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The Open Society Foundations (OSF) is supporting UN Women’s flagship programme on “Women’s Access to Land and Productive Resources for Climate-Resilient Agriculture” and is seeking a qualified Regional Policy Advisor to lead the initiative in West and Central Africa, based in the UN Women Regional Office in Dakar, Senegal.
The flagship programme covers four priority outcome areas, which will require action from a coalition of partners to achieve:
- Increase women’s land tenure security and rights
- Improve the productivity and reduce the time and labour burdens of women smallholder farmers by ensuring equal access to climate-resilient productive resources and information
- Remove financing barriers to allow women farmers to invest in climate-resilient agriculture
- Promote opportunities for women farmers to participate in green value chains and markets
By addressing the gender gap in agriculture through informed, women-centered investments and interventions that remove structural barriers and promote equal access to land and other productive resources, the initiative will support women’s economic empowerment and overall sustainable development.
Job Profile
The Regional Policy Advisor will oversee the launch of the programme in 3 pilot countries in the region, beginning with Senegal. Each country will have a programme coordinator. The role of the Regional Policy Advisor is to support these coordinators. The Regional Policy Advisor is not responsible for county programme management. Rather, the Regional Policy Advisor will support programme development and knowledge management across the country programmes. The position involves high-level advocacy and partnership building, as well as policy and technical support and advisory functions. The Regional Policy Advisor will lead in developing strategies and methodologies towards programme outcomes; identify opportunities for engagement with partners and for resource mobilization; keep abreast of policy research and development practice in gender and climate-resilient agriculture; ensure knowledge, learning and innovation in programmatic areas, including through documentation and contributing to a community of practice on gender and climate-resilient agriculture; handle communications within the region and with the counterpart Regional Policy Advisor in the UN Women Regional Office in Nairobi and UN Women headquarters; and represent the programme externally.
Primary responsibilities will include the following:
- Take the lead in the development of the flagship programme in the region. This will require intensive engagement with national and regional partners, including governments, development banks, UN agencies, OSF offices, civil society organizations, private sector, individual experts, and other stakeholders as appropriate.
- Lead the formulation the national project documents in the three pilot countries and other countries that join the initiative, including situation analyses/baseline assessments, strategy and partnerships, results and resources frameworks, implementation and management arrangements, and budgets.
- Provide technical and policy assistance to the national project teams as needed.
- Support mobilization of resources for the programmes in the three pilot countries.
- Build partnership, including through advocacy, in support of the flagship programmes theory of change.
- Identify and respond to capacity development needs, in conjunction with national programmes; convene meetings and seminars at national and regional levels on pertinent thematic areas of work for capacity development, knowledge sharing, and peer-to-peer learning
- Identify, develop, and manage relationships with an active roster of internal and external advisors, technical assistance providers, and consultants to support national and regional programme implementation.
- Work with regional development banks and other stakeholders to promote gender responsive financing instruments.
- Identify opportunities to promote intra-regional trade between women farmer cooperatives and producer organizations and private and public enterprises.
- Support national monitoring and evaluation, including quality assurance; conduct monitoring visits to country programmes, and engage in programme-wide evaluation and learning.
- Keep up-to-date with research, policy, and programmatic developments on land, climate-resilient agriculture, financing, etc. as related to gender equality and women’s empowerment; draft policy and programming notes that inform the wider team on important policy developments or advocacy opportunities and/or offer suggestions about strategic programme directions and approaches.
- Manage knowledge, by collecting and disseminating good practices and successful approaches at national, regional, and international levels through a community of practice in conjunction with UN Women’s Policy and Communications Divisions, and empowerwomen.org.
The Regional Policy Advisor will report to the UN Women Regional Director for West and Central Africa.
Qualifications
This exciting opportunity is for a seasoned international expert with substantial knowledge, expertise and programmatic experience on gender and climate-resilient agriculture, particularly in Africa.
The ideal candidate will have the following:
- Advanced degree in a relevant discipline, for example, international development, gender, or environmental studies; economics or agricultural economics; rural sociology, geography or anthropology; agronomy.
- Minimum of 10 years of professional policy and programming experience, with some time in the region
- Experience working on climate resilience agriculture and knowledge of its relation to gender equality
- Substantial experience in developing project documents including formulation of robust results/monitoring and evaluation frameworks
- Experience in knowledge management
- Ability to work efficiently under pressure and on a wide range of tasks and to work both as a team member/supervisor and independently, with a high degree of self-motivation and ability to set and meet goals
- Strong sense of responsibility, confidentiality and accountability
- Excellent organizational, analytical and problem-solving skills, with attention to detail
- Excellent written and oral communication skills; excellent drafting and editing skills
- Familiarity with the UN system
- Appreciation of the multicultural nature of the organization and the diversity of its staff
- Ability to listen and communicate clearly and effectively with people from diverse cultures and backgrounds
- Willingness to undertake extensive international travel
- Fluency in English and French is required; fluency in another language desirable.
To Apply: Please send your complete application (resume, cover letter and brief writing sample) to osiwarecruitment@osiwa.org with “Regional Policy Advisor” in the subject line by 27 August, 2016. |