Background
Mercy Corps AgriFin: Gender Strategy and Toolkit Rollout
The challenges in agriculture in Africa, particularly for the smallholder farmers producing 80% of it’s’ food
for consumption, are complex, and no single solution exists to reverse age-old issues around markets,
infrastructure, poverty and exclusion. Digital solutions can provide relatively low-cost solutions that
reach scale quickly, open new markets, and surpass the traditional brick-and-mortar approach to
customer acquisition and the distribution and sales of products and services. Over the past six years,
AgriFin has worked both to build capacity of fintech and agtech innovators to scale and worked to broker
partnerships for them onto larger digital platforms, typically hosted by banks, mobile network operators,
large agricultural enterprises and government. Digital platforms are evolving as drivers for impact and
viability in delivery of key services for agriculture and also for scale up of young, breakthrough technology
providers. Digital platforms can host multiple service providers, working to offer “end to end” services
to drive transformation in agricultural markets and impact for smallholders, while decreasing risks and
increasing revenue models for fintechs, agtechs and other market actors.
A key focal area for the program has been making technology work for women smallholders, with
program targets from 40-50% outreach to women across program innovation, which has been the most
difficult of all program milestones to meet. Over 2020-21, AgriFin has conducted impact studies across
a range of partners to find out what works for women, resulting in significant evidence and lessons
learned that have guided the development of the AgriFin Gender Strategy and also the development of
the AgriFin Gender Transformational Toolkit, which is a compendium of 17 tools to support farmer-facing
organizations in leveraging digital services to reach women for active use and impact. Results and
learning from this body of work can be found on the www.mercycorpsagrifin.org website.
Purpose of Engagement
The purpose of this engagement is to bring a gender expert, ideally with strong background in digital
services, financial inclusion and agriculture, to work side-by-side with the AgriFin program team to
support the active implementation of the new gender strategy, updated engagement development
processes and Gender Transformative Toolkit, helping the program to mainstream a deeper gender
approach into all our work with partners and around learning and impact.
Scope of work
The consultant will engage with the AgriFin team across the following key activities:
Review relevant gender strategy, engagement process, learning outputs, evidence base the Gender Transformative Toolkit developed over the past six months to gain a deep understanding of AgriFin’s updated tools, approaches and learning to inform the consultancy, which may include discussion sessions with members of the team and key stakeholders (i.e. CGAP, Dalberg, etc.);
Work with the AgriFin Technical Team members, as directed by the Deputy Director, to collaborate into new partner engagement design and implementation, to build capacity and support a deeper gender approach, as well as active deployment of AgriFin gender strategies, processes and tools;
Work with the AgriFin MERL Team members, in coordination with the MERL Director, to refine and implement gender-led MERL plans for engagements and to review implementation planning of those MERL plans;
Work with the AgriFin Senior Management Team (SMT) to consider future partnerships and collaborators for the program as it evolves in the next four years, to include gender-lens investors, products, technologies, value chains, etc.;
Make formal recommendations to the program about possible improvements to the current body of processes, strategies, tools, approaches and learning outputs that can improve the program’s overall gender performance and objective to be transformative for women SHF.**Deliverables**
The consultant will work to produce the following deliverables, in close collaboration with the AgriFin
SMT:
Approved workplan to engage with AgriFin Teams according to existing work stream timelines,based on agreed priorities with SMT;
Any and all work product related to advisory into specific partner engagements and MERL work;
Draft report on findings, learnings and recommendations for implementation of the AgriFin gender strategy and rollout of the Gender Transformative Toolkit;
Final report on findings, learnings and recommendations next AgriFin phase of development (narrative report or PPT, as agreed with SMT).**Required Qualifications**
The individual consultant must have a Minimum of a Bachelor’s degree in gender studies, international development or related fields and demonstrate significant experience and expertise in:
Deep experience with implementation of gender intentional and gender transformative approaches in agriculture;
Deep experience with use of digitally-enabled tools and services with women, including both financial services and non-financial services;
Understanding of monitoring, evaluation and learning approaches to gender inclusivity;
Deep experience in gender-based approaches that demonstrate impact in bringing technology enabled learning approaches to women smallholders;
Deep understanding of women smallholder farmers in the digital context in Africa and ideally India;
Demonstrated ability to work in a mentor/advisor capacity across multidisciplinary and multicultural teams to build capacity around application of gender transformative approaches;
Demonstrated ability to develop high quality written strategy, synthesis and recommendations on the related subjects
How to apply
Please refer to our website for more information.
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