Academy M&E Associate at Founders Factory Africa (FFA)

The Role

• FFA is looking to hire a full-time M&E Associate to support the ideation and execution of the internal evaluations of our Academy program. The successful candidate will be part of our newly-formed Embedded Impact and Learning team, and will report to the Research and Learning Manager while working very closely with the Academy team to conduct the evaluation of the program and also support various formative and summative research and learning activities to inform future Academy program strategy.

Responsibilities

• Study design - You will collaborate with different stakeholders, within the Academy team and the Embedded Impact and Learning to identify research objectives and craft a strategy for measuring and evaluating the impact of the Academy program on these areas.
• Tools design: Goal oriented survey design and testing of data collection instruments and revision.
• Contribute to the Design of Data Architecture: Develop a map of all data flows (related to monitoring and evaluation) that will be deployed in the Academy program and create a seamless design for how the data will be collected.
• Data quality control: You will ensure high data quality standards to ensure our impact evaluation is based on accurate and up-to-date information.
• Data analysis: You will contribute to the analysis and triangulation of qualitative and quantitative monitoring data and share findings with the Academy team and senior leadership for learning, accountability and decision-making purposes.
• Literature Review: Conduct ongoing literature review to understand best practices on hybrid and e-learning entrepreneurship programs and feed it back to the Academy design through recommendations.
• Data Visualization: Create BI dashboards to show the progress of the implementation of Academy programs in real time (monitoring progress) as well as early outcomes as the data comes to support day to day business decisions.
• Reporting and Recommendations - You will compile M&E results in different reporting formats on progress of project implementation, evaluation outcomes, and recommend corrective actions to the various stakeholders. Develop shareable/actionable knowledge products (e.g. slide decks, research factsheets, one-pager overviews, case studies, etc) for internal and/or external use.
• Reflection Sessions Coordinate internal reflection and learning sessions with FFA Academy team and senior leadership at the end of each cohort training to capture insights and ensure that learning gets shared and taken up within the organization.

Candidate Profile

• Minimum of three years of relevant experience, including at least 2 years in a similar role
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent in social sciences, international development, or other relevant field
• Strong command of research and evaluation and/or impact measurement methodologies and approaches, including theories of change, logic models, evaluation frameworks, survey research/ lean data approaches, etc
• Experience deploying a variety of qualitative and quantitative research and evaluation methodologies and tools to help organizations (preferably in the business of training/capacity building) measure/understand their impact
• Demonstrated ability to use data and evidence and apply learning to drive improvements in performance (exploring interesting questions isn’t enough; you have to be able to identify the areas where research and evaluation will lead to an improvement in FFA’s impact/ways of working)
• Appetite for collecting and analyzing data to produce meaningful reports to diverse stakeholders and audiences
• Project management experience, including running multiple projects simultaneously
• Excellent oral and written communication skills to deliver presentations and reports to a range of stakeholders in a clear, inspiring and confident way
• Strong relationship management skills; the ability to establish effective working relationships with people at all levels, internally and externally
• A self-starter who thrives in an autonomous role, with excellent prioritization, self-organization, and execution skills and ability to thrive in a fast-paced environment against deadlines
• Strong critical and creative thinking skills; a proactive approach to solving problems
• Experience in data visualization tools like Power BI, google studio, QlikView or Tableau is a plus