Budget & Programming Consultant

DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS

The School Meals Accelerator (the Accelerator) is a new initiative under the School Meals Coalition, launching in 2026 to support low- and lower-middle-income countries in scaling up and strengthening their national school meal programs. It responds directly to growing government demand for strategic, high-quality technical assistance that ensures long-term sustainability. The Accelerator builds on the momentum of the Coalition, which has mobilized over 110 countries and 140 partners around the school meals agenda, with more than 60 countries making formal national commitments.

ABOUT THE SCHOOL MEALS ACCELERATOR

Hosted by WFP and supported by a diverse network of partners, the Accelerator will provide demand-led, country-driven support across three core pillars: national program design, partnership alignment, and learning and knowledge. Its goal is to unlock the full potential of school meal programs by enhancing design, scaling investment, and fostering cross-sector collaboration across education, health, agriculture, and food systems. The Accelerator aims to help countries reach an additional 100 million children by 2030 with healthy and nutritious meals in school.

Joining the Accelerator team means being part of a bold, systems-focused effort to drive lasting change. It’s an opportunity to work alongside governments and partners to co-create solutions, strengthen national capacity, and help shape the future of school meals as a strategic investment in children, communities, and inclusive development.

About the School Meals Accelerator: 
 

School Meals Accelerator (the Accelerator) is the fifth and newest initiative under the School Meals Coalition, designed to support governments to scale and strengthen their national school meal programmes and turn their ambitions into real impact. Acting as a network catalyst and convenor, the Accelerator mobilizes resources and expertise from the right partners to deliver strategic technical assistance where it matters most.   

The Accelerator’s mission: unlock the full potential of national school meal programs by improving design, scaling investment, and fostering collaboration across education, health, and food systems. It embraces a systems-thinking approach, adapts to country priorities, and thrives in deep collaboration among global, regional, and local actors. The Accelerator’s ambition: to help low- and lower-middle-income countries reach an additional 100 million children by 2030, making school meals a cornerstone of human capital development and a global standard of care.  

The Accelerator operates in conditions of high complexity. Because it operates as a network facilitator rather than a traditional organization, its work spans multiple countries, organisations and institutional logics, and seeks to support system-level change rather than the delivery of predefined solutions.  
 
For this reason, the Accelerator has adopted a systemic leadership approach, which accepts that pathways to change are non-linear, and progress depends on learning, adaptation and collaboration across boundaries. Working in this way places ongoing demands on those involved and requires leaders who are able to work productively with uncertainty, difference and incomplete authority while maintaining accountability for results. Joining the Accelerator team therefore means being part of a first-of-its-kind development enterprise: a systems-focused effort to drive lasting, country-led change that requires a willingness to learn, adapt and be shaped by the work as it evolves. 
 

Purpose for the role:

This role is part of the Operations Team of the Accelerator, which is responsible for ensuring that SMA has the systems, processes, and institutional foundations required to operate effectively across a complex, multi‑country portfolio. The postholder supports the oversight of core operational functions — including finance and budget management, human resources, partner agreements, procurement, legal, reporting, and information management — ensuring they are coherent, compliant, and aligned with SMA’s operating model and WFP’s rules and regulations.

Within this structure, the Budget and Programming Consultant plays a key role in safeguarding and enabling SMA operations through the responsible and efficient management of financial resources. The role supports risk‑informed, end‑to‑end planning, budgeting and reporting, ensuring that resources are allocated strategically and utilized in compliance with organisational standards.
 

The incumbent will operate within an assigned portfolio, working independently and applying technical expertise to analyse data, prepare reports, advise managers, troubleshoot challenges, and identify opportunities for improvement. They are expected to lead and deliver budget, resource, and programming activities — including those of high complexity — and provide tailored support to the School Meals Accelerator’s leadership and teams.
 

Through close partnership with managers and technical counterparts, the Budget and Programming Consultant ensures the adoption of best‑practice approaches that promote the efficient, effective, and compliant utilisation of resources, enabling SMA to deliver on its priorities and strategic objectives.
 

Responsibilities:
Budget Planning and Management

• Identify opportunities to develop and implement policies and procedures for budget and programming activities, aimed at achieving objectives in alignment with SMA operational strategies.
• Proactively support the preparation and review of budgets to ensure accuracy, relevance, cost-effectiveness, and completeness, while monitoring ongoing performance against the operational budget.
• Review and clear submitted funding proposals, making recommendations as needed, in close collaboration with the SMA programme and partnerships teams, as well as SMA activity managers.
• Provide guidance on budgetary adjustments to optimize resource utilization, coordinating inputs from various SMA units and offering regular feedback to the SMA Director and key stakeholders.
• Coordinate with the WFP Budget and Programming function to ensure compliant management and oversight of the SMA Trust Fund, following up on outstanding actions with stakeholders and enabling timely reporting for SMA Trust Fund grants.

Funds and Performance Management, and Reporting:

• Collate inputs for the SMA Resource Management/Governance Committee, which reviews and prioritizes resources against SMA’s annual budgets and implementation plans, in line with agreed timelines.
• Advise the SMA Director and SMA units on complex programming requests and fund utilization (e.g., appropriateness, timeliness, accuracy), while proactively engaging fund managers to implement recommendations and corrective actions that support reporting against original budgets and approved funding proposals.
• Coordinate the preparation of interim, progress, and final reports as required by contribution agreements between SMA and specific donors, with particular attention to multi-year contributions.
• Monitor ongoing performance against the approved SMA operations budget, including country-level implementation, through financial analysis, and provide sound advice to the SMA Director on necessary budgetary adjustments to ensure optimal resource utilization in line with WFP financial guidance and SMA operational strategies.

Leadership:

• Support the SMA Director in the overall management of the SMA TSMA Trust Fund. Develop and document internal business processes, Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), and training materials related to resource management, including onboarding support for new team members.
• Supervise and guide SMA Business Support Assistants by providing coaching and training to build capacity and enhance the quality of operational support, while serving as a point of referral and escalation for complex analyses and queries.

Other:

• Coordinate data analysis efforts and develop innovative, SMA-specific reports to meet diverse requirements and support informed decision-making, ensuring consistency in information shared with SMA management and external stakeholders.

• Identify opportunities to enhance systems, techniques, tools, processes, and procedures for improved monitoring, management, and reporting of SMA budgets and resources.
• Represent the unit in internal meetings, committees, and working groups as needed, providing and gathering information from a budget and resource programming perspective. Provide technical recommendations and guidance, and support the monitoring and management of financial risks.
• Perform other relevant duties as required.

Qualifications:

Education:
Advanced university degree in Business Administration, Statistics, Finance, Economics or other relevant field, or First University degree in the same subject(s) plus equivalent relevant work experience.
 

Additional professional trainings in financial management, project management, statistical analysis and/or operational planning and management is desirable.

Experience:

• Minimum of 3 years of relevant professional experience in finance, financial management, resource management, and or budgeting.
• Demonstrated international experience, collaborating with diverse partners (governments, UN agencies, civil society, private sector) across regions and organizational levels.
• Successfully managed small to medium-sized operations of moderate complexity, overseeing project performance against available resources and ensuring compliance with established policies and procedures.
• Demonstrated experience in cross-functional collaboration to address resource management issues and gaps, effectively influencing Director-level managers to make informed decisions.

Language:

Fluency (level C) in English; intermediate (level B) in a second official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, Spanish). 

REASONABLE ACCOMMODATION

The School Meals Accelerator is committed to supporting individuals with disabilities by providing reasonable accommodations throughout the recruitment process. If you require a reasonable accommodation, please contact:  [email protected]

NO FEE DISCLAIMER

The School Meals Accelerator does not charge any application, processing, training, interviewing, testing or other fee in connection with the application or recruitment process. Should you receive a solicitation for the payment of a fee, please disregard it. Furthermore, please note that emblems, logos, names and addresses are easily copied and reproduced. Therefore, you are advised to apply particular care when submitting personal information on the web.

REMINDERS BEFORE YOU SUBMIT YOUR APPLICATION

• We strongly recommend that your profile is accurate, complete, and includes your employment records, academic qualifications, language skills and UN Grade (if applicable).

• Once your profile is completed, please apply, and submit your application.

• Kindly note the only documents you will need to submit at this time are your CV and Cover Letter

• Additional documents such as passport, recommendation letters, academic certificates, etc. may potentially be requested at a future time

• Please contact us at [email protected] in case you face any challenges with submitting your application

• Only shortlisted candidates will be notified

All employment decisions are made on the basis of organizational needs, job requirements, merit, and individual qualifications. WFP is committed to providing an inclusive work environment free of sexual exploitation and abuse, all forms of discrimination, any kind of harassment, sexual harassment, and abuse of authority. Therefore, all selected candidates will undergo rigorous reference and background checks.

No appointment under any kind of contract will be offered to members of the UN Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ), International Civil Service Commission (ICSC), FAO Finance Committee, WFP External Auditor, WFP Audit Committee, Joint Inspection Unit (JIU) and other similar bodies within the United Nations system with oversight responsibilities over WFP, both during their service and within three years of ceasing that service.