FHI 360 is a nonprofit human development organization dedicated to improving lives in lasting ways by advancing integrated, locally driven solutions. Our staff includes experts in health, education, nutrition, environment, economic development, civil society, gender, youth, research and technology — creating a unique mix of capabilities to address today's interrelated development challenges. FHI 360 serves more than 70 countries and all U.S. states and territories. We are currently seeking qualified candidates for the position of: Technical Advisor II
Description:
mSTAR is a multi-year, multi-country technical assistance mechanism that works directly with USAID’s Global Development Lab (Lab), Missions and other Operating Units to enhance the integration of technology innovations and solutions to advance development objectives. Since its launch in 2012, mSTAR has worked in over half a dozen countries conducting research, developing tools and trainings, and expanding the frontiers of the application of mobile solutions for development. mSTAR is currently seeking a Senior Technical Advisor to be based in Accra, Ghana with extensive expertise in designing, testing, and scaling digital tools across agricultural value chains and/or working directly with rural communities to increase uptake of relevant of services.
The U.S. Global Development Lab (Lab) and the Bureau for Food Security (BFS) are collaborating in an effort called “Digital Development for Feed the Future” (D2FTF) to demonstrate how the results and cost effectiveness of the U.S. Government’s Feed the Future Initiative can be increased when a Feed the Future country team leverages digital approaches holistically and according to best practices. The goal is to demonstrate how digital tools can accelerate progress towards Feed the Future high-level indicators of increasing agricultural income and improving nutrition in nineteen priority countries.
Ghana is one of a small group of countries where D2FTF will support a comprehensive look across the Feed the Future portfolio to identify and implement the most valuable ways digital tools and technologies can improve success. This means both working directly with USAID/Ghana implementing partners to increase uptake of appropriate digital tools, and addressing the digital enabling environment where key improvements – such as more affordable access to telecom services and improved digital literacy – will support digital tool adoption.
In December 2015, a D2FTF team visited Ghana and hosted a workshop with Feed the Future implementing partners to help these partners, through a participatory process, identify ways that digital development tools can accelerate progress towards their own results. The workshop leveraged an initial scoping study conducted in Ghana in May 2015, as well the recently published Guide to the Use of Digital Financial Services in Agriculture. The outcome of these visits was a set of consolidated opportunities developed by the team and endorsed by USAID/Ghana as representing the best pathway forward. Of these opportunities, USAID/Ghana expressed greatest interest in the provision of long-term technical assistance – across a wide range of digital tools and services – to two implementing partners. This Scope of Work outlines what this technical assistance would include.
Job Summary / Responsibilities:
The Senior Technical Advisor will work in Ghana over a period of six months to work directly with Feed the Future implementing partners to design, test, and scale digital tools most appropriate for each partner. Two partners have been selected for initial work: Agricultural Development and Value Chain Enhancement (ADVANCE) and Sustainable Fisheries Management Project (SFMP), based on their (a) early stage experience in deploying digital tools, (b) recognition of specific constraints to greater digital adoption, and (c) their expressed interest in receiving dedicated technical support:
- ADVANCE supports the scaling up of agricultural investments to improve the competitiveness of the maize, rice, and soybean value chains. The project has already implemented a variety of digital financial services (DFS), both in terms of operational payments (paying staff salaries and per diems) and training farmers on using DFS within the value chain. However, they are experiencing a variety of familiar constraints: lack of agent network availability and liquidity, infrequent connectivity, and lack of farmer uptake due to technical and financial literacy constraints.
- SFMP aims to rebuild targeted marine fish stocks that have seen major declines in landings over the last decade, particularly the small pelagic fisheries that are important for food security and are the mainstay of the small-scale fishing sector. SFMP is at a different stage than ADVANCE, taking early steps to plan how to use both digital information services to expand knowledge of best practices among fishers, and how to use digital financial services to help fishers smooth irregular income resulting from recent regulations that require a month-long moratorium on fishing each year to support sustainability. SFMP has developed a broad-based ICT strategy that is currently being finalized. Technical assistance will be designed in a manner that supports the rollout of their strategy which focuses on how mobile money platforms could be used to pay premiums for micro-insurance and on mobile data collection.
The Senior Technical Advisor will work with each partner to achieve the following objectives:
- Facilitate the use of digital solutions to enhance the reach, impact or cost effectiveness of each of the two Feed the Future activities, measured by targets for indicators agreed to at the outset with the USAID/Ghana Feed the Future team, the implementing partner and the D2FTF Team.
- To the extent possible, build the capacity of local entities as well as the implementing partner’s team as assistance is provided.
- Throughout the work, emphasize following the digital development principles (digitalprinciples.org) including organizational and financial sustainability of all services introduced beyond the project term
- Align activities around a Digital Development approach which considers the broader enabling environment and a large set of stakeholders as necessary for digital service adoption amongst the most underserved.
Key activities will include the following:
- Create an overarching strategy for using appropriate digital technology within each partner, drawing in part from existing work plans where relevant, including an understanding of the key constraints and opportunities faced by each partner and their community constituents including underserved served groups such as women, youth, the elderly, ethnic and religious minorities, and low-income people. To be more specific, learnings from the following related work streams should be integrated into the strategic approach:
- Ongoing investments that are being made to accelerate the development of the financial services ecosystem through policy and programmatic approaches;
- Efforts to address constraints to reliable and affordable telecom connectivity and digital/mobile adoption that allow smallholder farmers and other beneficiaries to better use a suite of digital tools and services to more effectively meet their economic and livelihood needs. These efforts need to address the differences among smallholder farmers and other beneficiaries (due to age, sex, gender, class, ethnicity, religion, etc.) that may limit their access to and use of reliable and affordable telecom connectivity and digital/mobile adoption. In cases where a robust strategy exists that adequately addresses the diversity of smallholder farmers and other beneficiaries, the consultant will support partner to refine and operationalize the strategy, helping to support the transition of strategy from the conceptualization to system readiness.
- Where needed, assess requirements for each activity and prepare a detailed work plan including key tasks, deliverables with dates, those responsible, key assumptions.
- Identify key risks per activity with a mitigation steps for each. For example, if it is identified that activities may exacerbate gender inequalities steps to mitigate any harms should be integrated into the activities.
- Working with the D2FTF team (and an M&E advisor to be provided) and the Ghana Feed the Future team;
- Identify within the D2FTF Results Framework which outcome and output indicators are appropriate and aligned with the two FTF projects’ current results frameworks.
- Draft targets to be reached due to the proposed work (most likely this will be done for several sets of activities not for the overall SOW) that surpass the Feed the Future projects’ current targets.
- Align work with broader Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning plan, to be drafted and deployed in parallel and through another entity
- Provide direct support on identifying and engaging with the appropriate partners (private sector, government, and other development partners) to implement the strategy. This may include setting up meetings, providing input on contracts, and supporting pricing negotiations (for example, support role in bulk pricing negotiations with providers).
- Design creative solutions to challenges faced in implementing digital tools. For example, a lack of digital literacy may be addressed through better marketing and educational materials offered in local languages, cultural barriers to women’s digital/mobile adoption can be addressed by targeting households and incorporating gender equality trainings into digital/mobile trainings, or agent network challenges may be addressed by engaging the implementing partner more directly in the process of training agents.
- Support iteration and learning to continually update the strategy as new ideas are tested and modified to achieve the best results.
- Explore opportunities to take the learnings from this work and apply them to other Feed the Future implementing partner activities in Ghana.
- Document the experience and lessons learned. This will include:
- Final report specific to each partner to ensure that they can carry on the work after the six month assistance period is completed.
- Lessons learned document with the aim of ensuring that other USAID/Ghana partners (Feed the Future and other sectors) can learn from their experiences. Documentation should consider the nuances of working with different types of partners and with populations that have different needs. It should also pull out relevant lessons that can be shared with the global Feed the Future community.
During the assignment the Senior Technical Advisor will be expected to prepare and submit the following products:
- Strategy documents for each partner (within 3 weeks of arrival in-country)
- Implementation plan for each partner (within 6 weeks of arrival in-country) including work plan with key tasks; related deliverables; those responsible; and a summary of key tasks in a summary Gantt chart to show dependencies between tasks.
- Mid-term report (within 12 weeks of arrival in-country)
- Final report for each partner (within 24 weeks of arrival in-country)
- Up to three progress presentations to USAID/Ghana, partners, D2FTF Team and others, as identified by mSTAR.
- Presentation to USAID/Ghana and partners on key lessons (before departure)
- Lessons learned document for wide dissemination (within 2 weeks of departure)
- Webinar summarizing work and lessons learned as organized by the mSTAR and the D2FTF Team.
DURATION AND LOCATION
The position will be based in Accra, Ghana, with some travel outside of Accra to visit projects based mainly in the northern part of the country and will last approximately six months, but it may be extended if there are additional needs.
MANAGEMENT AND REPORTING
The Senior Technical Advisor will report to a designated manager on the mSTAR Team in Washington, DC. mSTAR will facilitate relationships with a designated point of contact on the D2FTF Team as well as a contact on the USAID/Ghana Feed the Future Team. mSTAR, along with the D2FTF team, will inform the Senior Technical Advisor how to communicate (approach and frequency) with the USAID/Ghana Feed the Future Team member and IP Chief-of-Party.
The Senior Technical Advisor will provide bi-weekly outlines of work accomplished, work planned for the next bi-weekly period; any issues/challenges faced along with recommended solutions; and lessons learned. These reports will be brief – 2-4 pages – and presented in writing and as mSTAR desires face-to-face in update calls. mSTAR may opt to extend this reporting to monthly at their discretion and, if monthly, return it to bi-weekly.
Qualifications:
- Master’s Degree or its International Equivalent - Knowledge/Information Services, Communications, Education, Environment, Health, Behavioral, Life/Social Sciences International Development, Human Development or Related Field.
- 11+ Years of experience in a specialized technical/medical field of study.
- Considered an expert in their technical field of study or knowledge area.
- Experience in specialized technical/medical field of study.
- English language fluency.
- Experience working with digital financial services (DFS), especially as it relates to integrating these services across agricultural value chains and/or working directly with rural communities to increase uptake of relevant of services.
- Experience in working on improved efficiency of agricultural value chains, especially in terms of Feed the Future projects.
- Experience with or understanding of the complexities of agriculture extension services in Ghana including role of the public sector, private service providers, NGO’s and agribusinesses.
- Experience working on the design and/or implementation of information and communication technology for development (ICT4D) including agriculture developing, agriculture extension services, agricultural information services, or other similar digital development initiatives related to agriculture.
- Understanding of the enabling elements to mobile and digital adoption, including affordable connectivity, digital literacy, locally relevant content and mobile-enabled real time data collection and analysis
- Knowledge/familiarity with human-centered design principles, especially consumer-centric research methodologies, prototyping, and iterative design.
- Demonstrated ability to work with a variety of partners to find a common platform across different sets of needs (i.e. private companies, governments, donor agencies operating both internationally and locally.)
- Strong project management skills and ability to push towards results within complex environments.
- Strong written and oral communication skills.
- Demonstrated cultural sensitivity and ability to interact with people from different countries and organizational cultures.
This job description summarizes the main duties of the job. It neither prescribes nor restricts the exact tasks that may be assigned to carry out these duties. This document should not be construed in any way to represent a contract of employment. Management reserves the right to review and revise this document at any time.
We offer competitive compensation and an outstanding benefit package. Please click here to visit FHI 360's Career Center for a list of all open positions.
FHI 360 is an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer. FHI 360 is an equal employment and affirmative action employer whereby we do not engage in practices that discriminate against any person employed or seeking employment based on race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national or ethnic origin, age, marital status, disability, veteran status, genetic information or any other status or characteristic protected under applicable law.
We offer competitive compensation and an outstanding benefit package. Please click here to visit FHI 360's Career Center for a list of all open positions.
FHI 360 is an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer. FHI 360 is an equal employment and affirmative action employer whereby we do not engage in practices that discriminate against any person employed or seeking employment based on race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national or ethnic origin, age, marital status, disability, veteran status, genetic information or any other status or characteristic protected under applicable law.
