The Position:
As Somalia makes a political and economic transition, credible and timely official statistical information on population, social, economic, and environmental conditions will play a fundamental role in effective policy making, planning, and monitoring for economic growth, poverty reduction, and attainment of such development targets as the NDP9 and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To date, the Population and Housing Census was carried out twice in Somalia, the 1974 population and livestock census in which the results were adjusted for under-enumeration and limited data released and the 1986 census whose results were never released. The Population and Housing Census (PHC) is one of the main pillars of national statistical systems, and provide invaluable data for policy development, planning, research, and other purposes. This underscores the importance of a PHC for Somalia – a country with weak statistical systems and lack of routine vital statistics. The PHC is expected to be the main (or even the only) source of data on all people at the national, state and lower levels in many social and demographic domains for planning thereby promoting accountability and good governance. It is against this background that the Federal Government of Somalia plans to conduct the Population and Household Census in 2023.
It is against this background that the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), in collaboration with other UN agencies and development partners is geared to provide robust technical support in conducting the PHC - through building national technical and management capacities to plan and implement high quality censuses in accordance with scientifically established and internationally recognized standards and procedures and in full harmonization with internationally established standards and recommendations for census undertaking and related activities.
With the support of UNFPA, other UN agencies and Development Partners, a number of initiatives will be implemented to ensure a quality, participatory and inclusive census. The success of the census will thus hinge on the mutual commitment by both the Government and the international community. The donor community recognizes the importance of this exercise and financial commitments will be mobilized towards the funding of the PHC. With the commitment of other Development Partners, a multi-donor fund for the Census will be established, managed and led by UNFPA, to which donors can contribute, based on an agreed framework, priorities and budget lines. At the request of donor countries, UNFPA will set up a Donor Forum for reporting, sharing information and consultation with donors on the Population and Housing Census.
Requirements:
Education
Advanced university degree in Demography, Statistics, Population Studies, Social Sciences or related subjects- PhD preferable or equivalent professional experience.
Experience
- At least 10 years of progressive experience in social and demographic data collection, processing and analysis, preferably in population and housing censuses, particularly in a developing country. Experience with census implementation in a challenging context will be an advantage;
- Knowledge and experience in use of new technologies for data collection and in GIS and geospatial data;
- Experience in providing on-the-job training to local staff in data quality, analysis and report writing;
- Experience in the dissemination of census data and socio-demographic analyses to broad audiences as well as in motivating the utilization of data and results in development planning and policy issues;
- Knowledge and experience with census data processing software (CSPro, REDATAM, etc.), demographic data analysis (MORTPAK, FERTPAK, PAS), statistical packages (SPSS, STATA, R, etc.) and population projection programs (People, Spectrum, RUP);
- Experience in using GIS software (QGIS, ARCGIS) will be an asset
- Communication skills especially for transfer of knowledge.
We are no longer accepting applications for this position.
