International Consultant – Design & Development of a Gender Election Watch Africa (GEWA), a Pan-African Feminist Digital Electoral Platform

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. Placing women's rights at the centre of all its efforts, UN Women leads and coordinates United Nations system efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming translate into action throughout the world.     

The Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office (ESARO) coordinates and provides oversight to UN Women’s work in 13 countries across the region. The Office also plays a key role in ensuring the coordination mandate of UN Women as well as supports country offices' resource mobilization efforts. ESARO serves as the hub of technical assistance, policy guidance and oversight, as well as thought leadership on gender equality and women’s empowerment issues in the region. 

UN Women’s Leadership and Decision-Making (LDM) portfolio is a central area of work under the UN Women Strategic Plan 2026–2029 and the ESARO Strategic Note 2026–2029. In the East and Southern Africa region, it focuses on strengthening accountability for gender equality commitments by working with civil society, regional and national institutions, UN entities, Member States, electoral bodies, political parties, parliaments, and women’s movements. The LDM portfolio seeks to advance gender parity, inclusive electoral and political reforms, shared accountability benchmarks, peer learning, and regional problem-solving to advance women’s leadership and decision-making.

In Africa, women remain underrepresented as voters, candidates, election administrators and political leaders. While legal reforms and gender quotas have advanced in several countries, systemic barriers persist: electoral violence targeting women, discriminatory party nomination processes, unequal media coverage, cyber harassment, and limited access to campaign financing. These gaps are compounded by fragmented data. Information on women’s political participation is often scattered across reports, not updated in real time and rarely disaggregated by disability, age, or geography. 

Critically, there is currently no Pan-African feminist digital platform that provides gendered electoral information timeously. Existing initiatives either focus on single countries, publish post-election analysis months later, or lack a feminist lens that centers the experiences of women political leaders and marginalized groups. Equally urgent, there is no continental platform that systematically profiles female candidates during an election cycle and rallies others to provide sister-to-sister solidarity. Women candidates often campaign in isolation, facing attacks without visible networks of support. This absence of real-time visibility and collective backing reinforces impunity for violence and erodes women’s political ambition.

These twin gaps leave aspiring women leaders, women leaders, journalists, policymakers, election observers and donors without timely, actionable data or solidarity infrastructure to respond to violations, track trends, or amplify women’s political agency during the most critical moments of democratic processes. Without accessible, comparative and verified data and without a mechanism to mobilize feminist solidarity as campaigns unfold, women’s rights organizations struggle to hold institutions accountable and to design evidence-based interventions when they matter most. In that regard UN Women seeks to support a regional organization to develop a Gender Election Watch Africa (GEWA) responds to this urgent dual gap as a continental digital platform dedicated to making every African election visible through a gender lens while it happens and to making every woman candidate visible, protected and backed by a pan-African sisterhood.

UN Women Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office (ESARO), in line with its mandate on promoting women’s leadership and decision-making (LDM) and commitments under SDG 5.5 and Beijing+30, together with its partners WALPE Africa and FEMNET who are the custodians of the Pan African All Female election Observation Mission (PAFOM) seeks to engage a consultant to develop the Gender Election Watch Africa (GEWA) as a digital platform dedicated to making every African election visible through a gender lens.

GEWA must be designed as a secure, accessible and user-centered platform. Its development should be guided by feminist data principles, informed consent, data protection, digital safety, accessibility, safeguarding and a do-no-harm approach. The platform should not only make gendered electoral information visible, but also ensure that electoral stakeholders are not exposed to additional risk through the collection, publication or use of sensitive information.     

Description of Responsibilities /Scope of Work:

The consultant will report to the UN Women Regional Policy Specialist and work closely with the designated partner institutions to co-create GEWA through a participatory and capacity-strengthening process. 

The consultant will be responsible for the following tasks:

• Design and develop the GEWA platform prototype: Develop a secure, accessible and user-centred digital platform prototype that demonstrates the core functionality of GEWA as a Pan-African feminist electoral information platform;
• Build core platform modules: Create, at minimum, interactive country dashboards, candidate profile pages, an election calendar, a gender alert tracker on violence against women in politics, thematic analysis hubs, and a searchable legal and policy database;
• Humanise and contextualise electoral data: Ensure candidate profile pages include relevant manifestos, testimonies and personal leadership stories, subject to informed consent and safeguarding protocols, to make the data meaningful and accessible to users;
• Develop a user-friendly content management system: Design a content management backend that enables trained UN Women and partner staff to update dashboards, candidate profiles, alerts, briefs and other platform content without continuous developer support;
• Strengthen partner capacity and platform sustainability: Provide technical leadership, mentoring and advisory support to equip the partner institution to manage platform administration, content management, data governance, safeguarding protocols and future platform expansion.

The GEWA platform should meet the following minimum technical requirements:

• Mobile-responsive, accessible and user-friendly design;
• Public-facing website with interactive country dashboards;
• Backend content management functionality for trained administrators;
• Search and filter functions by country, election type, gender-disaggregated indicators, age, disability, region and election cycle;
• Data visualization tools, including charts, maps, trend lines and scorecards;
• Candidate profile module with safeguards for informed consent and protection of personal information;
• Election calendar with upcoming elections, relevant reforms and quota provisions;
• Role-based administrator access and basic security controls;
• Basic analytics to track platform usage;
• Compatibility with major browsers and mobile devices;
• Handover documentation and administrator/user guides.

Target users:

GEWA is designed to serve and equip a broad ecosystem of democratic actors:  

• Feminist movements and other CSOs seeking data and solidarity infrastructure during elections;
• Electoral management bodies (EMBs) requiring gender-disaggregated data to meet legal mandates and improve electoral integrity;
• Political parties aiming to strengthen women’s political representation, meet quota obligations, and develop gender-responsive manifestos;
• Election observation missions-domestic, regional and international needing real-time gender analysis and VAWP alerts for credible assessments;
• Africa Union, Regional Economic Communities (RECs), and intergovernmental bodies monitoring state compliance with gender commitments;
• UN agencies and donors investing in democracy and gender equality programs;
• Researchers, journalists, and data analysts covering governance and gender;
• Young women and aspiring leaders looking for role models, candidate profiles, and pathways into politics.

By centralizing gendered electoral data, GEWA will reduce duplication, increase accountability and equip women leaders with evidence to shift power. 

Safeguarding, Data Protection and Ethical Standards:                                                                    

The consultant shall ensure that the design and functionality of GEWA are guided by safeguarding, digital safety, informed consent and do-no-harm principles. Candidate profiles and any information related to threats, harassment or violence against women in politics must be collected, verified, stored and displayed in a manner that protects individuals from retaliation, stigmatization or further harm. The platform should include clear protocols for data verification, moderation of sensitive content, anonymization where required, and referral or escalation of serious VAWP incidents to appropriate actors. No sensitive personal data or incident information should be published without appropriate consent, verification and risk assessment.

Acceptance Criteria for Deliverables:

Deliverables will be considered satisfactory when they meet the following standards:

• Submitted on time and in editable formats where applicable;
• Platform functions work as intended across major browsers and mobile devices;
• Dashboards, search functions, filters and visualizations display verified data correctly;
• CMS functions are usable by trained non-technical staff;
• Candidate profiles and VAWP tracker include appropriate safeguarding and consent protocols;
• Platform is accessible, mobile-responsive and user-friendly;
• UN Women feedback is incorporated before final approval;
• Training, user guides, handover documentation and administrative access are provided before final payment.

Intellectual Property, Access and Handover:

All intellectual property, source code, documentation and platform assets developed under this assignment shall be jointly governed in accordance with agreements between UN Women and the implementing partner. The consultant shall ensure full transfer of knowledge, documentation and technical assets to the designated partner institution. Ownership, hosting and long-term management arrangements shall be determined by UN Women and the partner institution through a separate governance agreement. The consultant shall provide full administrative access, source files, platform documentation, login credentials, content management guidance and maintenance recommendations before final payment.

Consultant’s Workplace and Official Travel:

This is a home-based consultancy. Any official travel, if required and approved in advance by UN Women, will be arranged and covered in accordance with UN Women rules and procedures.

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:

• Access to complementary technical expertise, including UX/UI design, database development, data visualization, or cybersecurity, while retaining full accountability for deliverables;
• Ability to create, edit, synthesize, and present information in clear and presentable formats;
• Ability to administer and execute administrative processes and transactions;
• Ability to manage data, documents, correspondence and reports information and workflow;
• Excellent financial and budgeting skills;
• Excellent IT skills. 

Required Qualifications

Education and Certification:

• Master’s degree or equivalent in information technology, computer science, web development or a related field is required;
• A first-level university degree in combination with additional years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of an advanced university degree.

Experience:

• At least 2 years of progressively responsible work experience in web development, digital platform design, dashboard development, data visualization, civic technology or related fields is required;
• Demonstrated experience designing and developing interactive websites, dashboards, databases or digital knowledge platforms is required;
• Experience developing content management systems or administrator interfaces for non-technical users is required;
• Experience with data protection, safeguarding, digital safety, user testing and ethical data management is strongly desirable;
• Proven ability to translate complex data into accessible visual products, including charts, maps, filters, scorecards or searchable databases is required;
• Experience working with women’s rights organisations, civil society, UN agencies, regional bodies or development partners is an asset.

Languages:

• Fluency in English is required;
• Knowledge of any other UN official language is an asset.

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.)

Note: Applicants must ensure that all sections of the application form, including the sections on education and employment history, are completed. If all sections are not completed the application may be disqualified from the recruitment and selection process.