Senior Specialist, Gender at FSD Africa

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES AND ROLE REQUIREMENTS

Analyse & Strategize

Drive and support research and analysis to inform FSD Africa’s gender approach, ensuring that it is well aligned with the company’s overarching strategy.

• Keep up to date on global trends, developments, and key international issues in the key technical areas relevant to the work of FSD Africa.
• Directly manage market research and analysis to identify potential leverage points, risks and opportunities for disruptive change, and key market players who could act as transformative gender agents.
• Prepare and lead, on an annual basis, an issues paper that outlines gender perspectives that could inform pillars’ annual business plans and ambitions.
• Work closely with the Director, Development Impact, and Manager, Evidence and Insights in implementing the gender component of FSD Africa’s Strategic Research and Learning programme.
• Produce written work in a format that will be relevant and useful to key internal and external stakeholders.

Strategy & Planning

With support from the Director, Development Impact, and through collaboration with other staff members, lead the development and implementation of a corporate gender strategy and implementation plan.

• Support FSD Africa’s corporate strategy and business plan development, contributing insights and expertise that help the company identify and pursue opportunities related to women’s economic empowerment and more generally their meaningful participation in Africa’s climate action agenda.
• Participate in the development of the overall Development Impact pillar strategy; lead the development of detailed implementation plans for gender in the delegated sections of the strategy.
• Support the Director, Development Impact in the development of policies, tools and other resources which can facilitate the mainstreaming of gender and good practice at FSD Africa.
• Provide technical advice and tools in the design of pillar strategies and activities, ensuring gender is sufficiently provided for.

Intervene

Work with pillar heads, project managers and investment deal teams to design and implement a portfolio of interventions that maximises positive gendered impact, including but not limited to women’s economic empowerment.

• Participate in the development of interventions that comply with FSD Africa’s gender strategy and the company’s investment guidelines on gender.
• Design, update, and lead the utilisation of tools and approaches that help point project managers and deal teams to opportunities and risks that a project/investment under consideration might bear for women.
• Advocate for greater attention to gender perspectives, providing the necessary rationale and advice on approaches to support gender mainstreaming in projects and investments.
• Support gender-relevant engagements with the processes involved in gaining approvals for new projects, onboarding investees and implementing partners, and procuring the professional services required for successful implementation.
• Provide technical assistance to pillars and, if requested, their implementing partners, to enhance their capacity for successful implementation of gender commitments.
• Identify and train other employees on inclusivity strategies and gender integration with the goal of building a sustainable model for gender at FSD Africa.
• Coordinate FSD Africa’s engagement with the FSD Network Gender Collaborative Programme (CoPro), managing the relationships and resources needed for our meaningful participation in that programme.

Regular monitoring, reporting and learning on FSD Africa’s gender intentionality and impact

Ensure progress in the implementation of FSD Africa’s gender strategy is sufficiently tracked and learnings are utilised to maximise impact and innovation.

• Develop approaches and tools for tracking and reporting progress being made towards making FSD Africa a gender-intentional organisation, including its system-wide and micro-level gendered impact.
• Collect, analyse and disseminate on a regular basis, statistics on the extent to which pillars, programmes and investments are embedding gender, thus providing a holistic picture on the state of gender at FSD Africa.
• Monitor the achievement of goals set out, and the outcomes against strategy, working with other members of the DI pillar to prepare gender performance write-ups for FSD Africa’s impact report, reports to the Board and funders, etc.
• In collaboration with the Evidence and Insights manager, develop and disseminate a collection of good practice examples of gender mainstreaming in different types of work carried out by FSD Africa.
• Arrange for the preparation of special reports as needed, on gender issues.

Advocate & Communicate for Influence

Drive women's economic empowerment and meaningful participation in the climate action agenda through effective influencing, advocacy, and communication strategies

• Represent FSD Africa in key related events and build and maintain relationships with implementing partners, government institutions, media outlets, etc, always behaving in a manner that is consistent with our brand and values.
• Contribute towards stakeholder mapping for the identification of key decision makers / power brokers / customer groups and the development of innovative ideas for influencing them and/or transforming their mindsets.
• Identify how stakeholders need to be influenced to support the success of FSD Africa’s gender approach; for instance, advocating for policy reform or stimulating market demand amongst potential beneficiaries.
• Contribute to communication about the FSD Network’s Gender CoPro activities (e.g., by developing FSD Africa related content for written materials/website; participating in campaigns etc).

Manage Risks & Resources

Support the good management of gender workstreams by ensuring value-for-money procurements, timely development of quality reports, and budget compliance.

• Support the FSD Africa Gender champions including Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) champions, Gender Copro and staff to ensure they have the resources to deliver their gender strategies and workplans.
• Keep a database of suitable consultants for deployment on Gender projects; monitor and manage the outputs of consultants to ensure results are achieved.
• Work with the Director Development Impact to monitor the Gender budget, ensuring that financial resources are managed in accordance with FSD Africa’s procedures and that optimal value for money is achieved.
• Monitor identified project risks and work to mitigate these.
• Support the Director, Development Impact in the development, dissemination and storage of reports and publications; especially ensuring that any accountability requirements to donors are delivered on time and to standard.

Carry out any other duties or special assignments as assigned

Qualifications and Education

1. Master’s degree in Gender, Development Studies, or other related field with 9 years of experience, or bachelor's degree with 12 years of experience, in gender mainstreaming in development programmes, financial inclusion and women’s economic empowerment.
2. Professional association membership in the country of residence is desirable.