Gender Expert

Headquartered in Dakar, Senegal, Speak Up Africa is a Policy and Advocacy Action Tank dedicated to catalyzing leadership, enabling policy change, and increasing awareness for sustainable development in Africa. Through our platforms and relationships and with the help of our partners, we ensure that policy makers meet implementers, that solutions are showcased and that every sector contributes critically to the dialogue and strives to form the blueprints for concrete action for sustainable development – from individual citizens and civil society groups to global donors and business leaders.

Since 2022, Speak Up Africa hosts the Ouagadougou Partnership Coordination Unit, a movement launched to accelerate progress in family planning in nine Francophone countries in West Africa.

As a women-led organization, gender equality is in our DNA. Unless women and girls in all their diversity can meaningfully hold leadership positions, make decisions, and allocate resources, our continent will never fully thrive. We support the inclusion of women and girls on public platforms and as leaders and encourage them to significantly participate in decision-making spaces.

Through this recruitment, Speak Up Africa aims to pursue its institutional commitment to gender equality by ensuring that we establish gender mainstreaming approaches and resourcing and further strengthen capacity for gender integrated programming of our partners.

The Gender Expert will provide strategic leadership and oversight for gender mainstreaming efforts and interventions at Speak Up Africa. This will involve building a strong organizational infrastructure to facilitate effective gender mainstreaming both institutionally and across programs and projects

Agenda-setting and programming:

• Conduct a gender audit and gap analysis of existing policies, processes, programs and interventions
• Build a solid gender infrastructure with mechanisms that will guarantee the sustainability of Speak Up Africa’s mainstreaming efforts both institutionally and programmatically.
• Define the strategic vision and approaches for advancing Speak Up Africa’s gender equality objectives
• Support the development of a Monitoring Learning and Evaluation mechanisms that include qualitative and quantitative gender indicators to monitor outcomes of mainstreaming activities.
• Oversee implementation of gender components of partnership projects, including with civil society organizations
• Represent Speak Up Africa on gender platforms and communities of practice to position the organization as a thought leader
• Guide work of staff/consultants that may be hired for specific projects

Capacity-strengthening:

• Develop and implement a capacity building plan on gender mainstreaming for staff, board members and targeted partners.
• Ensure gender considerations and analysis are integrated into Speak Up Africa’s interventions by providing guidance to the staff on mainstreaming gender into design, monitoring frameworks and implementation.
• Document results and impact of gender mainstreaming work through reports, publications and other communications materials.

Reporting:

• Produce a quarterly report highlighting progress, potential bottlenecks and key activations to be shared with Speak Up Africa and OPCU leadership.
• Produce a yearly publication on Speak Up Africa’s impact with findings, lessons learned and recommendations.
• Lead the development of donor-facing annual reports.

• Master’s degree in Gender Studies, Social Sciences or related field
• Minimum 10 years proven experience managing and implementing gender mainstreaming initiatives
• Extensive knowledge of gender issues specifically related to Speak Up Africa’s areas of work
• Strong understanding of gender analysis frameworks and audits
• Demonstrated ability to implement institutional transformation initiatives
• Excellent relationship management and stakeholder engagement skills
• Outstanding verbal and written communications skills
• For the position advertised, fluency in English and French is required (fluent in written and spoken French and English)

Speak Up Africa has a Zero Tolerance approach to all forms of harm and abuse. Speak Up Africa is committed to taking appropriate action against human rights violations and exploitation in all its forms. The welfare and safety of all stakeholders is prioritized in all actions and decisions of Speak Up Africa. Appropriate policies and procedures are in place to ensure this. Only those who share our values and are committed to our Safeguarding Policy shall be considered for recruitment.

Speak Up Africa also promotes efforts on gender equality in line with its strategic directions and institutional values, which are themselves organized around the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We encourage our institutional and business partners to commit to the achievement of SDG 5 in line with our institutional strategy.