National Gender Specialist

Organizational Context

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is implementing an EU-funded Oil Palm Value Chains Development Project in Sierra Leone. This initiative aims to enhance productivity, processing efficiency, market access, and livelihoods for approximately 43,000 smallholder farming households. Key project pillars include addressing constraints in plantations, processing, farmer organizations, and access to finance and markets, while ensuring inclusive, gender-responsive, and youth-sensitive value chain development with a focus on women's economic empowerment and social inclusion.

Job Purpose

The National Gender Specialist will provide essential technical leadership for gender mainstreaming and social inclusion throughout the oil palm value chain. This role involves integrating gender-responsive approaches into production, processing, and marketing activities. A key focus will be promoting women's economic empowerment and leadership, developing gender-sensitive value chain interventions, and ensuring equitable access to assets, finance, training, and technologies. The specialist will also be responsible for strengthening gender-responsive monitoring, data systems, and reporting mechanisms to achieve project objectives.

Responsibilities

Conduct comprehensive gender analyses of the oil palm value chain to identify key gaps, barriers, and opportunities, and develop a corresponding Gender Action Plan. Integrate gender considerations into all project activities, including production systems, processing technologies, and farmer organizations, ensuring gender-responsive targeting. Design and deliver training programs on gender mainstreaming and women's economic empowerment for FAO staff, partners, and government counterparts. Promote women's participation in processing units, aggregation systems, and business development, supporting women-led agribusinesses. Develop gender-sensitive monitoring tools, ensure collection and analysis of sex-disaggregated data, and contribute to project reports. Liaise with relevant ministries and local authorities to promote gender-inclusive community engagement and ensure the application of gender equality principles and the "Do No Harm" approach, identifying and mitigating risks related to exclusion.

Work Experience

A minimum of 5 years of progressively responsible experience in gender mainstreaming within development programs, rural livelihoods, agriculture, or value chain development is necessary. Working knowledge of English at proficiency level C is also required.

Skills

The role requires strong expertise in gender analysis and mainstreaming, with knowledge of agricultural value chains and rural livelihoods. Essential skills include the ability to design and deliver training programs, strong analytical and reporting capabilities, and an understanding of EU donor priorities on gender and inclusion. Demonstrated experience in conducting gender analysis, developing action plans, integrating gender into program design, and delivering capacity-building is crucial. Proven experience working with government institutions, community-based organizations, farmer groups, and multi-stakeholder or donor-funded programs is highly valued.

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