36-009 | Senior Program Officer, Empowering Youth through Jobs and Entrepreneurship

VACANCY TITLE: Senior Program Officer, Empowering Youth through Jobs and Entrepreneurship
LOCATION: Nairobi, Kenya or Rotterdam, The Netherlands
INTENSITY: Full time
ANTICIPATED START DATE As soon as possible
APPLICATION DEADLINE: September 15, 2024

ABOUT GCA
The Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) is an international organization that works as a solutions broker to catalyze action and support for adaptation solutions, from the international to the local, in partnership with the public and private sector, to ensure shared learning and collaboration for a climate resilient future. Adapting to impacts of climate change provides a “win-win” for health, livelihoods, food security, water supply, human security and economic growth. The work of the GCA elevates the visibility and political importance of climate adaptation and facilitates solutions, such as smarter investments, new technologies and better planning to become more resilient to climate-related threats. GCA is a rapidly growing organization with offices in Abidjan, Beijing, Dhaka, Groningen, and Rotterdam.

The GCA has an ambitious 2020-2025 business plan with three pillars:

• Programs and Action: Food Security; Using Nature for more resilient infrastructure; Water for Urban Growth and Resilience; Climate Finance; Youth Leadership

• Knowledge Acceleration: Building adaptation knowledge globally through cutting edge products such as the State and Trends in Adaptation Report and the Knowledge Exchange Platform

• Agenda Setting and Advocacy: Formulating policy messages to move the global, regional, and local adaptation agendas forward.

GCA’s work program in Africa is of paramount importance. All the components of GCA’s Business Plan must succeed in supporting the changing momentum and pace of adaptation in Africa. Guiding GCA’s program in Africa is the Africa-owned and Africa-led Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program (AAAP), co-created with the African Development Bank Group (AfDB) to implement the vision of the Africa Adaptation Initiative to support African countries on key adaptation initiatives.

The AAAP is contributing to closing Africa’s adaptation gap and supporting African countries to make a transformational shift in their development pathways by putting climate adaptation and resilience at the centre of their critical growth-oriented and inclusive policies, programs, and institutions. It is scaling up successful initiatives fundamental to African nations’ economic development, and prosperity for women and men. The four pillars of the AAAP are: Climate Smart Digital Technologies for Agriculture and Food Security, the Africa Infrastructure Resilience Accelerator, Empowering Youth through Jobs and Entrepreneurship, and Innovative Financial Initiatives for Africa.

The Empowering youth for Entrepreneurship and Job Creation in Climate Adaptation and Resilience pillar, has as its goal, to promote sustainable job creation through entrepreneurship and innovation for action on climate adaptation and resilience in Africa. This Pillar aims at promoting innovation and inclusive growth for youth and will accelerate and scale youth-led innovative and bankable business solutions to climate-related challenges while creating jobs. This will be achieved through providing innovative youth-owned enterprises (50% women-led) $500m in credit; strengthening the productivity and growth of 10,000 youth-led enterprises to increase climate resilience and enhance job opportunities; developing skills and equipping 1 million African youth to prepare them for climate resilient jobs and green entrepreneurial opportunities; creating an enabling environment conducive for resilient enterprise development by supporting legal, policy and regulatory reforms and removing structural barriers to promoting youth participation in climate policies.

ABOUT THE ROLE

Profile
GCA seeks a dynamic individual to join the Youth, Jobs, and Entrepreneurship team as Senior Program Officer (Jobs & Entrepreneurship) working as a core team member to position the Global Center on Adaptation as a global leader and solutions broker in adaptation. Reporting to the Lead on Jobs & Entrepreneurship the individual will support the programmatic work on adaptation jobs mainstreaming across International Finance Institution (IFI) projects, scaling-up youth innovation through entrepreneurship programs and identifying opportunities to create resilience jobs in projects supported by the GCA across the African continent.

As Senior Program Officer, you lead on programmatic implementation in scaling-up youth innovation for adaptation action interventions, support in the mainstreaming adaptation jobs into International Finance Institution Projects agenda and work to ensure clear linkages of outcomes to the private sector. You will provide technical and content-focused support to advance GCA’s overall programmatic work, collaborating with internal stakeholders under the AAAP to create adaptation jobs and scale-up adaptation solutions (enterprises) across the continent.  Additionally, you will cultivate and manage relationships with external partners to develop and operationalize a framework for climate-resilient jobs in Africa.

Areas of responsibility
The key responsibilities of the Senior Program Officer include:

• In coordination with the Lead for Youth Jobs and Entrepreneurship and the Regional Director for Africa, further develop the strategy and implementation framework to identify, create and mainstream adaption jobs.

• Coordinate the preparation of the pipeline of projects under the Youth, Jobs and Entrepreneurship pillar, promoting creative solutions and approaches to climate resilient job creation. This will include adopting robust tools and date-driven information, and a broad, multi-sector strategy to drive job creation in adaptation.

• Participate in the preliminary evaluation of project proposals to assess their feasibility for financial support and/or technical assistance by GCA. This involves the initial screening of projects, carrying out desk reviews, preparing preliminary evaluation notes for presentation to the Global Program Lead and the Regional Director for Africa.

• Participate in relevant missions with project partners to prepare project appraisal reports, including various financial and risk analysis, development outcome analysis, strategic alignment with GCA goals.

• Support the day-to-day implementation of the Youth, Jobs and Entrepreneurship program, including but not limited to the preparation of project concepts, procurement documents, contract management, planning tools, and progress monitoring and reporting.

• Develop and review reports, presentations, and project briefs, among others, as well as support to overall outputs of the Youth, Jobs and Entrepreneurship Program, ensuring technically robust outputs with a clear narrative.

• Support the preparation of knowledge products – e.g. policy briefs, news stories, reports – on GCA’s activities and the Youth, Jobs and Entrepreneurship Program, as well as capacity building activities • Develop and expands a network of relevant experts, policymakers, and other partners in Africa to support the AAAP work on youth entrepreneurship and jobs.