Monitoring Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Advisor at Amref Kenya

Job Description

POSITION SUMMARY

• The MEL Advisor provides strategic leadership on monitoring, evaluation, and learning for the programme across Kenya, focused on creating dignified employment for young people and particularly young women through the professionalization of community-based health work.
• The role exists to ensure that evidence informs decisions, learning drives adaptation, and results are credible to donors, governments, and partners. The MEL Advisor translates programme strategy into clear results frameworks, robust data systems, and meaningful learning processes that support delivery, scale, and systems change for the programme.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Strategic MEL Leadership

• Lead the design, monitoring and roll-out of county-wide MEL frameworks aligned to agreed outcomes for youth employment, gender equity, and health systems strengthening;
• Safeguard consistency, comparability, and credibility of results across projects and time.

Evidence, Learning and Decision Support

• Ensure evidence is available and accessible to inform programme-level decisions, including scale, adaptation, and resource allocation
• Facilitate structured learning processes that enable teams to reflect on performance and improve delivery; and
• Maintain a balance between accountability, learning and impact, ensuring cohesion.

Accountability, Reporting and External Credibility

• Oversee programme-level results reporting to donors and partners, ensuring accuracy, integrity, and insight;
• Ensure MEL systems and data are audit- and evaluation-ready throughout the programme lifecycle;
• Protect the credibility of programme results through sound methodology and ethical data practices.

MEL Systems and Capability Building

• Strengthen programme country-level MEL capacity to ensure consistent application of standards
• Build judgment and confidence in programme MEL staff, reducing reliance on individual leaders for direction;
• Ensure learning flows across the country programme, not only vertically through management lines.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Work collaboratively with Programme, Finance, Grants, and Communications functions to ensure alignment between delivery, evidence, and narrative and provide MEL insight as a programme resource, not as a managerial control mechanism.

Stakeholder Engagement and Influence

• Engage donors, government counterparts, and partners to align learning priorities and manage expectations and strengthen the use of evidence for decision making;
• Facilitate cross-country and cross-partner learning communities to promote knowledge exchange and shared problem-solving; and
• Promote co-creation of learning with implementing partners and communities, ensuring that learning processes are inclusive and contextually grounded.

KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS (SUCCESS MEASURES) – Building the right platform and creating lasting impact

• Results and Indicator design: Designs and applies results frameworks, theories of change, aligned to programme objectives; ensures indicators are gender-responsive and sensitive to youth employment and health systems outcomes; and aligns programme indicators with donor requirements and organisational standards;
• Data collection systems and tools: Establishes and manages data collection systems; selects and applies appropriate quantitative and qualitative data collection tools; ensures consistency of tools and methodologies across programme while accommodating local context; and oversees digital and manual data systems where relevant.
• Data Quality Assurance & Management: Implements data quality assurance (DQA) processes, including verification, validation, and routine checks; manages data storage, documentation, and version control in line with organisational standards; ensures data integrity, completeness, timeliness, and reliability; and addresses data quality issues proactively and systematically.
• Learning and Adaptive Management: Designs and facilitates structured learning processes, including reflection sessions and after-action reviews; designs and facilitates structured learning processes, including reflection sessions and after-action reviews; supports leadership and teams to make evidence-informed decisions; and maintains a balance between accountability and learning.
• Reporting accountability: Manages evaluation timelines, budgets, and stakeholder engagement; ensures consistency between MEL data, global and country-level programme narratives, and financial reporting; Supports audit and review processes from a results and evidence perspective; supports audit and review processes from a results and evidence perspective; maintains reporting schedules and quality standards.
• Knowledge Management & Evidence Use: Organises programme knowledge, lessons learned, and evidence for accessibility and reuse; supports documentation of good practices, challenges, and learning; and enables programme knowledge sharing.
• MEL Capacity Building: Strengthens MEL capability at project level through guidance, training, and coaching; supports MEL staff to exercise sound judgment, not just follow templates; and reduces dependency on central oversight through capability transfer.
• Ethical & Responsible Data Practice: Applies ethical standards in data collection, analysis, and reporting in accordance with country data privacy acts; ensures informed consent, confidentiality, and data protection; uses data responsibly, avoiding misuse or misrepresentation, and upholds organisational and donor ethical requirements.

Qualifications

EDUCATION AND PROFESSIONAL QUALIFICATIONS

• Bachelor’s degree in Statistics, Biostatistics, International Development or Development Studies, Public Health, Social Sciences or a related field. A Master’s degree is an added advantage.
• Professional Diplomas in the MEL field including but not limited to MEL DPro (Monitoring, Evaluation and Accountability for Development Professionals).

EXPERIENCE

• Minimum of seven (7) years of relevant experience, with at least three (3) years of senior leadership experience with proven experience in MEL leadership within the development sector.
• Demonstrable research experience (e.g. operational research, implementation research, and peer-reviewed research), as well as experience in data management (qualitative and quantitative analysis) and report writing.
• Experience designing MEL systems, dashboards, and reporting tools;
• Proven experience engaging senior government, donor, and private-sector stakeholders;
• Experience in M&E of health systems, workforce development, or youth employment, exposure to gender-responsive or inclusive employment models; and
• Demonstrable project management skills, including budgeting, planning, reporting and attention to operational detail.

CORE COMPETENCIES

• Strategic Planning: Obtains and identifies key issues and relationships relevant to achieving long-range goals; commits to a course of action to accomplish a goal after developing alternatives based on logical assumptions, facts, available resources, constraints and Amref values.
• Driving innovation: Open to new ideas and experiences; seeks out learning opportunities; handles situations and problems with innovation and creativity; thinks broadly and strategically; supports and drives organizational change.
• Driving for results: Sets high goals for personal and team accomplishment; uses measurement methods to monitor progress toward programme goals; tenaciously works to meet or exceed goals while deriving satisfaction from that achievement and continuous achievement.
• Creating an inclusive environment: Makes decisions and initiates action to ensure that programme policies leverage the capabilities and insights of individuals with diverse backgrounds, cultures, styles, abilities and motivation.
• Delegation and empowerment: Identifies and leverages opportunities to accelerate results and build capability by assigning tasks to individuals or own team with clear boundaries, expectations, support and follow-up, with the intent of involving others in agreement, for successful outcomes.
• Innovative leadership: Creating a culture that inspires people to generate novel solutions with measurable impact for existing and potential stakeholders (internal and external); encouraging experimentation with new ways to solve work problems and seize opportunities that result in unique and differential solutions.
• Proactive Learner: Identifying own strengths and shortcomings that impact organizational and programme results; actively pursuing development experiences that will enhance own impact on long-term organizational outcomes.