AFAWA Enabling Environment Consultant – AHGC (EOI) at the African Development Bank Group (AfDB) Contract

Job Title: Expression of Interest: AFAWA Enabling Environment Consultant – AHGC

Location:  Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire
Consultant type: Individual Consultant
Job family: Gender
Duration of the services: 6 months, renewable
Start Date is expected to be: 15 June 2023.

The Complex

• The Vice-Presidency for ‘Agriculture, Human, and Social Development’ is a Sector Complex focusing on two of the Bank’s Ten-Year Strategy High 5s priority of “Feed Africa” and “Improve Quality of Life for the People of Africa”.
• The complex objectives are (i) to develop, policy and strategy; (ii) provide deep sector expertise to the Regions by gathering pools of experienced individuals who can be consulted to provide sector expertise on complex transactions; (iii) develop new financing instruments; (iv) the Vice President will act as the spokesperson to represent the Bank with external stakeholders on aspects of “Feed Africa” and Improve Quality of Life for the People of Africa”.

The Hiring Department

• Within the Complex, the Gender, Women and Civil Society Department is designed to improve coherence and coordination across Complexes on Gender and Civil Society Organization issues. The Department ensures strategic priorities are reflected in resources allocation, enhances monitoring and management of performance, and strengthens the focus on results.
• The Department also houses a number of special initiatives including the Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa (AFAWA) a flagship initiative of the Bank that aims to bridge the gender gap in access to finance and unleash women’s entrepreneurial capacity across the continent. AFAWA’s holistic approach focuses on 3 pillars: (a) access to finance, leveraging AfDB’s various
• instruments such as lines of credit, equity investments and risk sharing mechanisms, (b) technical assistance, to financial institutions as well as women entrepreneurs, and (c) policy dialogue to reform the legal and regulatory frameworks affecting women businesses.

Background of the AFAWA initiative

• The AfDB started the implementation of the AFAWA initiative in 2021.Through this initiative, the Bank plans to unlock US $5 billion in new financing for women led and women-owned businesses across Africa by 2026.
• The Bank is doing this through the AFAWA guarantee for growth program in partnership with the Africa Guarantee Fund, where the African Development Bank is helping to de-risk women-led small and medium sized enterprises and incentivize financial institutions to increase lending to women. The Bank is also utilizing its traditional instruments of Lines of Credit, Trade Finance and Equity to ensure a carve out of 30% is allocated to women SMEs with partnering financial institutions on the continent.
• The AFAWA initiative is also offering technical assistance/advisory to partner financial institutions to build their capacities to support women SME markets and tailor products and services more suitably to the types of businesses women run; and offer capacity building services for the women SMEs.
• To enhance the capacity of Women Entrepreneurship Enablers, in 2021, the Bank launched the first AFAWA Women Entrepreneurship Enablers call for proposals. USD 2.5 million in Grants is being provided to the top 10 women business associations, incubators, accelerators and such like organizations to strengthen their capacity in supporting women entrepreneurs alongside financial institutions and governments in 26 African countries. This program is expected to impact 16,000 women SMEs.
• AFAWA is also ensuring a conducive overall business enabling environment for Women SMEs. The Bank is supporting policy dialogues to address women’s property rights, legal status, and access to productive resources and tools such as land, technology and finance, in order to increase women’s business participation and their economic, social and political empowerment.
• In addition, the Bank continues to engage with governments and regulators on expanding the modes of collateral beyond land in order to ease access to finance.
• To date, the African Development Bank has approved over USD 1 billion in financing on the continent for the purpose of on lending to Women SMEs.
• As part of its efforts to successfully roll out the implementation of projects related to access to finance and technical assistance in partnership with the Africa Guarantee Fund, Partnering Financial Institutions and Women Enablers, AFAWA seeks to recruit the services of medium-term individual consultants to support its portfolio of projects in the Central and Nigeria, East Africa, North and West Africa, and Southern Africa

Scope of Work

• Under the overall guidance of the AFAWA Manager, and the direct supervision of the AFAWA Task Manager (TM) on the enabling environment, the consultant shall undertake the following tasks:

Policy and Regulatory Environment:

• Support the TM in activities related to the policy framework and governmental/ regulatory policies in place impacting women SMEs ability to access finance and markets;
• Conduct desk studies on priority reforms and develop approaches to reform;
• Support the TM in the development of a framework for analyzing existing policy, suggest reforms, and regulatory changes and identify necessary areas for capacity improvement;
• Support the TM in providing technical guidance to governmental agencies including Central Banks, Ministries of Finance in the Bank’s Regional Member Countries as well as Regional Economic Communities in implementing and monitoring reforms;
• Facilitate capacity building events for the government officials, as well as financial sector stakeholders, including facilitating training sessions other financial sector stakeholders.

Enhancing the Capacity of Enablers:

• Support the implementation of the Women Entrepreneurship Enablers Program call for proposals;
• Liaise with the Bank’s ecosystem (financial management, procurement, dsibursement and legal departments) to ensure clearance and finalization of the projects;
• Monitor and analyze the general performance of the Women Entrepreneurship Enablers selected in the program;
• Conduct a mapping of the different women business enablers, categorizing and identifying direct opportunities for linkages with financial institutions implementing AFAWA programs;
• Support the yearly enablers call for proposals.

Transition from the informal to the formal sector:

• Conduct desk research on best practices on reforms and implementation plans at policy level to support the transition from the informal to the formal sector in the AFAWA implementing countries;
• Support the design and the implementation of women SMEs formalization project aiming to facilitate the transition of women SMEs from the informal to the formal sector;
• Support the TM in the collaboration with SME ministries/government agencies to address challenges refraining women from formalizing their activities;
• Liaise with the Bank’s ecosystem (financial management, procurement, disbursements and legal departments) to ensure clearance and finalization of the projects.

Other:

• Contribute to the development of knowledge products and publications and participate in the team’s efforts to develop a repository of data on women’s access to finance and women economic empowerment in Africa;
• Provide market intelligence on the women’s market and business case for investing in women; recommend innovative and operational products/toolkits with the aim of addressing adequately the challenges women entrepreneurs face in accessing finance and markets and achieve the objective of AFAWA;
• Assist the TM with the organization of main AFAWA on the Enabling environment
• Support communication strategy and tools to disseminate project results (compendium, lessons learnt, best practice via partners/AfDB Channels internet, social media etc.)
• Perform other duties as assigned by supervisor.

Qualifications and Experience
The consultant should have:

• Master’s Degree in Public Policy, Business, Economics or a related field;
• At least five (5) years of relevant, successful experience in supporting policy decisions in public institutions especially central banks and ministries of finance or in private institutions;
• Understanding of and experience in handling enabling environment programs related to financial inclusion for women and women entrepreneurs in Africa;
• Professional experience with proven competence in Financial Inclusion roadmap and strategy formulation and implementation is required;
• Relevant experience in planning and implementing technical assistance for policy reform and institutional capacity building in entrepreneurship, access to finance, access to markets and trade;
• Ability to perform successfully as a member of multiple project-related teams;
• Excellent communications and writing ability; Strong computer literacy skills;
• Fluency in English is required and a good working knowledge of French is an advantage.
• Some work experience in the private sector and in a development project environment is desirable;
• Excellent Analytical Skills;
• Strong project management and organizational skills;
• Competence in the use of standard Microsoft Office applications (Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint) required; knowledge of SAP is desirable.
• A national of the Bank’s Member Country.

Technical and Financial Proposal

• Shortlisted candidates will be invited to submit a technical and financial proposal for the assignment. An interview will be held with the candidates who obtained over 70% following assessment of their proposals. Final ranking will be based on 50% of the scores obtained following assessment of proposals, and 50% of the score obtained from the interview scores.

The Eligibility Criteria

• The establishment of the shortlist and the selection procedure will comply with the Rules and Procedures for the Use of Consultants for Projects Financed by the African Development Bank Window, 2008 edition revised in 2012, which are available on the Bank’s website at: http://www.afdb.org

Selection Criteria

• General Qualifications and suitability to the Tasks: 40
• Experience in the specific assignment: 30
• Experience with International Institutions: 10
• Language Capacity: 10
• Working knowledge of the Africa Region:10

Application Closing Date
19th May, 2023 at 12pm local (Abidjan) time.

Method of Application
Interested and qualified candidates should send their Expressions of interest to the email below using and specifically mention “AFAWA Enabling environment Consultant.”
For the attention of: [email protected] And copy to: [email protected] and [email protected]