ILRI vacancy: Research Analyst, Index Based Livestock Insurance

The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) works to enhance the roles livestock play in pathways out of poverty in developing countries. ILRI has two main campuses in East Africa and other hubs in East, West and southern Africa and South, Southeast and East Asia.CGIAR is a global agricultural research partnership for a food-secure future. Its science is carried out by 15 research centres that are members of the CGIAR Consortium in collaboration with hundreds of partner organizations. The PositionThis position would be part of the team developing, piloting, assessing the impact of, and scaling-up index-based livestock insurance (IBLI) products.  Two comprehensive pilots have already been launched in Marsabit district of Northern Kenya and Borena Zone in Southern Ethiopia (See link).   The successful applicant will play a central role in managing and coordinating the research operations for the team.  The candidate will support team scientists with data analysis and writing to exploit the rich existing panel data and contribute to writing scientific papers.  The IBLI project conducts two large annual household surveys in Northern Kenya and Southern Ethiopia and several other specialized modules throughout the year.  It also utilizes a suite of remotely sensed data.  This position also involves coordinating and supporting the implementation of these surveys and will be expected to contribute to survey and research as well as overseeing data cleaning and storage.Key responsibilities

• Provide research and analytical support to project scientists and contribute to research papers
• Write research reports summarizing and analysing data
• Contribute to the IBLI research for development agenda (research design and strategy, survey instruments, sampling frame, survey implementation strategy, enumerator training, data collection and analysis).
• Oversee management of project data: data cleaning, data inventory and storage, data analysis.
• Writing and updating survey data codebooks that fully describe the research and survey design, data collection methods, cleaning and inventory process.
• Contribute to communication and dissemination of research findings, which should include participation in meetings and workshops, giving periodic presentations to participating institutions, and communicating to policy makers through web and popular media.

Requirements

• A Master’s degree in Economics, Development Economics, Agricultural Economics, Statistics or other relevant discipline.  
• Minimum 2 years of post-Master’s experience in quantitative and qualitative household-level socio-economic data collection and analysis; experience must involve field work and survey implementation as well as data analysis and report writing.
• Ability to clean, manage, and analyze household-level socio-economic panel data sets with statistical software including Stata. Experience in SQL is added advantage.  
• Experience in managing or playing a leading role in research programs involving field survey implementation and empirical analysis.
• Ability to design questionnaires and implementing surveys using computer assisted personal interviewing software such as surveybe.
• Experience in presenting and publishing research outputs.
• Ability to work independently and in interdisciplinary and cross-cultural teams.
• Ability to communicate and coordinate with multidisciplinary teams, enumerators, commercial partners, and local stakeholders.

Terms of AppointmentThis is a Nationally Recruited Staff (NRS) position based at ILRI’s Nairobi campus.  The position is on a 2 year contract with the possibility of renewal, contingent upon individual performance and continued funding.Job level and salaryThis position is in job Grade 3A level 2 with a minimum salary of KES 173,617. This is exclusive of other benefits provided by ILRI. This is exclusive of other benefits provided by ILRI.Location: The position will be based at the ILRI, Nairobi.How to ApplyApplicants should send a cover letter and CV combined as one document addressed to the Human Resources Director, explaining their interest in the position, what they can bring to the job and the names and addresses (including telephone and email) of three referees who are knowledgeable about the candidate’s professional qualifications and work experience.Applications should be submitted online to the Human Resources Director at our recruitment portal here on or before 12 July 2013. The position title and reference number REF: RA/IBLI/06/13 should be clearly marked on the cover letter. Only online applications will be considered, and only short listed candidates will be contacted.