The Office of the UN World Food Programme (WFP) Accra invites applications from suitable candidates to fill the vacancy below.
- Job Title : Digital Financial Inclusion Consultant
- Duration : 6 months
- Post Grade : SSA L9
- Duty Station : Accra
JOB PURPOSE:
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is a leading humanitarian organization saving lives and changing lives, through its food assistance, nutrition, and resilience programmes, aimed at fighting hunger worldwide and working towards the global goal of ending hunger by 2030.
The promotion of Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (GEWE) is intrinsic to WFP’s development and humanitarian approach and a precondition to fulfilling its dual mandate of ending global hunger and saving lives. The WFP Strategic plan (2022-2025) and Gender policy (2022) prioritizes gender transformative approaches in its programmes, recognizing Gender Equality and Women Empowerment as an objective and solution to persistent food and nutrition insecurity. Therefore, investing in and enabling young women, men and the most vulnerable build resilience and to achieve sustainable food and nutrition security.
In its new country strategic plan (2024-2028), WFP Ghana is playing a facilitating role in support of the government of Ghana achieving its ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’ agenda and maintaining its footprint in the emergencies where applicable. WFP is implementing a five-year project with funds from the Mastercard Foundation that seeks to create and enhance sustainable, dignified and fulfilling jobs for the youth (18-35 years) in the agriculture value chain. The programme is being implemented in eleven (11) regions of Ghana namely Upper West, Upper East, Northern, North East, Savanna, Bono, Bone East, Ashanti, Eastern, Volta, and Oti. The value chains being considered are Maize, rice, soybean, and vegetables such as onions, tomatoes and pepper. Despite constituting a greater portion of the labor force in the agricultural sector, women, and young people (men and women) are faced with structural and cultural barriers including access to finance, impacting their ability to meaningfully participate and benefit from employment and income opportunities. WFP seeks to make agribusiness opportunities more inclusive to young women, men, and PWDs by enhancing their access to agricultural and financial services, increasing awareness of gender dynamics among value chain actors, and building transformative structures to promote more equal gender relations at household and community levels. Intrinsic to achieving the project objectives is ensuring the financial inclusion of the young people in the selected value chains.
The WFP is thus seeking to engage an individual consultant capable of providing capacity strengthening to government and other partners and provide technical support in implementation of digital financial Inclusion.
MAJOR DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
Under the direct supervision of the Gender and Youth Inclusion Officer, and overall guidance from the Food Systems Coordinator and Head of Programme and Deputy Country Director; The successful candidate will be responsible for the following duties;
- Support WFP and Partners to design and implement interventions that enable project participants digital financial inclusion and economic empowerment, particularly for young women and persons with disabilities
- Support in mapping out of VSLAs in project communities and digitalization of VSLAs
- Provide capacity strengthening for Cooperating partners/ project participants on digital financial literacy
- Establish linkages of VSLAs and Project participants to financial service providers through digitization
- Lead VSLAs and its member onboarding unto financial products and services
- Perform any other role that may be relevant in ensuring the financial inclusion of project participants and as required.
Expected Outcomes and Deliverables
| Item | Deliverables | Expected Delivery Date |
| 1 | Detailed action plan for implementation of DFI developed and VSLA’s mapped out in all project communities. | 30th June 2024 |
| 2 | VSLA’s formed where non-existent in project communities. | 30th July 2024 |
| 3 | Partners capacity built on Digital financial literacy and supported to rollout/integrate trainings in project communities. | 30th August 2024 |
| 4 | Financial institutions mapped out and engaged in partnering to provide financial services through VSLA’s digitization. | 30th September 2024 |
| 5 | VSLAs digitized unto financial platforms | 30th October 2024 |
| 6 | Oversight and reporting on the progress of the digital financial literacy trainings and Financial Inclusion | June – October 30th 2024 |
| 7 | Final learning report describing main results achieved, lessons, challenges, and recommendations for scaling up DFI in WFP | 30th November 2023 |
Minimum Academic Qualifications Guide –
- A minimum of a master’s degree in development studies, gender, financial management, project management, business administration, or in other related fields corresponding to advertisement.
Required years of critical working experience
- At least 3 years of professional experience in supporting financial inclusion projects, digital finance, gender programming, and women’s economic empowerment among poor rural households.
- Previous experience working with VSLAs, and capacity strengthening of government and other partners on digital financial Inclusion is an asset.
Desired Experiences and Competencies for entry into the role:
In-depth technical knowledge and experience in Ghana’s financial Inclusion landscape, and the existing disparities and opportunities to bridge the inclusion gap is preferred, excellent collaboration skills with demonstrated ability to collaborate with various partners, including private sector actors and the government, strong gender background and experience facilitating training modules and focus group discussions using adult education/participatory methods.
A minimum of 3 years of progressive experience in/managing digital financial inclusion projects or other related fields as advertised.
Language: Fluency in both oral and written communication in the UN language in use at the duty station and in the duty station’s language, if different.
How to apply:
Applicants should submit their applications and CV stating 3 references online to: www1.wfp.org/careers/job.openings and follow the steps.
Qualified Female Candidates are encouraged to apply
People living with disability are also encouraged to apply
Only shortlisted candidates meeting the criteria will be contacted.