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OPPORTUNITY

The Resilience Learning Activity (RLA) is looking for a consultant with technical expertise in Digital Financial Technology Solutions for Inclusion.

United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Ethiopia Resilience Learning Activity (RLA) project is the new five-year, USAID-funded Resilience Learning Activity (RLA). The activity supports USAID and its resilience partners with learning, collaboration, and research around resilience issues in Ethiopia. RLA serves as a “learning sidecar” to USAID/Ethiopia and its implementing partners, helping them to better understand what relief and development interventions can help make households, communities, and systems more resilient to increasingly persistent shocks and stresses. RLA provides support with learning processes and frameworks, development and consolidation of learning and research agendas, and support to resilience partners for adaptive management, results measurement, and the increased integration of systems thinking and rapid feedback into their respective toolboxes.

ABOUT ENVIRONMENTAL INCENTIVES 

At Environmental Incentives (EI), our purpose is to create the conditions for human and natural communities to thrive. We do this by helping our partners improve the performance of conservation and development programs. Our clients trust us to design and support implementation of programs that (1) use evidence to develop effective strategies within complex systems, (2) center local stakeholder experiences and facilitate collective action, and (3) produce results that support learning about what works. Environmental Incentives is a certified B Corporation with offices located in Washington, DC, South Lake Tahoe, San Diego, Nairobi, and Lima (pending registration). Our remote staff and consultants are based in multiple states within the United States, and across five continents. 

CONSULTANCY DESCRIPTION  

The Resilience Learning Activity (RLA) is looking for a Digital Finance Consultant with experience working on improving access to finance for poor households, women and youth. The Consultant will facilitate and provide technical inputs into a Community of Practice (CoPr) that RLA is organizing to explore technology driven financial products that improve access to finance and build on existing VESA experiences. This may include field testing and documentation of learning that emerge. The approach aims to aid the resilience community in addressing issues related to effective access to finance disaster and better sequence, layering and integration among RLA partners.

The ideal candidate for this position will have strong knowledge and understanding of the subject matter, demonstrated abilities to facilitate groups in learning processes, and be capable of providing direction and technical support to the CoPr. The financial instruments and digital technology community of practice activity is established and will continue for several months into 2024.

The consultant will work closely with the RLA team in Ethiopia to support the Digital Technology and Financial Instruments CoPr in organizing and facilitating CoPr learning events together with the RLA team and CoPr members. The consultant will also provide technical support such as leading technical discussions with the CoPrs, defining the learning process for the CoPr. The consultant will document each process of the CoPr activities such as event report, After Action Review summary, next steps and points, lessons learned, among others. 

Following the conclusion of the Digital Technology and Financial Instruments CoPr activity, the consultant will prepare one generic report in addition to each event report. The consultant will hand over all knowledge products generated including presentation meeting notes, reports photos, and videos during the period of this contract.

This consultancy will be up to 20 days with a possibility of extension to 40 days. The period of performance will be from October 2023 to April 2024.

RESPONSIBILITIES AND ACTIVITIES 

Convening and Facilitating the Digital Finance Community of Practice for USAID Partners

  • Leads the organization of the Digital Finance CoPr. This includes participatory development of an action plan (including deliverables) for the CoPr evidence generation and synthesis to be carried out.
  • Assist the design and delivery of events by working closely with the RLA’s point of contact and CoPr members to define the scope of the event and create agenda and participatory exercises.
  • Maintain the records of each facilitation events and develop a post-event summary.
  • Continuously brief the CoPr members on progress by actively flagging potential issues and suggesting methods for remediation. 
  • Address any issue that may arise during the process of Digital Technology and Financial Instruments research activities in consultation with the RLA team.

Lead the learning activities for CoPr including the design and implementation of the evidence generation and analysis 

  • Provide strategic leadership, setting priorities in conducting analysis on major obstacles and opportunities for financial product development in Ethiopia with recommendations for USAID and IPS in collaboration with the RLA and CoPr team members.
  • Providing insights and recommendations in sequencing, layering, and integration programing around behavior change, business skills, and access to finance in developing resilience capacities.
  • Provide technical oversight for the information collection approach and tools in collaboration with CoPr team members and RLA to maintain a quality and consistent approach.
  • Coordinate with the Digital Technology and Financial Instruments CoPr team and RLA technical team in developing evidence-based knowledge products and documenting all steps of the CoPr process.
  • Provide regular progress reports on facilitation of the Digital Technology and Financial Instruments, and more especially linked to the learning for adaptive management. 
  • Design and apply other learning approaches such as consultative workshops. 

Support the adaptive management for CoPrs 

  • Facilitate Pause and Reflect sessions during mid and end of CoPr implementation.
  • Engage CoPrs in After-Action-Reviews to help them continuously learn and adapt. 
  • Produce relevant learning products, oriented to two audiences: 1) USAID 2) Resilience implementing partners.
  • Integrating adaptive management in its all support to help USAID and IPs apply adaptive management processes and integrate the recommendations from this exercise to their programming. 
  • Lead the dissemination of lessons to wider stakeholders in collaboration with the RLA team.

Monitoring and measuring progress and effectiveness of the Digital Technology and Financial Instruments CoPrs

  • Integrate a monitoring and evaluation process to track and report on the progress of CoPrs. 

DELIVERABLES  

  • Comprehensive work plan for Digital Technology and Financial Instruments CoPr.
  • Facilitation of regular in-person meetings for CoPrs with an agenda and facilitation guides.
  • Engaging and interactive tools prepared and executed for active audience participation. 
  • Detailed plan for conducting analysis on key obstacles and opportunities for financial product development in Ethiopia, with recommendations for USAID and IPs.

QUALIFICATIONS, SKILLS, AND ABILITIES 

  • An advanced degree (Master’s) in an area relevant to Digital Financial Solutions.
  • Minimum of 10 years of relevant Digital Financial Technology Options and conducting analysis/research.
  • Experience working on USAID-funded programs. 
  • Excellent facilitation skills and experience in participatory approaches.
  • Familiarity and experience with current financial instruments and digital technology on access to finance in Ethiopia, government processes, national policies, and strategies.
  • Demonstrated experience with organizing and facilitating sessions, as well as working with co-facilitators and subject matter experts. 
  • Ability to understand the needs of the participants and adapt quickly.
  • Excellent communication skills, including verbal, presentation, and written.
  • Effective teamwork skills.
  • Excellent command of English, both spoken and written, is required.
  • Amharic language proficiency is required. 

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS 

Legally authorized to work in Ethiopia with no restrictions. 

BASE STATION 

The position is based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. 

HOW TO APPLY 

Please submit your application. We will review CVs on a rolling basis and contact qualified applicants for additional information. 

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Confirmed 4 hours ago. Posted 30+ days ago.

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