Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund Gender Officer Jobs in Nigeria

Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund Gender Officer Jobs in Nigeria


The Programme

The Investing in Women in Nigeria (IIW-Nigeria) is a 6-year programme funded by Global Affairs Canada (GAC) that seeks to economically empower women working in the agriculture sectors as entrepreneurs, smallholder farmers, producers, and employees and to address the barriers that prevent women from participating in agricultural value chains in Kano State, Nigeria. Women account for 75% of farmers in Nigeria and agriculture is the economy’s second largest source of employment (36%).

Yet women farmers are significantly constrained by restrictive gender norms that limit their mobility, agency, ability to own land and access finance, inputs and technology. Climate volatility further exacerbates these challenges, especially in the North, which is prone to drought and flooding.

Through the project, the AECF will launch challenge fund competitions that will award performance-based grants to women entrepreneurs, producer groups, and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) offering employment, products and services that benefit women, that address barriers to women’s participation in agriculture, and are climate smart.

It will also provide business advisory services to the companies that are supported with grants, work with micro finance institutions to improve their ability to reach individual women farmers and engage with local community and political structures to support women in agricultural value chains.

The initiative seeks to contribute evidence on the effectiveness of funding the private sector to drive and improve women’s economic empowerment along various agricultural value chains. The project seeks to:

Increase access to finance for women-owned/led companies and those creating economic opportunities for women.

Increase access to business development services to support the growth of agribusiness that are beneficial to or led by women.

Address social norms through community-level and locally gender equality capacity building initiatives, advocacy and awareness campaigns and the recruitment of local champions. The project will support micro, start-up and growth level businesses through matching funding and technical assistance, and work to reduce systemic gender barriers to women’s economic empowerment at the grassroots level.

The Role

The Incumbent will be part of the IIW-Nigeria project team and collaborating with Gender team leading AECF’s work in social finance, women economic empowerment and gender lens investing.

The role holder will deliver gender activities across in the project including technical assistance to portfolio companies, coordinate and support the work of gender officers embedded in country, and work in close collaboration with AECF impact, knowledge, and partnership team to contribute to the overall learning, though leadership, dissemination and business development of AECF’s GLI work.

Key Responsibilities