The Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA) is a strategy and delivery-oriented government agency created to help accelerate the growth and transformation of the country’s agriculture sector. The ATA envisions that, by 2025, smallholder farmers are commercialized with greater incomes, inclusiveness, resilience and sustainability, contributing to Ethiopia’s achievement of middle-income country status.

The agency focuses on two primary national approaches to catalyze agricultural transformation. First, we support the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Resources (MoA), its affiliate institutions, and other partners to identify and address systemic bottlenecks within an Agricultural Transformation Agenda. Second, we support Regional Governments to accelerate development of high-priority commodity value chains in clearly defined geographic clusters, through the Agricultural Commercialization Clusters (ACC) Initiative.

Our major activities include conducting strategic and analytical studies, providing technical implementation support, coordinating platforms to better integrate partners and projects, and designing and directly leading a number of implementation projects. Our headquarters are in Addis Ababa, and we have regional offices in Amhara, Oromia, SNNP, and Tigray regional offices, allowing us to work closely with a wide range of public, private and development sector partners across the country.

Our Culture

We have an exceptional team of highly competent employees with a proven track record of success in managing complex activities and achieving transformational results.  Our culture is one where talented, dedicated and adaptable individuals are committed to doing their best and exhibit great team work to achieve excellent results.

At ATA, we provide an exceptional platform for people who want to achieve their highest potential and make a meaningful contribution in changing the country’s agricultural sector.  We offer rewarding work in a young, fast-paced growing organization with passionate, committed, motivated colleagues and excellent career development and training.  We recognize our most valuable assets are our staff and are committed to providing our employees with the tools, training, and mentorships necessary to achieve their career goals.

POSITION SUMMARY:

The Advisor, Gender Inclusion is primarily responsible for planning, designing, and implementing a high impact program of interventions to achieve gender equality at the ATA as well as the AgriHub project. She/he is responsible to ensure that gender issues are mainstreamed and integrated into relevant operational policies and procedures and are consistently implemented across the ATA as well as MSMEs supported by the AgriHub project. The Advisor will serve as a strategic advisor to ATA’s leadership team on gender inclusivity in the organization and be responsible for coordinating and managing ATA’s gender transformation initiatives across the organization. This includes leading the development of clear gender parity targets against select outcomes, and mobilizing and coordinating multiple teams across the ATA and AgriHub MSME management including HR, Gender Committee, and AgriHub project team and management teams of MSMEs in the implementation of key initiatives to achieve these outcomes.

Key outcomes to be achieved from this role

While specific targets for gender inclusivity will be co-developed with the input of the Advisor and ATA’s management team, the following are high level expectations of what this role should achieve:

• Increase female representation in ATA and MSMEs admitted to the AgriHub project across critical role levels at mid-career, leadership, and senior leadership positions.

• Increase retention rate of female staff (particularly at mid-career level and above).

• Establish an inclusive culture through building staff awareness at all levels on the importance of gender inclusivity and diversity.

• Develop and achieve specific gender representation targets across all departments in ATA and AgriHub MSMEs.

 ESSENTIAL DUTIES:

• Leading the gender transformation at ATA and providing strategic advice to the CEO, Senior Management Team and HR team on the issue of gender parity in ATA and MSMEs supported by the AgriHub project.

• Facilitating the development of organizational gender inclusion targets, including cascading the targets across departments and designing, tracking, and refining initiatives to achieve these targets.

• Designing, piloting, and implementing proposed strategic programs to attract, develop and retain female talent such as Women Leadership Programs, Minimum female application thresholds, simplification of JD’s as per best practice, including upward-feedback in performance reviews and others.

• Designing and conducting regular gender audits at organizational and department levels to ensure key gender-related data is collected and tracked to guide the refinement of interventions.

• Developing and supporting delivery of mandatory inclusivity trainings and gender awareness initiatives to induce inclusive and gender-sensitive mindsets and attitudes across leadership and employees e.g., during onboarding sessions and throughout staff tenure.

• Supporting change management communication of ATA and MSMEs gender initiatives by working with the communications team and proactively soliciting and integrating of staff feedback and concerns.

• Providing insight on how to strengthen ATAs ability to attract and retain female talent, as well as how to promote, support and target women owned MSMEs within Ethiopia to the AgriHub project

• Helping strengthen recruitment and selection processes to ensure that female applicants fulfilling minimum requirements are considered for further assessment.

• Reviewing existing policies and procedures for reporting, escalating, investigating, and addressing sexual harassment and update them to align with best practices and the legal requirements.

• Ensuring that gender issues are mainstreamed into relevant policies and procedures and implemented across the ATA and MSMEs supported by the AgriHub project.

• Organizing the dissemination of policies and deliver trainings for key stakeholders involved in these procedures and all-staff awareness training's.
• Document success stories, lessons learned, and challenges with integration and implementation of gender inclusivity initiatives into ATA and MSMEs and share for all relevant stakeholders.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS:

• Master’s degree or equivalent (preferably in areas Gender, International Development, and Human Resource Management related areas).

• More than 10 years of managerial experience in strategically focused roles in public, private or development sector organizations.

• Genuine passion and proven ability to inspire and manage organizational transformations (ideally in the area of advancing Gender inclusion in Ethiopia or similar cultural contexts).

• Strong understanding of the Ethiopian cultural context and ideally some experience working with various regional offices in the country.

• Ability to develop and maintain strong relationships with multiple departments and stakeholders in an organization.

• High degree of political acumen and sensitivity and demonstrated ability to achieve results in a politically and operationally complex environments.

• Outstanding communication and presentation skills with ability to design, coordinate and deliver trainings to large senior audiences.

• Strong core values of integrity, professionalism, cultural sensitivity, and emotional intelligence
• Fluency in English and Amharic.