Program Officer – Gender, Youth and Inclusion

Program Officer – Gender, Youth and Inclusion will champion gender‑age responsive approaches to post‑harvest reduction solutions, tackle disparities that limit youth and women’s participation, benefit and empowerment and promote inclusive market linkages. Recognizing women and youth as critical market actors, the role will drive business development opportunities for women’s groups, women-led, youth led enterprises, and smallholder farmers, ensuring they can access and sustain financial services, harvest and post-harvest reduction solutions, including harvesting technologies, drying, storage, and market systems.

Lastly, by fostering platforms for integration, supporting policy reforms, and strengthening institutional frameworks, the Program Officer will play a pivotal role in advancing gender equality, youth empowerment, and sustainable food systems within the RE-GAIN initiative.

Key Duties and Responsibilities:

• Oversee the delivery, monitoring, and evaluation of the Burkina Faso Gender and Inclusion Action Plan, and ensure continued compliance with related processes, including the application of the grievance mechanism, safeguarding protocols, and ESMS.

• Support the Burkina Faso Country Office in ensuring RE-GAIN implementing partners conduct their program implementation and monitoring in a gender-responsive and socially inclusive manner.

• Support and ensure improved and inclusive access to finance for women and youth for increased and more equitable participation in FL-RS.

• Provide technical guidance at country-level on how to integrate gender perspectives into activities related to post-harvest management, food security, and resilience building

• Facilitate and coordinate women-only demonstration activities, ensuring at least 30% of food loss reduction demonstrations are conducted with women-only groups to strengthen their technical capacity in post-harvest management practices.

• Prepare Burkina Faso country reports and donor presentations ensuring gender and youth outputs and outcomes are reported, while maintaining strict adherence to both internal and external reporting requirements for transparency and compliance.

• Champion and collaborate with country stakeholders, including implementing partners, local communities, government agencies, and NGOs, to ensure that gender-sensitive and youth-inclusive approaches are integrated into all program activities.

• Coordinate the provision of technical assistance to the relevant national bodies, providing gender technical support, coordination tools, and frameworks that are in line with creating an enabling environment for women and youth in harvest and post-harvest Food loss management 

• Monitor country gender-related and youth-focused programs, milestones, and deliverables against project schedules, working closely with the country M&E team to ensure gender and youth-centric considerations are reflected in M&E plans, frameworks, and reports, AMIS data disaggregated by gender and age, and organizing quarterly review sessions to assess what is working or failing in gender/youth integration.

• Contribute to gender specific outcome harvesting to identify unintended outcomes and learn adaptively

• Establish and nurture strategic partnerships with relevant stakeholders, including governmental agencies, NGOs, private sector sectors, and other organizations involved in addressing the challenge of post-harvest food losses at the country level to increase the voice and collective capacity of men and women networks. 

• Work with local government and AGRA’s policy and advocacy teams to domestically implement policies, regulations, certifications, and standards that address food loss and climate change impacts across the agri-food systems, ensuring they are gender and youth responsive.

• Support implementing partners in translating policies into actionable, context-specific implementation plans that are inclusive of women’s and youth associations, cooperatives, and agri-entrepreneurs.

• Support women smallholder farmers and agri-SMEs to access structured market linkages and value chains, including connections to wholegrain processors, targeting at least 50% women participation in market sales of cowpeas and rice.

• Provide technical input for the establishment of an effective gender response monitoring system, developing metrics and tools that track gender norms, power shifts, and changes in agency and access to post-harvest resources to measure program results.

•  Identify, promote, and track employment and income opportunities created for women and youth through RE-GAIN program activities, ensuring program delivery actively contributes to increased employment opportunities for target beneficiaries.

• Ensure data systems disaggregate by gender, age, disability, and geography, and integrate community-led feedback and real-time learning.

• Organize briefings, meetings, visits, and events; and set action plans for follow-up to ensure effective communication and accountability on gender-related matters at all levels of the program implementation.

• Coordinate the collection of lessons learned from gender-related and youth-focused harvest and post-harvest interventions, and document evidence-based success stories using insights from project beneficiaries and stakeholders, to build AGRA's knowledge base for continuous learning and program adaptation.

• Design, lead, and support the implementation of capacity-building activities targeting both internal and external stakeholders, including local actors and AGRA teams, focused on gender-related issues in harvest and post-harvest management, enabling them to interpret and act upon monitoring data and close gender and youth inclusion gaps over time.

Key Qualifications and Experience required:

• A Bachelor’s degree (Master’s preferred) in Gender Studies, Development Studies, Agriculture, Social Sciences, or a related field.

• Experience working on gender-related issues, particularly in agriculture, food systems, or resilience programs.

• Strong experience in designing and implementing gender-sensitive strategies in international development projects.

• Familiarity with post-harvest food loss, food security, and resilience-building frameworks is desirable.

• Familiarity with the Burkina Faso socio-cultural, political, and agrifood context, including an understanding of the key gender and youth dynamics, local institutions, and the operating environment for agricultural programs in the country is highly desirable.

• In-depth understanding of gender analysis frameworks and tools.

• Experience implementing grievance mechanisms, safeguarding protocols, and ESMS in the agriculture secto

• Proven ability to design, implement, and evaluate gender-sensitive interventions

• Strong project management skills with the ability to prioritize tasks, manage multiple stakeholders, and meet deadlines.

• Experience working with vulnerable populations, particularly women in rural areas.

• Fluency in English and French is required

   

  Behavioral Competencies

• Ability to drive collaboration through inclusive and agile teaming, breaking siloes, sharing information celebrating joint successes.

• Ability to execute excellently by delivering high-quality work at speed, committing to decisions and plans, and increasing accountability to deliver impact at scale.

• Ability to be sincerely constructive in interactions with others by demonstrating trust, sincerity, and care, in recognition of our joint purpose.

• Ability be increasingly entrepreneurial by breaking hierarchies, embracing learning and innovation to unlock the potential of diversity and ideas.

   

   If you believe you are the right candidate for this position, kindly submit your application with a detailed CV in English and French (including your e-mail and telephone contacts) to https://ekjd.fa.em2.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/CandidateExperience/en/sites/CX/jobs. 

   

  Applications must be received on or before 10^th May 2026. Due to the large volumes of applications we usually receive, we will only be able to contact those candidates who are shortlisted.

   

  For more information on the AGRA, visit www.agra.org.