Internship @ IFAD

Terms of reference internship
ESA Earth Observation trials in IFAD Madagascar Projects

Duration: 5 months between June 2010 and October 2010.
Duty Station: IFAD Headquarters, Rome, Italy and ESA, Frascati, Italy

Background
The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) has been selected by the European Space Agency (ESA) as one of several potential International Financial Institutions (IFI) for Earth Observation (EO) demonstration trials. IFAD is dedicated to eradicating poverty in the rural areas of developing countries and their activities focus on agricultural rural development. IFAD avails resources on concessional terms for agricultural development in developing Member States. Certain EO products and services have been identified as a useful tool to support the monitoring and management of IFAD projects, to improve the efficiency of the investments made and finally to assess the impact and social benefits of the financed development activity.
ESA has been interacting with IFAD to understand the information requirements for EO services. This process has resulted in the selection of areas and specific service trials within three IFAD ongoing projects in Madagascar, namely, crop acreage for impact assessment in the south, development planning in the west and land tenure support in the central region.

Objective
The objective of the trials is to demonstrate and validate the utility of EO information services in the monitoring and management of IFAD projects in Madagascar.


Definition of expected outputs and activities: Under the overall guidance of the Country Programme Manager, Eastern and Southern Africa Division, IFAD and the Technical Officer, ESA, the intern will be supporting IFAD in the following tasks:


· Assisting ESA and the contractor in the final definition of a service that satisfies IFAD requirements. This means providing ESA with the necessary information on IFAD requirements.
· Facilitating access to suitable in-situ data and any other ancillary data available from the selected IFAD projects in order to help ESA and the contractor implement and validate the required products.
· Consolidating IFAD feedback on the quality and benefit of the service trials.

Deliverables
The intern shall deliver a report in the form of a case study, where he/she will assess the utility of the trials to IFAD projects and provide practical recommendations on how IFAD project teams can make best use of EO information for better monitoring and management.

The agreed monthly rate will be USD 600.

Essential Qualifications
Education: Degree in development or related issues with appropriate training in Geographic Information Systems and Remote Sensing.

Required skills: Excellent analytical skills and good written and spoken French. The intern must be able to work independently and as part of a team, have strong interpersonal skills and be able to identify and understand the objectives of different stakeholders. The intern should have excellent organizational skills, and should be able to plan and organize work and deliver outputs in a timely fashion.

Interested candidates should send their CV to s.devos@ifad.org and y.oodally@ifad.org  before 25 May 2010.