Manager – Impact at Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund (AECF)

The Role

• The incumbent will have primary responsibility for all Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) activities across AECF’s renewable and clean energy sector, including monitoring the performance of individual investments, supporting and facilitating partner learning, generating portfolio-level insights, and leading thematic reviews and donor impact reports.
• In addition to this exciting MEL role, the incumbent will also provide technical expertise on strategies and implementation approaches to achieve results for the renewable and clean energy portfolio – This includes leadership in the marketing, application review and selection of projects, overall design, planning and implementation of new projects and programmes and acting as a key advisor/reference point for renewable energy for the portfolio team.
• S/He will make technical contributions to fund raising for the institution and represent it at technical conferences and other events as necessary. The role holder must be passionate about MEL and energy.

We are looking for someone who can:

• Understand with rigor the change in the lives of the rural and marginalised people whom our renewable and clean energy investments target;
• Understand our successes and failures;
• Provide transparency for donors and investors looking to maximize the impact that their investment capital can make.
• The role holder will work closely with program teams, partners, and external evaluators to measure our work’s effectiveness, outcomes, and impact.

The key responsibilities are:

• Strategic deliverables
• Develop and coordinate energy elements of the overall MEL strategies and implementation approaches to achieve results for the renewable energy and climate technologies portfolio.
• Oversee project impact measurement in the renewable energy sector, including development and dissemination of tools, materials, reports, papers, and intervention linked research.
• Define and implement standardized procedures for the monitoring and evaluation of program activities, including institutionalizing feedback loops for continuous learning into future program design.
• Together with knowledge management, develop and lead the implementation of a robust learning agenda for continuous learning and in line with strategic and programmatic objectives.
• Be proactive in managing the progress of individual projects towards impact targets and building an evidence base on what works.

Sector and Program leadership

• Provide technical expertise to assure alignment of the renewable energy portfolio with evolving sector development policies, government development objectives, other donor programs, and foreign policy priorities.
• Provide technical leadership for the marketing, application review and selection of renewable energy investments.
• Support in coordinating and managing effective competition design and implementation.
• Provide impartial impact analysis into the due diligence process to ensure that the investment committee has accurate and timely information to facilitate decision making.
• Provide regular updates to investment performance on impact, including where necessary the review and reformulation of impact targets.
• Provide periodic reports on the renewable energy portfolio, information trends and other relevant information as requested.
• Oversee ongoing monitoring of investees against the targets agreed upon in their funding agreements. This includes the periodic validation of investee self-reported data to ensure sufficient quality of outputs, including distillation of insights from the data collected.
• Ensure accurate and timely compliance with all reporting requirements including contributing to board reports, periodic donor reports, and other ad hoc reports.
• Ensure accurate and timely compliance with all reporting requirements including contributing to board reports, periodic donor reports, and other ad hoc reports.
• Lead on the dissemination of learning papers and impact studies to inform the wider development ecosystem on opportunities for targeted interventions and further investments.
• Effectively engage with industry peers, donors and other parties to understand new results measurement mechanisms and industry standard metrics and integrate these into AECF’s reporting systems.

Team Leadership & Management

• Coach, train, and mentor Managers and Officers with the aim of strengthening their technical capacity in results measurement in the energy sector, exchanging knowledge within the team and providing professional development guidance tools and products.
• Provide capacity building support as required to investees in results measurement and coordinate training programs for the AECF staff to help update their skills, technical abilities and professional knowledge in the areas of results measurement and energy.

The Candidate:

Suitable candidates should:

• Hold a graduate/masters qualification in Engineering, Business Administration, Economics, Development Studies, Sustainable Energy, Resource Economics, or other relevant fields of study.
• Have a minimum of eight (8) years of experience and recognized expertise in Renewable Energy, Climate Change, Climate Financing and Renewable Energy Financing.
• Have a minimum of eight (8) years’ experience in Monitoring and Evaluation activities for market systems development and the private sector development programmes, with a bias to renewable energy and climate adaptation, in Africa.
• Demonstrate project management skills with the ability to work with a diverse group of clients.
• Demonstrate experience working in the development sector, managing and reporting to multiple donor/ funder engagements.
• Possess strong analytical, evaluation design, and methodological skills, and utilise “right-fit” methods for a broad range of quantitative and qualitative approaches to communicate a rigorous, yet compelling story about AECF’s impact.
• Have experience working with or reporting to large bilateral funders or private foundations and should be comfortable speaking their language.
• Have an ability to facilitate the process of turning impact data into meaningful stories.
• Have experience with the Donor Committee for Enterprise Development (DCED) standard for private sector-led development in relevant sectors.
• Have excellent communication and writing skills, with a keen ability to synthesize and present complex data in a simple, compelling, meaningful way (ability to produce beautiful and top-notch data visualization is a plus).
• Bring a positive mindset and attitude that continuously pushes the organization to accomplish its mission.
• Have an ability to work with and lead cross-cultural teams.
• Be fluent in English. Working knowledge of French and Portuguese will be an added advantage.