Program Officer – Gender

Job Description

POSITION ANNOUNCEMENT – INTERNAL/EXTERNAL

PROGRAM OFFICER – GENDER

POG/AGRA/14/2025

AGRA seeks to recruit a Program Officer – Gender who will be member of AGRA Ethiopia located at the International Livestock Research institute, Addis Ababa Campus. The Program Officer will also support pertinent activities in Uganda.

AGRA is an African-led institution that actively supports the drive towards inclusive agricultural transformation and sustainable food systems. We do this by empowering the continent’s 33 million smallholder farming households to transform their agriculture from a struggle to survive to profitable businesses. The continent’s farmers regularly face challenges, and we aspire to provide uniquely African solutions that respond to their agricultural and environmental challenges, leading to increased harvests for reduced hunger and more income.

Working in alignment with the development priorities of our focus countries, we enable farmers to access improved and high-yielding seeds, gain knowledge on sustainable farming, and linkages to profitable markets.

In our work, we aspire to build the alliances, partnerships, and networks required to drive an inclusive agricultural transformation. We work with our partners to create an equitable youth-friendly environment that harnesses the youth dividend on the continent to drive growth and facilitate open employment opportunities for young women and men. We achieve our key objectives through a focus on the following four areas of intervention:

1. Policy and state capability – We support governments in creating an enabling environment for private sector involvement in agricultural transformation.
2. Seed systems – We trigger higher productivity by increasing the availability and access to improved seeds by farmers allowing them to increase their harvests for food security and better incomes.
3. Sustainable farming – We support farmers in building resilient farming systems for sustained high yields through interventions such as mechanization and irrigation.
4. Inclusive markets and trade – We work to increase the linkages between farmers, and other market actors for a positive, sustained cycle of commercialization and reinvestment.

Implementing Our New Strategy Through People

People are the heart of our organization and remain the true drivers of our delivery and our impact.  We work with incredible people and partners who have roots in farming communities across the continent combined with an inclusive and diverse workforce from over 24 nationalities. Our commitment to a call to action goes beyond ourselves as we arise to catalyze African Food Systems transformation by being Deeply collaborative, Executing Excellently, Sincerely Constructive and Increasingly Entrepreneurial aligned with our values of (I-RISE; Integrity, Respect, Innovation, Stewardship and Equity).

We are, therefore, looking for people who are passionate about Africa to join our innovative, growing, and multidisciplinary team. Together, we can grow Africa’s food systems improving the livelihoods of smallholder farmers. Want to join us?

Overall purpose:

The RE-GAIN program – Scaling solutions for food loss in Africa, aims to address the impacts of climate change on post-harvest food losses in seven African countries: Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. The program focuses on strengthening food security by supporting the innovative adaptation of the harvest and post-harvest value chain. It seeks to reduce food loss, improve food quality, and enhance local capacity through the wide-scale adoption of Food Loss-Reduction Solutions (FL-RS) among smallholder farmers. The program operates across three primary pathways: farmer-centric, supplier-centric, and institutional support.

The Program Officer – Gender will ensure sustainable, inclusive, and equitable program outcomes ensuring that each component of the program carries key gender-responsive actions and not only ensures equal participation of women but also actively empowers women within the FL-RS value chain.

Role Summary:

The Program Officer – Gender will ensure the availability of business development opportunities that directly target women’s and youth’s groups and women/ youth-led enterprises, recognizing them as key actors in the market, and supporting these groups to establish robust, sustainable services in the FL-RS value chain. The role holder will ensure the provision of platforms that will promote gender and youth integration, hence leading to gender-sensitive outcomes. The role will focus on addressing gender disparities in post-harvest practices, promoting gender equality, and empowering women and marginalized groups in food production, storage, processing, and distribution systems. The Program Officer will be responsible for the implementation of gender-responsive strategies, advocating for women’s participation in decision-making, and ensuring the program’s activities are inclusive and equitable.

Key Responsibilities:

• Oversee the delivery, monitoring, and evaluation of the Gender and Inclusion Action Plan, and ensure continued compliance with related processes, including the application of the grievance mechanism, safeguarding protocols, and ESMS.
• Implement the gender and inclusion action plan to ensure that the RE-GAIN program is rolled out in a gender-responsive and socially inclusive manner.
• Support and ensure improved and inclusive access to finance for women and youth for increased and more equitable participation in FL-RS.
• Provide technical guidance at country-level on how to integrate gender perspectives into activities related to post-harvest management, food security, and resilience building
• Support the preparation of proposals, reports, and presentations for donors, emphasizing gender equality and women’s empowerment.
• Champion and collaborate with stakeholders, including local communities, government agencies, and NGOs, to ensure that gender-sensitive and youth-inclusive approaches are integrated into all program activities.
• Analyze data related to food loss and its impacts on women, youth, and marginalized groups to advocate for targeted interventions in countries of assignment.
• Coordinate the provision of technical assistance to the ministries of gender, youth and agriculture that are in line with creating an enabling environment for upcoming entrepreneurs in agrifood systems.
• Monitor country gender-related and youth-focused programs, milestones, and deliverables, ensuring adherence to project schedules.
• Collect, analyze, and interpret data related to the RE-GAIN program’s gender performance, impact, and outcomes at the country level.
• Work closely with the M&E team to ensure that gender and youth-centric considerations are reflected in the M&E plan, frameworks, and reports to assess whether the gender and youth-centric objectives are being met.
• Organize quarterly review sessions with country team office to analyze what’s working or failing in gender/youth integration.
• Provide real-time dashboards for key indicators disaggregated by gender and age.
• Document evidence-based success stories and learnings using project beneficiaries and stakeholder insights for continuous learning.
• Contribute to gender-specific outcome harvesting to identify unintended outcomes and learn adaptively
• Establish and nurture strategic partnerships with relevant stakeholders, including governmental agencies, NGOs, private sector sectors, and other organizations involved in addressing the challenge of post-harvest food losses at the country level to increase the voice and collective capacity of men and women networks.
• Work with local government and AGRA’s policy and advocacy teams to domesticate policies that address food loss and climate change impacts across the agri-food systems.
• Support policy translation into actionable, context-specific implementation plans that are inclusive of women’s and youth associations, cooperatives, and agri-entrepreneurs.
• Provide technical input for the establishment of an effective gender response monitoring system for the delivery of program results.
• Develop metrics and tools that track gender norms, power shifts, and changes in agency and access to post-harvest resources.
• Coordinate collection of lessons learned on RE-GAIN to build on AGRA’s knowledge base for gender-related and youth-focused intervention on harvest and post-harvest food losses.
• Design and lead the implementation of capacity-building activities targeting both internal and external stakeholders focused on gender-related issues in harvest and post-harvest management.
• Support the capacity building of local actors and AGRA teams to interpret and act upon monitoring data, and to adapt program delivery to close gender and youth inclusion gaps over time.
• Ensure data systems disaggregate by gender, age, disability, and geography, and integrate community-led feedback and real-time learning.
• Organize briefings, meetings, visits, and events; and set action plans for follow-up to ensure effective communication and accountability on gender-related matters at all levels of the program implementation.
• Ensure strict adherence to both internal and external reporting requirements to maintain transparency and compliance.

Academic and professional qualifications:

Education:

• Masters or PhD in Gender Studies, Development Studies, Agriculture, Social Sciences, or a related field
• Relevant professional certification

Experience:

• 10 years relevant experience with master’s or 3 years relevant experience with PhD.
• Direct 5-7 years’ experience working on gender-related issues, particularly in agriculture, food systems, or resilience programs is essential.
• Strong experience in designing and implementing gender-sensitive strategies in international development projects.
• Familiarity with post-harvest food loss, food security, and resilience-building frameworks is desirable.
• In-depth understanding of gender analysis frameworks and tools.
• Proven ability to design, implement, and evaluate gender-sensitive interventions.
• Strong project management skills with the ability to prioritize tasks, manage multiple stakeholders, and meet deadlines.
• Experience working with vulnerable populations, particularly women in rural areas.
• Fluency in English is required.

Skills:

• Demonstrates expertise in integrating gender perspectives into agricultural and food security programs, particularly in post-harvest systems, and ability to conduct comprehensive gender analyses and incorporate gender-sensitive approaches into program design, implementation, and evaluation. Demonstrates knowledge in gender-related challenges in agriculture and food systems, with a focus on post-harvest losses and resilience.
• Demonstrates a thorough understanding and skilled in designing, managing, and implementing gender-responsive programs, ensuring alignment with both gender equality goals and broader program objectives, ability to prepare project plans, budgets, timelines, and monitoring frameworks and adapt program strategies based on monitoring and evaluation data, particularly from a gender perspective.
• Demonstrates capacity to engage in advocacy for gender-sensitive policies, ensuring that women’s needs and voices are included in policy discussions on food security, agriculture, and post-harvest management with familiarity with international frameworks and agreements on gender equality and food systems (e.g., the SDGs, CEDAW, etc.).
• Demonstrates the ability to deliver training and capacity-building activities that increase awareness and skills around gender equality in food systems and post-harvest management with experience in building the capacity of local stakeholders, including women’s groups, to engage effectively in post-harvest activities and decision-making processes.

Duty Station:  Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – with some travel to Kampala to support the AGRA Country Office in Uganda.

Grade: HG 17

Minimum Base Salary: Birr 150,522 per month

Terms of appointment: This is a National Staff (NS) position, initial appointment is for three years with the possibility of renewal, contingent upon individual performance and the availability of funding. The ILRI remuneration package for nationally recruited staff in Ethiopia includes a very competitive salary and benefits such as life and medical insurance, offshore pension plan, etc.

 

HOW TO APPLY

Applicants should provide a cover letter and curriculum vitae; names and addresses (including telephone and email) of three referees who are knowledgeable about the candidate’s professional qualifications and work experience to be included in the curriculum vitae. The position and reference number POG/AGRA/14/2025 should be clearly indicated in the subject line of the cover letter. All applications to be submitted online on our recruitment portal: http://ilri.simplicant.com/ on or before 26 June 2025.

AGRA/ILRI does not charge a fee at any stage of the recruitment process (application, interview meeting, processing or training).

To find more about AGRA, visit our Website at www.agra.org.

To find out more about working at ILRI visit our website at https://www.ilri.org/

Suitably qualified women are particularly encouraged to apply.