Position:                               Director – Women and Social Affairs (Re-Advert)

Term of Employment:        One year with possibility of extension

Duty Station:                       Addis Ababa   

Required Number:              One

Application Deadline:         May 05, 2023

BACKGROUND:

The Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Institute (ATI) is a strategy and delivery-oriented government Institute created to help accelerate the growth and transformation of the country’s agriculture sector. The ATI envisions to be the leading centre of innovative solutions for the transformation of the Ethiopian Agriculture by 2030.

The Institute focuses on two primary national approaches to catalyze agricultural transformation. First, we support the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), and its federal and regional affiliate institutions, and other partners to identify and address systemic bottlenecks within sector’s development plan. Second, we support Regional Governments to accelerate development of high-priority commodity value chains in clearly defined geographic clusters, through the Agricultural Commercialization Clusters (ACC) Program.

Our major activities include conducting strategic and analytical studies, providing technical implementation support, coordinating platforms to better integrate partners and projects, and designing and directly leading a number of implementation projects. Our headquarters are in Addis Ababa, with regional office representations in Amhara, Oromia, SNNP, Sidama, Southwest, and Tigray regional offices, allowing us to work closely with a wide range of public, private and development sector partners across the country.

Our Culture

We have an exceptional team of highly competent employees with a proven track record of success in managing complex activities and achieving transformational results.  Our culture is one where talented, dedicated and adaptable individuals are committed to doing their best and exhibit great team work to achieve excellent results. 

At ATI, we provide an exceptional platform for people who want to achieve their highest potential and make a meaningful contribution in changing the country’s agricultural sector.  We offer rewarding work in a young, fast-paced growing organization with passionate, committed, motivated colleagues and excellent career development and training.  We recognize our most valuable assets are our staff and are committed to providing our employees with the tools, training and mentorships necessary to achieve their career goals. 

PURPOSE OF THE POSITION

The Director, Women and Social Affairs, is a leadership position reporting to the Head, Office of the CEO. The Director is primarily responsible for planning, designing, and implementing a high impact program of interventions to achieve gender equality at the ATI and its projects. She/he is responsible for ensuring that women and youth quest for development and other issues are mainstreamed and integrated into projects and relevant operational policies and are consistently implemented across the ATI programs and projects. The Director will serve as thought partner and strategic advisor to ATI’s leadership team on gender inclusivity in the Institute and be responsible for coordinating and managing ATI’s transformation initiatives. This includes leading the development of clear women and youths’ targets against selected outcomes and mobilizing and coordinating multiple teams across the Institute in the implementation of those key initiatives and targets. To this effect, he/she must possess and be able to demonstrate strong verbal and written communication skills, and relationship building abilities among multiple stakeholders. The candidate should possess a thorough understanding of the agricultural system and passion for improving the lives of small-holder farmers, familiarity with Ethiopia’s gender and social dynamics relations, and the stakeholders involved in the sector.

 MAJOR DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Lead the women and social affairs of the ATI and providing strategic advice to the CEO, Senior Management Team (SMT) and HR team on the issue of gender parity with the ATI and its across programs and projects  

• Coordinate and lead the designing and the implementation of stand-alone women, youth, nutrition, and other social affairs pilot projects within the ACC woredas and other ATI operating regions.

• Coordinate the development of organizational gender and youth inclusion targets, including cascading the targets across teams and designing, tracking and refining initiatives to achieve these targets

• Drive the designing, piloting, and implementing of interventions to attract, develop and retain female and youth talents across the agricultural system.

• Design and conduct regular gender audits at organizational and department levels to ensure key gender-related data is collected and tracked to guide the refinement of interventions

• Develop and support delivery of mandatory inclusivity trainings and gender awareness initiatives to induce inclusive and gender-sensitive mindsets and attitudes across leadership and employees e.g., during on boarding sessions and throughout staff tenure

• Support change management of ATI and programmatic initiatives by working with the HR and communications teams and proactively soliciting and integrating of staff feedback and concerns

• Review existing policies and procedures for reporting, escalating, investigating and addressing sexual harassment and update them to align with best practices and the legal requirements

• Ensure that gender and youth issues are mainstreamed into projects and relevant policies and procedures and implemented across the ATI

• Organize the dissemination of policies and deliver trainings for key stakeholders involved in these procedures and all-staff awareness trainings

• Document and share success stories, lessons learned, and challenges with integration and implementation of gender inclusivity initiatives of the ATI and its projects periodically.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES:

• Coordinate and lead effective planning, budgeting and target setting activities of the team

• Work closely with program and other teams to ensure alignment and coordination of planning and implementations.

• Plan and implement women, youth, nutrition, and other social affairs pilot projects in the ACC woredas and other ATI operating regions  

• Provide high quality, results-focused stakeholder management across teams and build a genuinely collaborative engagement with key stakeholders

• Manage women and social team, providing high caliber team management, coaching and support to ensure building a high performing team

• Provide technical input to the SMT and other teams as they develop thought pieces, studies, policy briefs, publications, undertake workshops and design project to ensure consideration of crosscutting issues such as women, youth, nutrition, and other social affairs

• Contribute to the development of an institutionalized knowledge base for the ATI

• Prepare project concept notes, and proposals that address women, youth and other social issues across the agricultural value-chains and system for possible funding in collaboration with Analytics and Partnership teams.

• Engage in gender discussions with key stakeholders and build independent working relationships with all levels of stakeholders; represent ATI at key fora on issues related to gender in agriculture

• Manage and evaluate employees’ performances of staff members under the Women and Social Affairs team. 

• Contributing to the creation of positive working atmosphere within the team and across the ATI teams.

• Identify and escalate challenges around implementation of and reporting on prioritized targets and deliverables, as well as providing solutions and recommendations for effective implementation.

• Undertake regular follow-up on all implementation of plans, target deliverables, and budget utilization

• Prepares performance reports against plan and targets including budget utilization's regularly and submit to the Head of the CEO Office, the SMT, and other relevant team as required.  

Job Requirements

• Master’s degree in in gender, development studies or related fields

•  At least ten (12) years’ experiences in working on gender in agriculture and related sectors of which 6 years as supervisory position.

• Understanding of the role of addressing gender in Ethiopia’s agricultural system, with a broad perspective on how the entire system operates and how public, private and informal actors operate within the system

• Experience in leading teams and managing and monitoring projects and programs.

• Ability to work independently and achieve results

• Demonstrated experience in building capacity of stakeholders at institutional and individual levels on gender issues

• Experience with program design, performance management, learning systems and monitoring & evaluation of projects

• Ability and efficiency in facilitating and organizing multi stakeholder discussions, workshops and consultative meetings

• Ability to thrive in a fast-moving, start-up environment, with an emphasis on high-performance, teamwork, accountability and results

• Ability to build and maintain relationships with diverse set of stakeholders 

• Excellent adaptive and problem-solver in challenging environment

• Strong set of personal values including integrity, honesty and desire to be of service

• Fluency in Amharic and working knowledge of English are essential. Knowledge of additional Ethiopian language is an advantage 

• Strong verbal and written communication and presentation skills

• Excellent computer skills at least in MS word, excel and PPT applications 

How to Apply

We invite all candidates meeting the required qualifications to submit (i) a cover letter and (ii) a CV (maximum 5 pages) to THIS LINK

It is mandatory to mention the position title under the subject line of your application/cover letter.

Please DO NOT submit scans of certificates with your application.

Women are highly encouraged to apply.

NB. Only short-listed candidates will be contacted.