Chief Technical Advisor (CTA) at Ministry of Education, Science and Technology

Under the overall supervision and guidance of the Project Manager, the UNDP County Office and the Regional Technical Advisor for chemicals and Waste for the region, the Chief Technical Advisor will be responsible for providing overall technical backstopping and management support to the Project, and in particular provide technical assistance to implementation of Project Component 3.

Term of Engagement: The position shall be on an initial twelve (12) months contract with possibility for extension.

Duties and Responsibilities

Reporting to the project manager, the Chief Technical Advisor will:

1. Prepare Evidence-based economic models of processing plant upgrades based on existing best practice mines and chemical-free pilot plants established;
2. Train miners and managers of mining groups on record keeping and reporting;
3. Support mining groups in the development of loan applications;
4. Provide guidance to the project team on the development of socioeconomic baseline surveys (including collection of sex-disaggregated data) and mercury/gold mass balance inventories for each of the priority project sites;
5. Review accumulated data (including amount of gold produced and amount of mercury used/released) and review the report that will be presented to the government;
6. Provide guidance on the training of miners by trainers at existing plants and laboratory installations using existing and newly developed training materials and resources (incl. the use of practical on-site liberation tests to give miners the opportunity to observe results hand and learn how to obtain such results themselves).

Required skills and expertise

Qualifications

Applicants must possess the following, in order to be considered for appointment to the position:

1. Master’s degree, in the field of mining, environmental management, hazardous waste management or a related field;
2. Bachelor’s degree preferably in the field of mining, environmental management, hazardous waste management or a related field.
3. PhD in the field of mining, environmental management, hazardous waste management or similar; will be an added advantage.

Experience

• At least three (3) years experience of working in environmental projects related to reducing mercury in the Artisanal and Small-Scale God Mining (ASGM) sector.

Competencies

1. Strong leadership, managerial and coordination skills, with a demonstrated ability to effectively coordinate the implementation of large multi-stakeholder project;
2. Ability to coordinate and supervise multiple Regional Project Officer (RPOs) in their implementation of technical activities in partnership with a variety of subnational stakeholder groups, including community and government;
3. Strong computer application skills, in particular mastery of all applications of the MS Office package and internet search;
4. Strong drafting, presentation and reporting skills;
5. Strong communication skills, especially in timely and accurate responses to emails;
6. Very good inter-personal skills;
7. Excellent language skills in English (writing, speaking and reading); and
8. Strong knowledge about the political and socio-economic context related to ASGM at national and subnational levels.