Programme Policy Officer (Digital Financial Inclusion & Women’s Economic Empowerment) – Kinshasa
Qualified women and people living with a disability are strongly encouraged to apply.
WFP celebrates and embraces diversity.
It is committed to the principle of equal employment opportunity for all its employees and encourages qualified candidates to apply irrespective of race, colour, national origin, ethnic or social background, genetic information, gender, gender identity and/or expression, sexual orientation, religion or belief, HIV status, disability.
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BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE OF THE ASSIGNMENT:
The World Food Programme (WFP) is the world's largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide. DRC is one of the largest hunger crisis in the world, where hunger and conflict contribute to increase the vulnerability of the Congolese people, and where multiple other crises compound DRC’s humanitarian challenges. WFP’s operations in DRC support humanitarian response with lifesaving and humanitarian assistance, and aim to improve resilience to shocks, promote self-reliance and economic recovery of smallholder farmers.
Cash transfers programmes empower people to meet their essential needs in local markets and can contribute to longer-term objectives such as digital financial inclusion (DFI) and women’s economic empowerment (WEE), when deliberately designed to do so. Evidence shows that, when women are economically empowered, everyone benefits and economies grow. When cash transfers are integrated into resilience strategies to diversify livelihoods, it can contribute to unleashing women’s economic power achieving gender equality and lifting millions out of poverty and food insecurity.
As such, WFP has a very important responsibility to uphold and ensure that cash and resilience programmes are designed and delivered to maximize the unique benefits for women. Digital financial inclusion and women’s economic empowerment feature in WFP’s new Strategic Plan 2022-2025 and new Gender Policy and will be central in WFP’s upcoming Cash-based Transfers Policy (going to the Executive Board in June 2023).
The Democratic Republic of the Congo currently implements both resilience and emergency food security activities (unconditional distributions) using cash-based transfer modalities as direct cash and mobile money across multiple provinces. WFP DRC would like to apply the D3 (Design, Digitize, Direct) framework on cash transfers and resilience programmes to come up with financial inclusion approaches that can be a source of learning for strengthening resilience and self-reliance and for streamlining gender transformative programming across the portfolio.
As part of this initiative, the candidate will support WFP to identify strategies for promoting digital financial inclusion in WFP’s programmes, with a view to scale up resilience activities and cash transfer-based operations in DRC. The consultancy approach will include a situation analysis to identify associated socio-economic barriers and opportunities to enable access to digital financial products and services for women in DRC. At the same time, WFP will integrate digital literacy activities in its project in urban N’sele, targeting beneficiaries of WFP’s cash transfers. The recommendations from both the analysis and the N’sele project will provide a way forward to scaling-up relevant operations to promote DFI and women’s empowerment in WFP programmes. The consultancy should also support identifying entry points for advocacy and capacity strengthening efforts with public and private counterparts to create an enabling environment for DFI and promote WEE in DRC. The Programme Policy Officer will work in close collaboration with the recruited project staff under supervision of the Head of Cash-based Transfers, with technical guidance from the head of Resilience, and in close collaboration with the gender and protection to ensure that the expected outputs are completed on time and within the set activity and budget scope.
ACCOUNTABILITIES/RESPONSIBILITIES:
1. Be the DFI & WEE focal point in DRC, to collect and share intelligence with other internal WFP teams, locally, regionally and globally.
At the local level:
• Support WFP DRC teams to design and implement interventions that enable people’s digital financial inclusion and economic empowerment, specifically for women, whilst ensuring user-centered programme design.
• Work in close collaboration with the Resilience team, to make recommendations and ensure alignment with the priorities set by the resilience programme in the different provinces of interest for this consultancy, mainly in rural areas, including supporting the design of a financial inclusion collaboration with private sector partners to support smallholder farmers and farmers’ organizations.
• Work in close collaboration with the gender and protection team and Protection against Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (PSEA) focal points to ensure that WFP DRC PSEA Action Plan and Protection and Conflict sensitivity strategy requirements are mainstreamed in activities related to financial inclusion and financial literacy.
• In liaison with the monitoring and evaluation team and the HQ DFI team, develop a theory of change for digital financial inclusion in line with WFP programme outcomes.
• Liaise with the Finance team to potentially explore new Financial Services Providers that offer relevant services and can give greater choice to the people we serve.
At the regional and global level:
• Coordinate update regular calls and provide learning updates to the CBT Headquarter and regional bureau teams
• Contribute to WFP Global Learning agenda on Women’s Digital Financial Inclusion (blog, reports, events)
2. Conduct a situation analysis to identify associated socio-economic barriers and opportunities to enable access to digital financial products, digital literacy and other financial services for women in urban and rural areas (Urban N’sele, and for rural areas where the resilience project is active in South Kivu and Tanganyika provinces).
3. Coordinate implementation of relevant DFI strategies and support capacity-building activities on digital financial inclusion to beneficiaries and partners.
• Investigate and map user-centered digital financial services that women are interested in and advocate for support at different forums.
• In collaboration with existing partners, support identifying opportunities of linking women receiving WFP cash assistance with Village savings and loans association (VSLAs) and finance institutions in selected areas of operations.
• Scope for and recommend interested and/or active female retailers, VSLAs, and entrepreneurs to Financial Service Providers and Mobile Network Operators for vetting as potential digital merchants & bank/mobile money agents.
• Support sensitization and communication efforts for women participating in WFP programmes to increase their use of digital financial products that are appropriate to their needs and ensure women are prioritized when opening accounts.
• In collaboration with partners supporting the urban N’sele project, make recommendations to improve training and selection of participants and provide field oversight for the roll-out of the digital and financial literacy trainings for women, men, and selected teenage women groups and digital cash beneficiaries.
• Coordinate the design and integration of digital literacy trainings in selected areas of operations (rural and urban), working closely with WFP’s cooperating partners to understand feasibility and explore appropriate channels. Provide recommendations to scale-up the training into other WFP CBT operations / locations.
4. Represent WFP externally and build WFP’s Advocacy profile on DFI & WEE
• Support WFP’s efforts to develop a business case for partnerships with private sector stakeholders, identifying key actors, opportunities to collaborate, and mapping existing financial and digital financial products that are available and that can potentially benefit WFP beneficiaries’ profiles in urban and rural areas.
• Scope for linkages and synergies with national programmes supporting gender equality, resilience, and social protection plans, policies and strategies where possible.
• Actively participate in the external Cash Working Group (CWG) – or other relevant working groups – and organize virtual and/or physical forums with Financial service providers (FSPs), FSPs agents, merchants, fintechs, users and stakeholders to find solutions to decrease the need for Cash-in-and Cash-outs and increase the use of e-money to stimulate the journey towards a cashless economy.
• Build stronger public-private stakeholder engagement and dialogue, specifically with the Central Bank, the telecom regulator, the national identification agency or other relevant governmental bodies in the space of digital financial inclusion.
• Scope for other government-to-people (G2P) programmes whereby WFP could provide technical expertise and support, specifically in the field of women’s digital financial inclusion.
Expected Outcomes and Deliverables:
• A workplan outlining the planned activities, timelines and methodology for achieving the consultancy objectives.
• A brief situation analysis with barriers, opportunities and recommendations to increase women’s digital financial inclusion in urban and rural areas, linked to WFP operations.
• A theory of change for digital financial inclusion in line with WFP programme outcomes.
• Learning deck and suggestions to integrate the N’Sele Digital financial literacy trainings into other resilience programmes.
• Focus Group Discussions on another location than N’Sele and recommendations to inform design of digital literacy strategies.
• At least one external Workshop to present the Business case for attracting private sector partnerships for the expansion WFP Cash based programmes in DRC with a digital financial inclusion and women’s empowerment lens. This should include a presentation of the mapping of (digital) financial products available, with recommendations for their adaptation so that they can be more conducive to WFP beneficiaries’ needs.
• Digital financial literacy trainings are integrated into the WFP programme.
• Learning report describing main results achieved, lessons, challenges, partnership strategy and recommendations for scaling up DFI in WFP’s operations (max 8 pages) and/or blog.
• M&E report.
• Coordinate regular calls with WFP Headquarters.
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QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE REQUIRED : Education : |
A minimum of a bachelor’s degree in Development studies, Project Management, Business administration, Gender or any related field. Master’s degree is an added advantage. |
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Experience : |
At least 6 years’ professional experience of which 3 years in a substantive role in supporting savings groups implementation, financial inclusion projects, digital finance, gender programming, and women’s economic empowerment among poor rural households. |
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Knowledge & Skills: |
An understanding of DRC and global informal finance landscape and their role in the informal financial sector in economic development and promotion of financial inclusion is preferrable but not mandatory. Strong gender background. Excellent collaboration skills with demonstrated ability in collaborating with various partners, including private sector actors and the government. Ability to work with rural communities, good communication and interpersonal skills especially for dealing with WFP partners. The ability to produce consistently high-quality written outputs demonstrating an attention to detail. Experience facilitating training modules and focus group discussions using adult education / participatory methods. Experience developing, managing, and implementing multi-party projects with defined objectives, deliverables, monitoring and evaluation of results. Experience working in cross functional and cross organizational reporting structures. Ability to work with flexibility, efficiency, enthusiasm, and diplomacy both individually and as part of a team effort. A motivated and proactive individual who can work with minimal supervision, adhering to deadlines and used to meeting targets. Ability to collect and analyse programme output and outcome data and preparing various reports for management and stakeholders. IT literate with proficiency in MS Word, MS Excel, and MS Power point and online collaborative working tools. |
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Languages: |
Fluent/excellent knowledge of French and Proficiency in English. |
DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS
15/11/2022
Ref: VA 177971
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.
