Summary
Date Posted: Wednesday, August 16 2023, Base Salary: Not Disclosed

JOB DETAILS:
Project Overview and Role:
The Challenge Fund for Youth Employment (CFYE) is a 7-year and €134 million programme funded by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, that aims to create a prosperous future for 230,000 young women and men in the Middle East, North Africa, Sahel & West Africa and Horn of Africa regions. The Fund will be supporting initiatives in 12 focus countries that will offer youth, in particular young women, opportunities for work that is demand-driven and productive, offering a stable income and safe working conditions, and that is contributing to their personal development and social protection.

The portfolio of projects is selected from business cases that were proposed by private sector, civil society and knowledge institutions. Each business case has outlined scalable solutions for creating more and better jobs and income generating opportunities for youth. Solutions in particular focus on an integrated approach that addresses the shortcomings on the demand side (jobs) and supply side (skills) and bridging the mismatch between these two in the labour market.

The main purpose of this role is to provide consultancy support to CFYE’s key implementing partner in Uganda - Opportunity International UK (OIUK), in designing a learning method for measuring the linkage and impact between refugee financial inclusion (financial literacy trainings and loans disbursed to project beneficiaries), job creation and improvement and self-reliance, and also rapidly test it on the current CFYE project with the goal of ensuring that the project starts to count the jobs out of this pathway.

Assignment Overview:
Our key implementing partner in Uganda – Opportunity International UK (OIUK) requires a consultant to support in framing of a high-level impact plan and learning agenda, that captures the link between financial inclusion (FI), jobs created and improved, and and self-reliance. This will enable OIUK to answer the following questions:
• What is the role of access to finance in job creation, improvement, and self-reliance?
• How could access to finance help refuge led organizations (RLOs) and entrepreneurs reach sustainability faster?
• How can we capture the link between financial inclusion and job creation and improvement?
• How and to what extent can access to finance (and by extension job creation)?
• What works and what does not work in the process of linking financial inclusion to job creation and improvement, and at what stages does financial inclusion come in?
• How can RLOs benefit from more integrated market access/via financial service provider linkages and what steps can be taken to reduce barriers to entry?
Given that this project already started, this plan cannot be integrated into a baseline scenario. The consultant will therefore advise on the best design and approach to use given this reality, and upon understanding the context of this consultancy. Gender should be integrated within this learning agenda so as to identify specific barriers for women.
And to create pathways for overcoming these.

Primary Duties and Responsibilities:
The consultant will be expected to support OIUK to understand the linkages between financial inclusion, job creation and improvement. This will help OIUK to be able to effectively count jobs created as a result of access to financial products and services by its consortium partner, and to define what works in order to be able to replicate this method and take it to scale.
To achieve this overall objective, the activities under this scope of work will include:
• Reviewing the project logframe and the data capture capabilities of OIUK consortium partners.
• Review the existing approaches in financial inclusion using a desk-based approach.
• Defining a method that articulates the impact between financial inclusion and job creation and improvement, based on existing data already collected but which can be supplemented with additional in person interviews, FGDs and other means of verification.
• Design learning questions that will form the basis of this learning and would guide the design of the tool(s) to capture this needed information.
• Working with the OIUK team, design the tool to capture supplementary information from clients (user feedback or surveys) on the learning questions.
• Work with OIUK team to identify who and how to track the data using these tools.
• Test the designed tool by starting to conduct initial data capture, analysis and insights development.
• Work with the OIUK project consortium team (managers and inclusion officers) to build their monitoring, evaluation and learning capacities and their ability to support this work independently in future projects.
• Design a workplan (including timelines) to collect the data, to analyse it and to generate early insights.

Deliverables:
1. A learning agenda for measuring the impact of financial inclusion on job creation, improvement including the research method, learning questions, measurement tools, and a plan for collecting and managing the information.
2. Quality supplementary primary data collection (and a report and datasets from this). This data collection should be other than what the partners are already collecting themselves.
3. An initial data analysis/findings and insights summary from the secondary and primary data collected.
4. Quality capacity building of the team (and a report from this) on the learning agenda and processes.

Operational Arrangements:
Consultant will report to the CFYE Country Lead in Uganda on CFYE contractual issues, and on a day-to-day basis, report to senior staff designated for the consultant at our partners Opportunity International UK, where consultant will be posted. Operations will be on ground in Uganda and have frequent visits to the refugee settlements where the project is based.

Level of Effort and Reporting:
This role will be provided over a period of 6 months, starting in October 2023 and ending in March.
2024.

Required Qualifications:
Minimum Requirements:
• Knowledge or familiarity with a market systems development approach is essential.
• Experience in financial inclusion and job creation fields is essential
• Experience in design and implementation of a learning agenda and in impact evaluation.
• Prior engagements in the refugee sector are an added advantage
• Very good working knowledge of written and spoken English.

Core Competencies:
• A Ugandan based consultant with no reservations making field visits to remote areas.
• Background in at least two of the following: impact measurement; market systems development, financial inclusion; entrepreneurship support, and designing and measuring learning
• Ability to deliver capacity building to teams and provide mentorship and coaching
• Willingness to work with and be part of a team
• Knowledge of local working style and culture in Uganda
• Experience supporting cross-cultural working teams
• Must have the right to work in Uganda




Work Hours: 8

Experience in Months: 48

Level of Education: Bachelor Degree

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