
IGAD has various divisions andspecialized institutions working to advance development and address the challenges in the region.The IGAD Climate Prediction and Applications Centre (ICPAC) is one of the specialized institutions within IGAD mandated to provide climate services and applications, including disaster risk management.
The IGAD region has been facing recurrent disasters resulting from natural and human-made hazards and due to multiple drivers. Key among the multiple hazards that evolve into disasters are droughts, floods, land slides, epidemics, and pandemics. Human-made hazards include industrialand transportation accidents, environmental pollution, and crop and livestock pest. These hazards have caused disasters of varying magnitudes in the past. Disasters still remain a serious development challenge for the IGAD region, destroying years of development efforts, squandering vast resource investments, perpetuating poverty, damaging infrastructure and the natural environment, impoverishing communities, and diverting national priorities and development resources to emergency management operations.The Disaster Risk Management (DRM) programme has established a multi-hazard early warning situation room (in partnership with AUC and UNDRR); called IGAD Disaster Operations Centre (IDOC) in 2021.
There are several systems developed and running in the situation room includinga) East Africa Hazards Watch; b) East Africa Drought Watch; C) East Africa Agriculture Watch,among others. The aim is to monitor major hazards and generate early warning information to support relevant actors in anticipating and delivering early action, there by averting or mitigating the impacts of disasters on the lives and livelihoods of the people in the region. To achieve this,there is a need to shift the focus from the hazard alone, but also look at the predisposition of people and societies that face these hazards. This requires a an integration of socio-economic vulnerability into the East Africa Hazard Watch to be able to forecast the impacts of the disasters. A combination of bio-pysical data (hazard-centered) and socio-economic data (people centered) will not onlyimprove the early warining systems, but also inform the necessasy early actions that reduce the impacts of the disasters.
The ICPAC is partnering with the United Nations University – Institute for Environment andHuman Security (UNU-EHS, Germany), the Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD, Kenya), the Centro Internazionale in Monitoraggio Ambientale foundation (CIMA, Italy) to implement “ Towards actionable impact-based early warning in Africa: integrating exposure and vulnerability into early warning systems – a pilot study in the IGAD region” (Early Warning 4 IGAD) project which is funded by United Nations office forDisaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) as part of “Strengthening Disaster Risk Governance and Recovery Capacities FED/2021/429- 594 (EDF 11)”. This project seeks to promote people-centered EWS approaches for the development of methodology, triggers and thresholds for impact-based EWS through the incorporation of data on vulnerability and exposure in the risk module.
Therefore, ICPAC seeks to give two internships to socio-economic data analysts from any IGAD member state to collect socio-economic data from Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS)and Central Statistics Agency of Ethiopia (CSA).
Tasks and responsibilities
The data analyst interns will be attached to ICPAC for 5 months and will work under thesupervision of the Disaster Risk Assessment Expert of IGAD’s DRM Programme to undertake all the socio-economic data gathering activities in their respective countries. The interns will work with national statistics departments in Kenya and Ethiopia to gather the existing socio-economic data on elements exposed and vulnerable to flood and drought (such as the population size segregated by gender, age, and education, income and source of livelihoods, infrastructure such asroads, hospitals, schools, etc), the historical data, clean, arrange, and share the datasets indesignated formats (such as .csv, .xls, .rdata, or .dta, .shp files).
The general task of the interns isto put together all socio-economic datasets that will be used to conduct the assessment of the socio-economic vulnerability to disasters for impact-based forecasting. Some of the core tasks and responsibilities include:
- Learning the indicators used for socio-economic vulnerability assessment for flood and drought.
- Review the national surveys and censuses vis a vis the needed indicators.
- Put together all socio-economic data available in statistics departments at national and sub-national (county, constituency, and ward) levels.
- Arrange and clean the data, create a dataset and save it in either .csv, .xls, .dta, .rdata, .shp format.
- Collect and arrange socio-economic data from the global sources such as World POP, Human Development Index (HDI), etc.
- Cross-check and identify the the descripencies in data from differet sources
- Support the collection, aggregation and analysis of disaster displacement data in the IGAD region and integration in the ICPAC/IGAD geoportal as a base layer.
- Performs such other duties related to data collection, cleaning, arrangement, and analysis as may be assigned from time to time.
Qualifications and Experience
- University degree in statistics, economics, Geographic Information System (GIS), or other relevant field. Those undertaking their advanced degree in the same relevant fields are welcome to apply.
- Previous experience as data analyst, statistician, socio-economist, or GIS specialist
- Previous experience in data collection, cleaning and data analysis.
- Having contributed to preparation of national surveys such as the recent demographic and health survey in Kenya, or household budget surveys, or sensus is an added advantage.
- To be proficient in statistical software such as R and/or stata.
- Previous experience on dealing with disaster related data (flood or drought) and/or proficiency in GIS is an added advantage.
Core competencies:
- Self-driven,
- result oriented,
- problem solver
- Teamwork
- Keeping deadlines
- Communication
Reporting: The data analyst intern will be under the overall supervision of the Director of ICPAC while technical reporting will be to the Disaster Risk Assessement Expert and IGAD DRM programme coordinator.
Language: For this assignment, strong command of English is required.
How to apply
Interested candidates are encouraged to apply via email (Hard copies will not be accepted) with subject line ‘‘Application for Socio-Economic Data Analyst Internship – DOC 06/2024’’.
Applications should be received by close of business on 30th August 2024. Include an expression of interest and curriculum vitae stating relevant achievements and illustrating capacity to undertake the work to the following Address: [email protected] and a copy to [email protected]
