National Consultant-To provide capacity-building training and mentorship on ICT, digital financing, and digital literacy for young female entrepreneurs, job seekers and employees

UN Women Ethiopia Country Office (ECO) supports national and local efforts in accelerating progress towards gender equality and women's economic empowerment, while also advocating for systematic integration of gender-focused approaches within various sectors of organizations.

Aligned to the global, and regional initiatives and country priorities, UN Women Ethiopia Country Office (ECO) strategic note (2021-2025) is devoted to creating economic opportunities for women and strengthening women's economic institutions. UN Women under the Women Economic Empowerment (WEE) Program supports women and young girls to earn decent incomes, improved access to and control over resources, a reliable market, and greater security through its various projects/initiatives. To this end, it facilitates enabling environments and enhancing women/girls’ access to ICT, and financial and non-financial services including support for women/girls’ digital financial inclusion and e-marketing. It promotes and advocates young girls’ access to and use of ICT for advancing gender equality and women’s economic empowerment.

It is crucial to promote female entrepreneurship to reduce poverty and advance economic empowerment. Investing in women's entrepreneurship contributes to the achievement of economic and social development objectives. However, there are structural barriers that affect women entrepreneurs' and women-owned businesses growth and resilience to shocks within the economy. These barriers include the lack of access and use of productive assets, finance, and ICTs, limited entrepreneurial and management skills, and opportunities to access markets, distribution networks, and new technologies. This replicates a negative cycle and prevents them from accessing markets and developing their supply capacity, particularly in this digital era. 

ICT and effective business leadership capacity offer essential tools for business operation and competitiveness. It helps women/young entrepreneurs overcome gender-based challenges such as time constraints due to women’s multiple roles and responsibilities, social stigma, low physical mobility, and limited access to finance, education, skills training, information, and existing as well as potential markets. Women entrepreneurs can build a strong business through the adoption of technologies and other financially smart processes. There are varieties of technologies designed specifically to aid business management and increase productivity and income generation.  However, the major concern is how many women entrepreneurs have knowledge of and can use these tech solutions in their businesses.  In Ethiopia women entrepreneurs have limited access to ICT tools that have the potential to affect their business positively. This gap can be addressed through capacity-building training and enhanced networking including the adoption of mentoring and coaching approaches.

General objective

The overall objective of this consultancy work is to equip young female/women entrepreneurs/, potential entrepreneurs, employees and job seekers with the skills and knowledge of digital literacy and or ICT to enable them to get access to digital financing services, technologies for marketing (digital marketing) and on how to expand and diversify their businesses, generate better income, be more successful in business operations and employment.

Specific Objectives

1. Provide skill-based training on ICT, digital financing and digital literacy for 120 young female entrepreneurs, job seekers and employees
2. Provide focused  mentorship and supervision services to selected young women volunteers from the trainees  to train and support another 60  young women entrepreneurs   to access e-business platforms and benefit from  digital financing initiatives,
3.  Establish a network/sharing platform among  the target young women and others  to foster further learning and  be networked in access to market and other services, ,

• Develop and design training programs on digital business skills such as e-commerce, use of digital financing services ,  online marketing, and networking, and how to boost their entrepreneurship presence on social media and other relevant content to advance their businesses and/or products/initiatives and employment, .
• Develop exercises by collecting stories from successful young entrepreneurs using an ICT platform that can be able to share information on relevant business models, success factors, coping strategies, and others.
• Conduct participatory/interactive /practical training in the subject matters,
• Provide mentoring services to role model(selected)  girls with necessary tracking templates to follow -up on the progress of the support that will be delivered to other young girls. 
• Develop and conduct pre- and post-assessment of the training as well as the cascaded mentorship supports  and prepare the final report of the consultancy task that includes assessment of participant evaluations and results of the mentorship services on ICT.
• The consultancy is home-based, and the consultant should not require a working space at the UN Women's office.  

Deliverables 

The team of three consultants supervised/led by the lead consultant is expected to deliver the following:

• Inception Report (which includes an understanding of ToR, proposed methodology, outline of the training programs, deliverables, and schedule as the main components) about ten long
• A comprehensive training program with the following components for individual sessions: Learner Objectives, Time, Session Overview, Materials, Handouts, Special Preparation Steps, Tasks, Key Points for Discussion
• A PowerPoint presentation and other reading materials to be shared during the training.
• Conduct three days of training on digital literacy in three rounds (9 days) and provide a two-day training on mentoring services and ensure linkage with other young girls.  
• A workshop report covering the pre- and post-assessment evaluation, challenges, and lessons learned during the training.  

Core Values/Guiding Principles:

• Integrity - Demonstrate consistency in upholding and promoting the values of UN Women in actions and decisions, in line with the UN Code of Conduct.
• Professionalism - Demonstrate professional competence and Consultant knowledge of the pertinent substantive areas of work.
• Cultural sensitivity and respect for diversity - Demonstrate an appreciation of the multicultural nature of the organization and the diversity of its staff. Additionally, each individual should have an international outlook, appreciating difference in values and learning from cultural diversity.

 Core Competencies:

• Planning & Organizing – Develops clear goals in line with agreed strategies, identifies priorities, foresees risks and makes allowances accordingly.
• Organizational Awareness - Demonstrate corporate knowledge and sound judgment.
• Teamwork - Demonstrate ability to work in a multicultural, multi-ethnic environment and to maintain effective working relations with people of different national and cultural backgrounds.
• Accountability – Takes ownership of all responsibilities and delivers outputs in accordance with agreed time, cost and quality standards.

Education 

• Minimum qualification master’s degree in information communication technology, or any other relevant field of ICT with expertise in the areas of business skills and entrepreneurship.
• Under the leadership of the team leader, three experts with significant experience in ICT and business development are required while at least one consultant must be female,
• The team of experts including the lead consultant should have a complementary academic profile. 

Experience

• A minimum of 7 years of demonstrable experience in ICT and business development skills and training on business leadership/business management,
• The consultant should have in-depth knowledge of the use of ICT and applications in promoting business opportunities,  
• Technical expertise and strong understanding of gender, the situation of women entrepreneurs in Ethiopia, and the role of ICT and digital technologies,
• Demonstrated ability and experience in facilitating participatory, interactive, multi-cultural training for youth and adults,
• Prior experience in providing training on ICT and women entrepreneurship/business leadership is an advantage.
• Experience in developing lesson plans with relevant learning topics and exercises.
• An ideal candidate(s) should have creativity, strong organizational ability, capacity to deliver on time, excellent presentation skills and be responsive to feedback,
• Previous experience working with the United Nations system, the African Union, or other inter-governmental organizations will be an asset.
•  Women applicants are encouraged to apply

Thus, the lead consultant is expected to organize the required two experts/experienced professionals under his /her leadership in submitting the proposal.

Language

• A consultant needs to have excellent knowledge of written and oral communication in English

Application:

• All applications must include (as an attachment) a completed UN Women Personal History form (P-11) which can be downloaded from http://www.unwomen.org/about-us/employment.