Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning Associate Director at DAI Kenya - Development Alternatives, Inc.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

The USAID Africa Trade and Investment (ATI) Activity is designed to bolster the U.S. Government’s ability to boost trade and investment to, from, and within the African continent. The continent-wide program is USAID’s flagship effort in support of the Prosper Africa initiative and will expand and accelerate two-way trade and investment between African nations and the United States.

Driven by market demand, ATI embraces innovative approaches to achieve its goals. ATI is designed as a small, core set of centrally coordinated technical and institutional support activities, and a large, flexible performance-based subcontracting and grants under contract facility designed to support the needs and opportunities that USAID Missions and the private sector identify.

OVERVIEW OF POSITION DESCRIPTION

The Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) Associate Director will oversee the implementation of ATI’s MEL activities to ensure accurate and consistent measurement of project progress and accomplishments. The MEL Associate Director will oversee the MEL team’s engagement with USAID clients and ATI partners and stakeholders, enabling the program to develop the robust intelligence and analysis needed to develop, adapt, and improve its program strategy on an ongoing basis, and meeting client requirements for reporting on indicators and other performance data. The MEL Associate Director will ensure a consultative process with ATI management and USAID. S/he will directly supervise 4 managers who will supervise MEL associates, the total Nairobi team being up to ten MEL staff.

The MEL Associate Director will also work directly and supportively with ATI’s Senior MEL Director to execute the MEL Plan. The MEL Associate Director will help develop the capacity of ATI’s staff (e.g., Technical Team, Activity Team, Environmental Team, etc) to generate the data and analysis they need for routine reporting, success story development, and learning. In support of the Communications Team, the MEL Associate Director will take a lead role in MEL reporting to USAID and ensuring that all data reported meets the Data Quality Assurance Standards set by the client.

KEY DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Supervise a team of MEL managers, ensuring high standards of performance and continual development of professional competencies.
• Plays a leading role in Data Quality Audits and ensuring the ATI Program receives clean audit reports.
• Oversee implementation of the MEL Plan in cooperation with the project team and USAID and reporting on project indicators and targets.
• Develop a mastery of ATI’s large portfolio and the technical lessons emerging from it. Gain an understanding of the relative importance of different evidence and findings and prioritize the most impactful for dissemination. Share and validate these choices with USAID counterparts and buy-in clients and network partner.
• Support the Senior MEL Director to update the MEL Plan through relevant feedback and analysis as needed over the course of implementation.
• Ensure the optimal use of MEL systems and processes by staff and partners, provide input to improve quality and operational efficiencies as needed.
• Oversee the MEL Team’s management, tracking, and reporting on indicators established by multiple sets of clients: in addition to the program client, various buy-in, bureau-level, or interagency clients may have specific sets of indicators to track and report.
• Provide leadership to ATI Data Quality Assurance Processes. This includes setting up DQA assessments and ensuring all data in ATI MEL systems meets the USAID Data Quality Assurance standards.
• Oversees ATI’s use of the USAID reporting platforms such as Salesforce and DIS and shall ensure that all reports and data needs are provided as per Mission requirements and Performance monitoring plans.
• Contribute to ongoing project strategy adaptation through the application of learning across the full ATI portfolio of work through active engagement with project leaders and teams; support internal process improvements and facilitate effective internal communications and learning.
• Other duties as assigned by the Senior MEL Director.

QUALIFICATIONS

• Bachelor’s degree in a related field with a minimum of 10 years of relevant experience.
• Experience leading portfolio-level MEL activities on USAID projects in specific programmatic areas such as trade, investment, private sector engagement, and/or food security.
• Experience with USAID CLA, development finance, or USAID-funded private sector engagement initiatives a plus.
• Excellent writing and communication skills; proven client management skills and an orientation toward relationship-building and trust.
• Proficiency with data collection, data management, and data visualization software
• Strong data analysis skills, both quantitative and qualitative.
• Experience in managing a team and building the capacity of team members in monitoring, evaluation, and learning.
• Ability to work in a fast-moving, fluid team setting with multiple stakeholders.

REPORTING

The MEL Associate Director will report to the Senior MEL Director.