National Consultant to conduct a Rapid Assessment on Marketable Skills, Job Opportunities, and Demand for Small businesses in Tigray with a gender lens

Job Description

Background:

UN Women, grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security.

Women in Tigray suffered gravely from the violent conflict that erupted in November 2020 and lasted until November 2022, and have continued to bear the brunt of multiple overlapping challenges, including drought, unemployment, inflation of currency value, ongoing post-conflict insecurity, and lack of or limited access to basic services and support.  Economic empowerment has proven to be a sustainable approach for individual and household economic recovery and the improvement of gender equality. In the post-conflict context of Tigray, support for economic empowerment is highly requested by the conflict-affected women, thus UN Women Ethiopia engages to provide comprehensive empowerment and support to conflict-affected women in the region. To this end, the UN Women Ethiopia Country Office has designed a project titled ‘Addressing Systemic Barriers to the Sustainable Reintegration of Women Ex-Combatants and Other Conflict-Affected Women and Communities in Northern Ethiopia’. A component of the project is economic empowerment through hard and soft skill training for securing jobs in the labor market or self-employment through establishing group-based and/ or individual businesses after start-up capital provision to the conflict-affected women. This sets to supporting conflict-affected women holistically to ensure their sustainable empowerment through self-employment or entrepreneurship.

Therefore, as part of the project to support conflict-affected women in the region, UN Women Ethiopia wants to recruit a national consultant to conduct a Rapid Assessment within the Tigray region on the situation of the local post-conflict economic environment in terms of the most profitable skills in the labor market and the lucrative potential of micro-businesses with a gender lens that will help UN Women offer guidance within its programming. The geographical focus of the assessment will be two pre-selected towns for the project sites, spanning beyond these towns where relevant.

 OBJECTIVES OF THE RAPID ASSESSMENT:

The Rapid Assessment on Marketable Skills, Job Opportunities, and Demand for Small Businesses in Tigray with a gender lens aims to achieve several key objectives to result in sustainable economic empowerment and building resilience of conflict-affected women in the region. It results in the identification of skills attractive to employers and skills profitable for business start-ups for the empowerment of conflict-affected women in Tigray.

Firstly, it seeks to identify the various skills that the private businesses and government sectors can employ given the post-conflict economic context of the region.

Secondly, it identifies potentially profitable micro and small businesses that could be established by conflict-affected women after gaining the necessary skill sets from the training to be delivered by the vocational and tertiary education institutions in the region and start-up capital provision.

Thirdly, the assessments will map the types of attractive skill training specializations identified to the region’s available vocational and tertiary institutions.  Understanding the skills that are attractive to employers and for lucrative/ profitable businesses in the post-conflict economic and infrastructural condition of the region is essential as it will aid in tailoring the skill and business training needs to be organized for conflict-affected women to the real economic environment in the region.

The general objective of the consultancy is:

Collect timely and accurate data and analysis on skills that are attractive to employers and profitable businesses in the specific and challenging context of the Tigray Region.

Specific purposes of the consultancy is:

To identify the types of potentially marketable skills (hard and soft) required from individuals (the conflict-affected women considering their vulnerabilities and challenges) for their post-conflict economic empowerment and resilience building in Tigray, specifically the project site towns and their surrounding areas.

To provide an overview of current labor market trends and snapshots of businesses’ opinions on training and strategic skills needs and what interest they have in hiring locally trained conflict-affected women to meet those needs.

To identify what type of jobs are available in the post-conflict labor market situation in Tigray, specifically the project site towns and their surrounding areas, that can be filled by vocational skills graduates (conflict-affected women), with a special focus on highly demanded skills.

To identify potentially lucrative business opportunities that can be linked to skill/ vocational training specializations delivered in the vocational training centers and tertiary institutions, in particular to conflict-affected women in the region.

To map the skill training portfolios/ programmes of available training institutions versus the marketable skill/ vocational training specialization in selected woredas of the region.

ORGANIZATIONAL SETUP AND REPORTING
The consultant will be reporting to the UN Women Ethiopia Country Office’s Women Peace and Security and Humanitarian Action Programme Specialist and will be supported by the Project Manager and the Women, Peace and Security and Humanitarian Action Programme Officers based in Addis Ababa and Tigray.

Contract and payment issues:
Contract duration of the consultancy is one month, starting 20th of January to 20th of February 2025.

Payment arrangement is:

20% of the contracted amount will be released upon the submission of the inception report including the following deliverables (methods and tools, study design, i.e., sampling, selection, and list and the number of subjects for KII, FGD, and desk review, KII and FGD checklist)

30% of the contractual amount will be released upon submission of the draft report and presentation to stakeholders to collect feedback

50% of the contracted amount will be released upon submission of the final report (after comments of the draft report are considered), and presentation is delivered.

DESCRIPTION OF RESPONSIBILITIES/ SCOPE OF WORK

The scope of work includes:

Data collection: gathering primary data through interviews and focus group discussions with relevant stakeholders, including government officials, sector heads, private sector representatives, and representatives of conflict-affected women and communities.

Secondary data collection: gathering secondary data from government, sectorial, humanitarian, and development organization reports to identify post-conflict market trends, potential lucrative MSE ventures and job opportunities for conflict-affected women, vocational training institutions, and their portfolio.

Reporting and presentations: compiling and presenting findings in a comprehensive report, including recommendations for economic empowerment of the conflict-affected women in the region.

METHODOLOGY
Desk Review: Initial review of existing data and reports relevant to the Marketable Skills, Job Opportunities, and Demand for Small businesses in Tigray.

Field Data Collection: conducting interviews and focus group discussions with stakeholders in and around the pre-selected project site towns (TBD).

Data Analysis: Analyzing collected data to assess potential Marketable Skills, Job Opportunities and Demand for Small businesses in Tigray, particularly the pre-selected project site towns.

DELIVERABLES:
The following deliverables are envisioned under this TOR
 

Consultant’s Workplace and Official Travel

This is a home-based consultancy. Thus, the consultant works at their convenience within the contract duration and deadlines set for the deliverables.
Competencies :

Core Values:

• Integrity;
• Professionalism;
• Respect for Diversity.

Core Competencies:

• Awareness and Sensitivity Regarding Gender Issues;
• Accountability;
• Creative Problem Solving;
• Effective Communication;
• Inclusive Collaboration;
• Stakeholder Engagement;
• Leading by Example.

Please visit this link for more information on UN Women’s Values and Competencies Framework:

Functional Competencies:

•    Ability to work with minimal supervision and support
•    Evidence of having undertaken similar assignments
•    Experience in providing capacity-building training
•    High level written and oral communication skills in English and Tigrigna
•    Result-oriented, exhibiting high levels of enthusiasm for gender equality, partnership, stakeholder engagement, and integrity.
•    Demonstrate excellence in interpersonal and professional skills in interacting with CSOs and development partners.
•    Experience in conducting assessments, research, and writing high-quality reports in English

Required Qualifications

Education and Certification:
Master’s degree or equivalent in economics, development studies, business administration, or marketing with at least four years of experience in similar work (research, assessment, analysis) is required

Bachelor’s degree in economics, development economics, business administration, or marketing with at least six years of experience in similar work (research, assessment, analysis) can be accepted instead of a Master’s degree level experience.

Experience:

At least 6 years (for Bachelor degree holders) and 4 years (for Master’s degree holders) of progressively responsible work experience in conducting assessment, research, and consultancy on labor market analysis, livelihoods, and economic empowerment
Experience in data analysis and report writing of results is required
Experience in delivering coherent and engaging presentations is required.
Excellent analytical skills with a strong drive for results and capacity to work independently
Excellent English communication and writing skills; (Samples of previous work will be required)

Languages:
•    Fluency in English is required.
•    Knowledge of the local language, i.e. Tigrigna, is mandatory.

Statements :

In July 2010, the United Nations General Assembly created UN Women, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. The creation of UN Women came about as part of the UN reform agenda, bringing together resources and mandates for greater impact. It merges and builds on the important work of four previously distinct parts of the UN system (DAW, OSAGI, INSTRAW and UNIFEM), which focused exclusively on gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Diversity and inclusion:

At UN Women, we are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment of mutual respect. UN Women recruits, employs, trains, compensates, and promotes regardless of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, ability, national origin, or any other basis covered by appropriate law. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, competence, integrity and organizational need.

If you need any reasonable accommodation to support your participation in the recruitment and selection process, please include this information in your application.

UN Women has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UN Women, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to UN Women’s policies and procedures and the standards of conduct expected of UN Women personnel and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. (Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.)