Project duration: Fixed term position (until April 2018)
A. Background and Justification
FoodTrade ESA is a 5 year programme aimed at improving national and regional markets efficiency in the trade of staples. FoodTrade ESA is based in Nairobi, and covers 9 countries; Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda (East Africa) and Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe (Southern Africa). FoodTrade ESA systemically improves the functioning of national and regional staple food market systems; impacting directly on over 400,000 households and consumers through stable markets for staple food products.
FoodTrade East and Southern Africa (ESA) recognises the transformative potential of agriculture and trade to improve the lives and incomes of thousands of small scale farmers, as well as strengthen food security in the region. To harness this potential and bridge the gaps that exist in the trade of staple foods in East and Southern Africa, FoodTrade ESA is investing in innovative systems to allow small-scale farmers to improve their inputs and gain access regional markets. We support the private sector, governments, and other development actors to bring small scale farmers closer to the heart of agricultural systems in East and Southern Africa. In addition to this, we recognise the specific challenges that prevent both men and women from equally participating in, and benefiting from, regional agricultural value chains.
We are therefore recruiting a Gender Expert to help mainstream gender in our operations, and provide the required technical support to technical staff members and grantees to ensure our programme interventions, and the resultant outputs meet the specific needs of both men and women.
The Gender Expert will work closely with the technical teams (Market Systems, Policy, Monitoring & Results Measurement (MRM) as well as Communication & Knowledge) to develop an operational approach to gender mainstreaming that supports increasing the number of women beneficiaries and the number of grantee companies with women in key decision-making positions. The Gender Expert will provide strategic gender advice and implementation support for the third phase of the FoodTrade ESA programme.
B. Scope of work, duties and responsibilities
The scope of work will involve reviewing the extent to which the existing FoodTrade ESA interventions mainstream gender, proposing specific new policy and operational actions for improvement, and working with the technical teams to implement these proposals. Tasks include:
- Conducting a gender gap analysis of the programme and the various projects we are supporting and assessing how far current interventions are having an impact on promoting gender equality and where there is potential to do more to maximise benefits to women;
- Conducting a stakeholder mapping exercise to identify potential partnerships to jointly drive the gender mainstreaming agenda and working with new and existing partners to build a knowledge network specifically dedicated to gender issues in the staple foods trade;
- Critically assessing the recent poverty study of FoodTrade ESA and other key pieces of learning relevant to FoodTrade ESA’s work, and conducting interviews with existing and potential partners, as well as staff members and a selection of programme beneficiaries to identify opportunities and challenges to gender equality in FoodTrade ESA operations and programming, to understand the relative benefit to women of the various programme interventions, to consider how the number of women beneficiaries might be increased, and to assess FoodTrade ESA’s suitability for gender mainstreaming and/ or propose an alternative approach;
- Considering the need for an FTESA gender policy (with vision, mission and SMART objectives) and develop recommendations for gender mainstreaming/an alternative approach;
- Developing a gender action plan for the remaining duration of the programme, with a clear work plan endorsed by the Team Leader to inform the above work;
- Provide technical assistance to staff members, strategic partners and grantees to implement the proposals made in the gender action plan, developing training modules where relevant to support gender mainstreaming in staple foods trade;
- On-going support to the MRM team to collect, analyse and verify sex-disaggregated data to be used for reporting, and the Communication & Knowledge unit to ensure knowledge products and material that communicate gender impact and that learning is fed back into FoodTrade ESA operation and programming;
- Support the development of comprehensive gender reporting, including lesson learning from interventions and the development of best practice case studies.
C. Required Key Skills & Qualifications
The Gender Expert will act as the gender focal point, and provide technical support to mainstream gender into our operations, under the direction of the Team Leader. He/ she is expected to have a good understanding of gender issues across East & Southern Africa. Experience of gender mainstreaming in at least one of the following areas is preferred: Women Economic Empowerment (WEE); technical business development skills focused on women, partnership development, or monitoring and evaluation. Other requirements include:
- An advanced degree in social or international development (or related area);
- At least seven years’ experience working on gender issues in the development space (both private and public sectors);
- An understanding of key approaches to Monitoring & Results Measurement (MRM), as well as gender analysis tools and methodologies.
Candidates with previous experience in gender mainstreaming projects, working with women’s groups at all levels of the agricultural value chain, excellent communication skills including fluency in English will have an advantage. Knowledge of local languages and dialects is an asset.
D. Project location
To be based in Nairobi, Kenya.
E. Reporting
To FoodTrade East & Southern Africa Team Leader.
HOW TO APPLY:
F. Application instructions
Interested and suitably qualified candidates can send their CV and cover letter by email only throughfoodtrade_recruitment@dai.com . Applications should include three work-related referees and day-time telephone numbers.
Application deadline is 14 days from the date advertised. Only candidates who meet qualifications will be shortlisted and contacted.
We are committed to minimizing the environmental impacts of operations related to the programme, and to ensuring our work supports social protection for everyone without bias. We encourage gender equity and diversity in our programme.
All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, colour, religion, sex, or national origin. We are an equal opportunity employer. Only Kenyan nationals or persons with Kenyan residence/work permits will be considered.
