TechnoServe Background

TechnoServe works with enterprising people in the developing world to build competitive farms, businesses, and industries. We are a nonprofit organization that develops business solutions to poverty by linking people to information, capital, and markets. Our work is rooted in the idea that given the opportunity, hard-working women and men in even the poorest places can generate income, jobs, and wealth for their families and communities. With five decades of proven results, we believe in the power of private enterprise to transform lives.

 TechnoServe is committed to advancing gender equality guided by our Gender Policy, launched in June 2015, which necessitates actions focused on both our programming and our corporate practices and culture. By investing in gender equality and women’s economic empowerment, we increase project effectiveness, strengthen our organization, and mobilize greater resources. We recognize that maximizing the inclusive economic growth that is required to achieve widespread prosperity requires the full and unencumbered participation of women and girls. Our Gender Policy and commitment to programmatic excellence necessitate that our work and our organization engage, empower, and benefit both women and men.

Program Background

 Starting in 2008, TechnoServe and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launched the Coffee Initiative to help coffee farmers in Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, and Tanzania improve their livelihoods and lift their families out of poverty. Over seven years, the project helped to bring lasting change to the region’s coffee sector, boosting production and incomes for more than a quarter-million farmers in the region including over 160,000 farmers in Ethiopia. Since then, TechnoServe Ethiopia has partnered with Nespresso to spur long-term investment in smallholder coffee growers and most recently with USDA and HereWeGrow to further enhance the sustainable competitiveness of coffee.

Position Description 

 The Gender Specialist will work closely with the Coffee Practice team in Ethiopia and in coordination with the Global Gender Practice to support the delivery of gender integration activities across the Coffee Practice’s programs in Ethiopia. This will include technical support to program staff, staff capacity development, direct management of gender integration activities, and support to monitoring and reporting activities.

Programmatic Technical Support

 Key responsibilities will include:

• Provide technical oversight and technical assistance to a portfolio of activities across the Ethiopia Coffee Program
• Identify, develop, and support the deployment of gender-responsive activities to meet the needs of clients
• Build local capacity for gender integration, and facilitate gender-related training for staff
• Development and adoption of gender analysis tools including gender action plans which assist with the design and implementation of activities and continuously improve technical excellence
• Conduct assessments and facilitate meetings, as needed, with key stakeholders and clients to identify measures to improve inclusiveness, especially for women within the project scopes
• Provide strategic guidance and counsel to program leadership and staff on gender integration approaches, priorities, and compatibility with program aims and resource constraints
• Implementation and monitoring of gender integration in activities Ethiopia programs
• Contribute to reporting on gender-related topics
• Development of key knowledge products (e.g., case studies, lessons-learned documents, etc.) that facilitate program development, program implementation, internal knowledge sharing, and the influencing agenda
• Support staff recruitment and hiring processes

Job Requirements

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree with 7 years of experience or a Master’s degree in development economics, sociology, anthropology, gender, or another relevant discipline with at least 5 years experience
• Demonstrable experience implementing practical approaches to advance gender equality in agriculture programs; experience working with coffee programs highly preferred, familiarity with climate change desirable
• Demonstrable experience implementing approaches to mitigate and reduce gender-based violence in economic growth programs preferred
• Experience in adult learning techniques, excellent in-person and virtual facilitation, skills
• Must be able to work across teams to influence behavior and build capacity.
• Ability to work both persuasively and diplomatically in a team-based environment with a high degree of complexity and ambiguity.
• Ability to communicate complex gender issues with clarity and precision
• Demonstrated success in leadership roles developing and managing development organizations, programs, or initiatives requiring a combination of strong analytical, writing, social, and management skills
• A deep, demonstrable commitment to gender equality and women’s economic empowerment.
• High standards of personal integrity and a flexible, laid back personality with an excellent sense of humor required
• Fluency in English and Amharic

Success Factors:

Competency is a combination of knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) directly related to successful performance on the job.

Core Competencies include:

• Integrity and honesty: Is widely trusted; seen as a direct, truthful individual; presents truthful information in an appropriate and helpful manner; keeps confidences; admits mistakes; does not misrepresent himself or herself for personal gain.
• Team Work/ Relationships: Works cooperatively and flexibly with other members of the team with a full understanding of the role to be played as a team member and/or leader, to achieve a common goal. Ability to build and maintain effective relationships and networks.
• Learning attitude: Proactively takes advantage of opportunities to learn. Actively identifies new areas for learning; applies and shares new knowledge and skill appropriately.
• Diversity/Inclusiveness: Demonstrates an understanding and appreciation for diversity and supports diversity efforts. Interacts effectively with and inclusively with people of all races, cultures, ethnicities, backgrounds, religions, ages, and genders.
• Communication: Expresses ideas effectively in individual and group situations. Listens effectively; shares information, ideas, and arguments; adjusts terminology, language, and communication modes to the needs of the audience; ensures accurate understanding; acts in a way that facilitates the open exchange of ideas and information; use appropriate non-verbal communication.
• Decision making/Problem Solving: Is able to analyze situations, diagnose problems, identify the key issues, establish and evaluate alternative courses of action and produce a logical, practical, and acceptable solution. Is able to make effective decisions on a day-to-day basis, taking ownership of decisions, demonstrating sound judgment in escalating issues where necessary.
• Results-Oriented/High-Quality Deliverables: Stays focused on the efforts necessary to achieve quality results consistent with programmatic or departmental goals. Demonstrates the ability to achieve effective results; works persistently to overcome obstacles to goal achievement. Accomplishes tasks by considering all areas involved, no matter how small; showing concern for all aspects of the job; accurately checking processes and tasks.
• Planning & Time Management: Establishes a course of action for self and/or others to accomplish a specific goal. Effectively plans, schedules, prioritizes, and controls activities; identifies, integrates, and orchestrates resources (people, material, information, budget, and/or time) to accomplish goals. Prioritizes work according to the program or department’s goals, not just own job responsibilities; manages own time effectively.
• Business Acumen: The ability to use information, ask the right questions, and make decisions that make an impact on the overall business performance.

 Job Specific/Technical Competencies include:

• Financial & Resource Management: The ability to estimate, justify, and manage appropriate funding levels to support goal accomplishment. Managing Resources is about understanding human, financial, and operational resource issues to make decisions aimed at building and planning efficient project workflows, and at improving overall organizational performance.
• Donor/Partnership Management: Identifying opportunities and taking action to build strategic relationships between one’s area and other areas, teams, departments, or organizations to help achieve business goals.
• Analysis, Research, Report Writing: Experience in business planning and analysis, modeling for feasibility and execution. Able to analyze and express oneself clearly in business writing.
• Innovative Mindset: Curious inquiries, asks questions and seeks out information from multiple sources, learns from mistakes, sees change as an opportunity. 

How to Apply

Application Instruction

 Qualified and interested applicants should Click here to apply for this position and submit a cover letter resume as a single document (either Word or PDF) by March 11, 2022. Applications will be reviewed and considered as received/on a rolling basis. Please identify the position for which you are applying in the subject line. Only applicants meeting minimum qualifications will be contacted. Please note that we are not accepting CVs that are not sent through the indicated link. 

TECHNOSERVE ENCOURAGES DIVERSITY AT ALL LEVELS AND ACROSS ALL FACETS OF OUR ORGANIZATION. WITH THIS COMMITMENT TO DIVERSITY, WE ARE PROUD TO BE AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER AND DO NOT DISCRIMINATE ON THE BASIS OF GENDER, RACE, COLOR, ETHNICITY, RELIGION, SEXUAL ORIENTATION, GENDER IDENTITY, AGES, DISABILITY, AND ALL OTHER PROTECTED CLASSES. 

Women are highly encouraged to apply. TechnoServe has the right to cancel this advertisement.