Gender and Youth Senior Manager, Agribusiness Partnerships

TechnoServe believes that achieving prosperity requires the full and free participation of women and girls. Our Gender Policy and our commitment to programmatic excellence requires that we involve, empower, and benefit both women and men, both at the level of our beneficiaries and at the level of our staff.

By joining our team, you will benefit from a respectful working environment of women and men that believe in the professional development of each one.

Program Overview

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and SDC fund the three and a half year PRO (Promoting Market Systems, Innovation and Resilience (PREMIER) – Oholo) activity in Mozambique. The PRO activity will facilitate the development of an inclusive, resilient, and sustainable market system to boost agriculture-led economic growth in the Nacala corridor of northern Mozambique. The activity will use a market systems approach and will focus on minimizing barriers that disadvantage the vulnerable, women and youth and exclude them from economic opportunities within the agriculture sector. This activity is anticipated to cover a combination of staple and high value crops.

The Gender and Youth Manager will contribute to and be held accountable for the following results:

• Support and provide guidance to the technical team with designing and implementing activities that will benefit small holder farmers increasing their income, through establishing relationship with and creating commitments from the local agribusiness sector,
• Building the capacity of 300 women and youth led agribusinesses,
• Expanding employment and entrepreneurship opportunities, especially for youth and women
• Enhancing access to finance across sectors for the rural 30,000 women and youth,
• Increasing incomes for 50,000 female and young smallholder farmers
• 38,700 women and youth are suppliers and/or employees of agribusinesses and agro-processors
• 50,000 youth trained in soft skills/life skills

Position Overview

The Gender and Youth Senior Manager will be responsible for developing strategies and activities, and managing the activities under the Strategic Objective Expand economic opportunities for women and youth for the PRO activity. Activities under this Strategic Objective will be implemented in coordination and/or involvement of agribusinesses, financial institutions, business development services, and other private sector actors. The Gender and Youth Manager will be responsible for identifying and developing strong partnerships with a range of partners who can deliver the results described above. The primary responsibility of the Gender and Youth Manager is therefore to lead and manage partners and interventions that target women and young entrepreneurs and beneficiaries with capacity building, access to markets and access to finance facilitation.

The Gender and Youth Senior Manager advices and supports the PRO FTF Premier Chief of Party, the PRO management team and the technical and grants teams to assure the inclusion of 40% women and 50% youth in all FTF Premier activities. The Gender and Youth manager is expected to closely work together with the Technical Director who supervises the technical PRO team and is a member of the PRO Management team. He/she reports directly to the Chief of Party.

Primary Functions and Responsibilities

The Gender and Youth Senior Manager will lead a set of activities and collaborate with the PRO management team to ensure the results mentioned above and the targets for the inclusion of 40% women and 50% youth are achieved. This includes but is not limited to the implementation of Strategic Objective Economic opportunities for women and young people of the PRO annual work plan.

These will be achieved through the following primary responsibilities:

Lead the growth of women and youth-led businesses and associations

• Initiate activities to assure women and youth led businesses develop new opportunities for growth,
• Develop and manage partnerships with business development service (BDS) providers to improve the business performance and growth of women-owned businesses
• Identify partners to strengthen at least 300 women-led agribusinesses
• Identify and encourage eligible women and youth led organizations and businesses to participate in FTF Premier’s grant facilities
• Oversee the women and youth led organizations and businesses selected as grantees under FTF Premier’s grant facilities
• Support the Access to Finance Portfolio manager to manage the relationships with financial institutions that focus on financing and financial services of women- and youth-owned businesses
• Lead the Identification and supporting the growth of women-led and youth led BDS providers

Support agribusiness companies to advance the economic opportunities for women and youth, as farmers, entrepreneurs, or employees

• Responsible to Identity and communicate the business case for the inclusion of women and youth to agribusiness clients and partners
• Work with Portfolio managers to encourage agri-business companies to adopt inclusive sourcing practices that reach women farmers and/or improve jobs for women and youth employees
• Manage the partnership with the Women in Business (WIN) project

Strengthen youth skills and employability

• Develop partnerships (e.g., with NGOs, TVETS, or other) and design and implement activities to build the soft skills of 300 women and young entrepreneurs
• Develop partnerships with universities and TVETs to create entrepreneurship and self-employment opportunities for graduates, for example as suppliers to agribusiness clients
• Lead the FTF Premier internship and young professional programs
• Identify and oversee interventions to strengthen leadership and technical skills of women and young people employed in agribusiness companies

Lead gender and youth integration and capacity across PRO’s activities and among staff

• Participate in the technical evaluation committee for PRO’s grants facilities
• Advise and support PRO’s technical director and portfolio managers with the integration of women and youth specific activities in the project work plan, the grants implementation plans and the organizational Capacity Building Plans
• Develop weekly highlights and annual success stories to showcase the success of the PRO women and youth inclusion strategy
• Build the capacity of Premier staff on women’s and youth economic empowerment
• Conduct regular monitoring of implementation of gender action plan and progress towards gender and youth targets

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree, either Business, Economics, Agriculture, Finance or equivalent, including 10 years of experience or a Master’s degree, either Business, Economics, Agriculture, Finance or equivalent, including 7 years of experience in agronomy, rural development, agribusiness or other relevant field,
• Strong knowledge of the private sector drivers, interests and motivation to collaborate and partner with the PRO project; entrepreneurial and innovative thinker,
• Experience with Market Systems development projects is required, in particular with including women and youth into market systems,
• Proven experience working with the private sector to reach women and young people,
• Knowledge and understanding of issues around women’s economic empowerment,
• Proven results achievement with the empowerment and integration of women and youth in agricultural value chain and agri-businesses,
• Experience facilitating change through participatory and inclusive learning and reflection, especially in rural and cross-cultural environments
• Knowledge and experience in conducting gender analysis, delivering gender training and developing gender policy in programs in Mozambique and outside preferred but not necessary
• Passion for advancing women and youth economic empowerment a must
• Result orientation, including strong organizational, analytical, and quantitative skills.
• Good computer skills in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other administrative applications.
• Communicative and open to exchange and learning
• Fluency in Portuguese and proficiency in English.

Read Full Description