The International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds to the world's worst humanitarian crises, helping to restore health, safety, education, economic wellbeing, and power to people devastated by conflict and disaster. Founded in 1933 at the call of Albert Einstein, the IRC is one of the world's largest international humanitarian non-governmental organizations (INGO), at work in more than 40 countries and 29 U.S. cities helping people to survive, reclaim control of their future and strengthen their communities. A force for humanity, IRC employees deliver lasting impact by restoring safety, dignity and hope to millions. If you're a solutions-driven, passionate change-maker, come join us in positively impacting the lives of millions of people world-wide for a better future.
As part of our internal mobility process, current incumbents in the existing regional roles will be given priority consideration for this position. Should the role open more broadly, all qualified internal and external candidates will be considered, therefore all are welcome to apply.
IRC’s The Technical Excellence (TE) provides technical assistance to IRC’s country program staff and share learnings to influence policy and practice. TE is comprised of technical units: Health; Economic Recovery and Development (ERD); Education; and Violence Prevention and Response (VPR). There are also three supporting units: Measurement, Grant Operations and Analytics, and Program Quality Support.
Health Unit
IRC’s health programs comprise the largest proportion of its overall program budget and are essential to both IRC emergency response and long-term programming worldwide.
The Health Technical Unit is a dynamic team of more than 70 professionals in Primary Health Care, Sexual and Reproductive Health, Nutrition, Mental Health and Psychosocial Support, and Environmental and Climate Health. They provide IRC’s 40 plus country offices and emergency response team with world class technical expertise, capacity building and a cross-country view of what works to achieve outcomes in terms of both evidence and practical experience. They also lead focused research agenda, influencing donor policy to support interventions and innovations proven cost effective to achieve positive change in people’s lives.
West and Central Africa Regional Overview:
The West and Central Africa Region (WACAR) supports effective, efficient, and high-quality programming by strengthening capacity around client outcomes, program quality, strategic positioning, and business development. It addresses overlapping humanitarian and development challenges—conflict, weak governance, and environmental degradation—through integrated, impactful approaches.
WACAR prioritizes cross-learning, innovation, and harmonized technical strategies, especially in high-need areas. It ensures continuity of care and coordinated service delivery for clients on the move, while advancing strategic donor engagement through cohesive fundraising and regional collaboration.
The region responds swiftly to country program needs, filling critical gaps and navigating access constraints, emergencies, and security shifts. It amplifies client and frontline voices to inform global advocacy and fosters strong team cohesion to enhance program delivery. WACAR focuses on cost-efficient and adaptive approaches to the evolving humanitarian and donor landscape, with a clear focus on resourcing country programs.
WACAR comprises Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon/CAR, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, DRC, Mali, Niger and Nigeria.
Position Overview
As the Nutrition Technical Advisor for West and Central Africa Region, you are responsible for ensuring high quality technical assistance to one IRC region comprised of 9 country programs listed above. You will collaborate with relevant stakeholders to achieve high quality, high impact interventions that are informed by evidence, data, and best practice, contextually appropriate, driven by client and partner voices, and are safe, inclusive, and promote equal outcomes for clients.
Program Design & Business Development
You will support country programs to design winning submissions and generally position IRC for continued success in our technical domains:
• Participate (in-person or remotely) in technical discussions with potential donors
• Substantially contribute to the development of proposal theories of change and log frames
• Support the in-country technical lead in analyzing relevant information including available M&E and client responsiveness data, to prepare for design meetings/conversations
• Advise on program modalities and strategic partnership development based on evidence, scale considerations, and how we can best support, complement, and reinforce local systems
• Advise on and/or provide hands-on support on assessments, including application and contextualization of technical standards
• Participate in project design meetings for all relevant proposals (remotely or in person)
• Review and validate design meeting decisions around technical design quality, including alignment of narratives, log-frames, and budgets, to IRC standards and outcomes
• Promote and support design collaboration with partners and clients
• Promote and support gender equality and diversity inclusion throughout project design
• Review proposals before submission to the donor or play a larger role in writing the proposal, in certain circumstances
Implementation Support
You will support country program staff and other key stakeholders in implementing technical interventions:
• Support country programs and other stakeholders with the recruitment and training of technical coordinators
• Assess program quality and inform improvements, providing follow up support to country programs as needed
• Collaborate with country program colleagues to monitor and analyze key indicators to inform periodic review, program adaptation, and course-correction as needed
• Provide technical capacity strengthening through ongoing mentoring, coaching, and trainings with country program focal points
Knowledge & Learning
You will support continuous sectoral learning and IRC technical leadership:
• Document learnings from program activities and sharing takeaways and opportunities
• Share cross-contextual learnings with country program staff across the region
• Collaborate with the Quality in Emergencies team and Emergencies Unit (EmU) counterparts during emergency classifications to support country programs to assess, design and implement high quality programming in acute emergency situations
• Collaborate with other technical advisors within the region to promote integrated programming leadership, within the health unit, with other sectors (VPR, ERD, Education) and with multi-country project management units.
• Refresh the sectoral evidence-base in collaboration with global and regional staff to influence approaches
• Contribute to the delivery of Health Technical Unit strategic priorities
• Maintain currency with sectoral best practices through continual learning and development
Key Working Relationships: This position reports to the Health Regional Lead for West and Central Africa Region. This position may potentially supervise occasional consultants and/or interns. Regular communication with other Health Unit staff, regional and country program teams, awards management and grants management staff, and other internal stakeholders.
Professional Profile
Success in this position requires an individual with expertise in designing and delivering technical assistance in public health, primary healthcare, nutrition or related programs, and with a deep understanding of the cultural, societal, and political contexts in the WACAR region.
Education: Bachelor’s Degree in Nutrition or a relevant field required, Master’s Degree preferred.
Work Experience:
• A minimum of 6-8 years of relevant experience in implementing and/or managing health programs with strong experience/background in Nutrition, with on the ground programmatic experience in a service delivery organization, NGO or comparable international agency required.
• Experience and familiarity with related donors, peer agencies and national contexts required, preferably in humanitarian, post-crisis, or climate impacted contexts.
• Demonstrated expertise in technical program design, monitoring and evaluation, with the ability to turn concepts and strategy into measurable action.
Demonstrated Skills and Competencies:
• Excellent verbal and written communications skills
• Strong organizational and time-management skills; proven ability to prioritize and deliver projects on time and independently.
• Demonstrated ability to navigate a dynamic, cross-functional, global team structure in a large multi-national organization.
• Demonstrated ability to work effectively with internal and external stakeholders at all levels.
• Strong analytic problem-solving skills.
• Highly proficient in Microsoft Office suite.
• Ability to manage and work through change in a proactive and positive manner.
Language Skills: Excellent spoken and written English and French is essential.
Working Environment: This role will have some international travel up to 40% of the time within the region.
Standard of Professional Conduct: The IRC and the IRC workers must adhere to the values and principles outlined in the IRC Way – our Code of Conduct. These are Integrity, Service, Accountability, and Equality.
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