Background

Context

Grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, UN Women is working for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security. Placing women’s rights at the Centre of all its efforts, UN Women is leading and coordinating the United Nations System to ensure that commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming translate into action throughout the world. It is providing strong and coherent leadership in support of Member States’ priorities and efforts, building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors.

UN Women focuses on a limited number of transformative programmes to bring about change in the lives of women and girls. For each of these programmes, UN Women leverages ICTs to accelerate implementation and to scale up impact in a cost-effective manner.

In climate resilient agriculture, UN Women has developed a platform called ‘Buy from Women. This platform combines an open source end-to-end cloud based, and mobile enabled supply chain system (based on Odoo open source ERP platform) to connect women farmers to information, finance and markets. This innovation enables women farmers to have a 360-degree view of the entire business lifecycle. It provides real time reports in dashboard form of key performance indicators including forecasted yield and sales revenue.

The Buy from Women platform has been launched in several countries and the DRC is currently working on launching it. To support that process, the Country Office in the DRC is recruiting an officer to support the implementation. 

The BuyFromWomen (BfW) Officer will be based in Kinshasa and is expected to work closely with the Women Economic Empowerment (WEE) team, other UN Women staff working in the same capacity in Senegal, Mali, Rwanda and Haiti and the UN Women’s Economic Empowerment specialists and UN Women’s Innovation Facility and IT department at headquarters to develop the platform for DRC.

S/he will have the opportunity to work the relevant staff to learn more about its ICT for development strategy and “Buy From Women” Platform. S/he will be expected to help envision how existing and new ICT solutions can support UN Women’s mandate. Her/his main tasks will be business analysis, planning and design as well as roll-out and adoption activities such as testing, user training and advocacy. The BfW Officer will work as a bridge between thematic specialists and the IT project team including our central IT department as well as our existing software development partners.

The BfW Officer is also expected to cover the programmatic aspect of the BfW program by implementing the associated checklist (from sector selection to the launch of the platform).

Duties and Responsibilities

Responsibilities

Under the direct supervision of Deputy Representative and working with the WEE Team, the BfW Officer will undertake the following tasks:

• Work closely with the UN Women’s Economic Empowerment specialists to understand the program, business model, processes, supply chain and partners.

• Execute and Implement the program checklist both on the programmatic and IT side

• Identify and evaluate potential ICT solutions, notably UN Women’s enterprise platform “Buy From Women”.

• Translate business process into system flows for country specific system configurations.

• Develop technical specifications.

• Interact with the other staff in the same position in other countries to learn from their experience.

• Interact with UN Women Innovation Facility and IT department at Headquarters as well as software development partners on technical development.

• Conduct system testing and quality assurance.

• Develop and conduct system training for project partners.

• Monitor system roll-out and ensure feedback is used to improve the system.

• Provide demonstrations of the system as needed and requires.

•  

Impact of results

• ICT solution (Buy from Women Platform) discussed and agreed to with local stakeholders.

• Business processes translated into system flows and technical specifications.

• System is built, rolled out and functioning

• Development of capacity through coaching, mentoring and formal on-the-job training, when working with staff or (non-) governmental counterparts, including Implementing Partners (IPs);

• Age, Gender and Diversity (AGD) perspective is systematically applied, integrated and documented in all activities throughout the assignment

   

Competencies

Compentencies

Qualifications, skills, experience: 

Knowledge of programming languages, following applications and frameworks are an asset. Database Design & ETL development (Data warehousing)

• Database Development (SQL)

• NET / C# /ASP.NET / MVC / LINQ / JQuery / Entity Framework / JAVA / HTML

• Entreprise Resource planning (ERP)

• SharePoint

• Office applications

Skills in content management systems (CMS), ecommerce and Agile software are an asset.

Technical Skills and competencies

• Ability to understand technical plans

• Very solid project management skills

• Strong oral and written communication skills required

• Open minded towards new developments and tools.

 Competencies and values:

• Integrity and professionalism: demonstrated expertise in area of specialty and ability to apply good judgment; high degree of autonomy, personal initiative and ability to take ownership; willingness to accept wide responsibilities and ability to work independently under established procedures in a politically sensitive environment, while exercising discretion, impartiality and neutrality; ability to manage information objectively, accurately and confidentially; responsive and client-oriented.

• Accountability: mature and responsible; ability to operate in compliance with organizational rules and regulations.

• Commitment to continuous learning: initiative and willingness to learn new skills and stay abreast of new developments in area of expertise; ability to adapt to changes in work environment.

• Planning and organizing: effective organizational and problem-solving skills and ability to manage a large volume of work in an efficient and timely manner; ability to establish priorities and to plan, coordinate and monitor (own) work; ability to work under pressure, with conflicting deadlines, and to handle multiple concurrent projects/activities.

• Teamwork and respect for diversity: ability to operate effectively across organizational boundaries; ability to establish and maintain effective partnerships and harmonious working relations in a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic environment with sensitivity and respect for diversity and gender;

• Communication: proven interpersonal skills; good spoken and written communication skills, including ability to prepare clear and concise reports; ability to conduct presentations, articulate options and positions concisely; ability to make and defend recommendations; ability to communicate and empathize with staff , military personnel, volunteers, counterparts and local interlocutors coming from very diverse backgrounds; ability to maintain composure and remain helpful towards the staff, but objective, without showing personal interest; capacity to transfer information and knowledge to a wide range of different target groups;

• Flexibility, adaptability, and ability and willingness to operate independently in austere, remote and potentially hazardous environments for protracted periods, involving physical hardship and little comfort, and including possible extensive travel within the area of operations; willingness to transfer to other duty stations within area of operations as may be necessary;

• Commitment towards the UN core values.

Required Skills and Experience

Qualifications

Education

Bachelor degree (or equivalent) in Social Sciences, Political Science, Development, ICT

Experiences

• 5 years of experience in programme/ project management

• minimum of 5 years of practical and relevant professional experience working in ICTs/software development in the public, private or NGO sector

• Experience working with the private sector, government or development programmes in designing and delivering innovative ICT solutions

• Experience working in business operations, objectives and strategies as well as business process and information flow