Regional Policy Advisor Job in Kenya

The Open Society Initiative for Eastern Africa (OSIEA)
 
Vacancy: Regional Policy Advisor
 
The Open society Foundations (OSF) is supporting UN women’s flagship programme on “Women’s Access to land and Productive Resources for Climate-Resilient Agriculture” and is seeking a qualified Regional Policy Advisor to lead the initiative in East and South Africa, based in the UN Women Regional Office in Nairobi, Kenya.
 
Job Profile: The Regional Policy Advisor will support programme development and knowledge management across the country programmes. 

The position involves high-level advocacy and partnership building, as well as policy and technical support and advisory functions. 

He/she will lead in developing strategies and methodologies towards programme outcomes; identify opportunities for engagement with partners and for resource mobilization; keep abreast of policy research and development practice in gender and climate-resilient agriculture; ensure knowledge, learning and innovation in programmatic areas, including through documentation and contributing to a community of practice on gender and climate resilient agriculture: handle communications within the region and with the counterpart Regional Policy Advisory in the UN Women Regional Office in Nairobi and UN Women headquarter; and represent the programme externally.

Primary responsibilities will include the following:
  • Take the lead in the development of the flagship programme in the region by engaging with national, regional partners, governments, and other stakeholders as appropriate.
  • Lead the formulation of the national project documents in the three pilot counties and other countries that join the initiative, including situation analyses/baseline assessments, strategy and partnerships, results and resources frameworks, implementation and management arrangement, and budgets.
  • Provide technical and policy assistance to the national project teams as needed.
  • Support mobilization of resources for the programmes in the three pilot countries.
  • Build partnership, including through advocacy, in support of the flagship programmes theory of change.
  • Identify and respond to capacity development needs, in conjunction with national programmes Identify, develop, and manage relationships with advisors, technical assistance providers and consultants to support national and regional programme implementation.
  • Work with regional development banks and other stakeholders to promote gender responsive financing instruments.
  • Identify opportunities to promote intra-regional trade between women farmer cooperative and producer organizations and private and public enterprises.
  • Support national monitoring and evaluation, including quality assurance
  • Keep up-to-date with research, policy, and programmatic development on land, climate-resilient agriculture, financing, etc as related to gender equality and women’s empowerment; draft policy and programming notes that inform the wider team on important policy developments or advocacy opportunities and/or offer suggestions about strategic programme directions and approaches.
  • Manage knowledge, by collecting and disseminating good practices and successful approaches at national, regional, and international levels in line with UN Women’s policy and Communications Divisions, and empowerment.org.
The Regional Policy Advisor will report to the UN Women Regional Director for East and Southern Africa.
 
Qualifications
 
This exciting opportunity is for a seasoned international expert with substantial knowledge, expertise and programmatic experience on gender and climate-resilient agriculture, particularly in Africa.
 
The ideal candidate will have the following:
  • Advanced degree in a relevant discipline, for example, international development, gender or environmental studies; economic or agricultural economics; rural sociology, geography or anthropology or agronomy.
  • Minimum of lo years of professional policy and programming experience.
  • Experience working on climate resilience agriculture and knowledge of its relation to gender equality.
  • Substantial experience in developing project documents including formulation of robust results/monitoring and evaluation framework.
  • Experience in knowledge management.
  • Ability to work efficiently under pressure, multitask and to work with minimal supervision.
  • Strong sense of responsibility, confidentiality and accountability.
  • Excellent organizational, analytical and problem-solving skills with attention to detail.
  • Familiarity with the UN system.
  • Appreciation of the multicultural nature of the organization and the diversity of its staff.
  • Willingness to undertake extensive international travel.
  • Fluency in English is required; fluency in another language desirable.
How to Apply

Suitably qualified candidates should mail their resumes and cover letters to jobs@osiea.org by 26th August 2016. 

For more information on the Organization interested applicants may visit: www.osiea.org.

The position will attract a competitive salary with good benefits package.