CONSULTANT DIGITAL FINANCIAL INCLUSION AND WOMEN ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT)

External/Internal Vacancy Announcement

No. WFP/GHA/ PROG /13/April /2023

CONSULTANT

(DIGITAL FINANCIAL INCLUSION AND WOMEN ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT)

Deadline for Application: 10 days from day of publication

The Office of the UN World Food Programme (WFP) Accra invites applications from suitable candidates to fill the vacancy below.

Job Title : Consultant (Digital Financial Inclusion and Women Economic Empowerment)

Duration : 11 Months

Post Grade : SSA L9

Duty Station : Accra, Ghana

About WFP

The World Food Programme (WFP) is the world's largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide.

WFP’s operations in Ghana focuses on capacity strengthening through technical assistance and facilitation, to ensure Government leadership, implementation and ownership of food security and nutrition interventions. The target focus is youth, women, and smallholder farmers, leveraging on technology and digitization for effectiveness.

Job Purpose:

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 current Country Strategic Plan 2019-2023 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 Ghana Country Office received funding for a 2-year long work jointly with the Government of Ghana’s main safety net LEAP to ensure that its beneficiaries, and particularly women, receive their transfers in digitally financially inclusive means. After the successful completion of the fist activity of the project, which was to conduct a gender and cash assessment to determine the key barriers women face to being formally financially included and identify how cash can affect gender quality within a household, the CO is at a crucial stage of designing interventions alongside selected partners to support a digital financial literacy and productive inclusion initiative. The aim of these activities is to test gender sensitization and financial inclusion material, including Customer Protection mechanisms and in some areas a package paired with productive assets to see their impact on women’s ability to access, use and benefit from digital financial services offered through LEAP. The lessons from these activities would be used to support the Government of Ghana to develop and/or strengthen similar opportunities for women across LEAP beneficiaries.

The position is an 11-month consultancy, and the candidate will work in close collaboration with project staff under supervision of the head of social protection, 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.

Key Duties and Responsibilities

1. Be the DFI & WEE focal point in to collect and share learnings with other internal WFP teams, locally, regionally and globally.

At the local level:

• Support WFP Ghana 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.
• In liaison with the monitoring and evaluation team, WFP Ghana Technical Lead, LEAP Secretariat liaison and the HQ DFI team, keep track of outputs and outcomes for digital financial inclusion interventions as a part of the BMGF funded program 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. Support WFP to 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 LEAP implementation areas. Coordinate implementation of relevant strategies.

• In collaboration with partners implementing and supporting the LEAP 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 women and digital cash beneficiaries. Coordinate the design and integration of digital literacy trainings in selected areas of operations, working closely with WFP’s cooperating partners to understand feasibility and explore appropriate channels.
• Investigate and map user-centered digital financial services that women are interested in and advocate for support at different forums. Liaise with the Finance team to potentially explore new Financial Services Providers and give greater choice to the people we serve.
• 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.
• Scope for and recommend interested and/or active female retailers, savings groups, and entrepreneurs to Financial Service Providers and Mobile Network Operators for vetting as potential digital merchants & bank/mobile money agents. In collaboration with the LEAP Secretariat liaison lead, ensure that biometric Point of Sale devices, and visibility materials are subsequently delivered in their shops to serve beneficiaries in and around the communities.
• In collaboration with partners implementing the productive inclusion intervention, ensure the delivery of training and sensitization and assessment based on agreed criteria ahead of disbursement of productive grants.

3. Represent WFP externally and build WFP’s Advocacy profile on DFI & WEE

• In collaboration with the WFP Ghana technical lead, 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 more 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.
• In collaboration with the technical lead, 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.

Expected Outcomes and Deliverables

Education and Experience required:

• A minimum of a Masters’ Degree in Development studies, Project Management, Business administration, Gender or any related field. Master’s degree is an added advantage.
• At least 10 years’ professional experience of which 5 years in a substantive role in supporting social protection implementation, financial inclusion projects, digital finance, gender programming, and women’s economic empowerment among poor rural households.
• Previous experience working in emergency and humanitarian settings and cash-based transfers is an asset.

Skills and Competencies required:

• A strong understanding of Ghana’s social protection landscape and national social protection programmes, and their role in the informal financial sector in economic development and promotion of financial inclusion is preferrable but not mandatory.
• Strong policy planning and 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.
• Fluent/excellent knowledge of English.

Language: Fluency in both oral and written communication in the UN language in use at the duty station and in the duty station’s language, if different.

How to apply:

Applicants should submit their applications and CV stating 3 references online to: www1.wfp.org/careers/job.openings and follow the steps.

Qualified Female Candidates are encouraged to apply

People living with disability are also encouraged to apply

Only shortlisted candidates meeting the criteria will be contacted.

Note:

• WFP will not request payment at any stage of the recruitment process including at the offer stage. Any requests for payment should be refused and reported to local law enforcement authorities for appropriate action.
• WFP has a zero-tolerance approach to conduct such as fraud, sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination.
• All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to WFP’s standards of conduct and will therefore undergo rigorous background verification internally or through third parties. Selected candidates will also be required to provide additional information as part of the verification exercise. Misrepresentation of information provided during the recruitment process may lead to disqualification or termination of employment

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