Programme Associate, Eastern Africa at Tony Blair Institute for Global Change

Job Description

The Africa Programme Associate is a new role created to support our Africa Executive Committee and Regional Directors to deliver TBI’s objectives across the continent.

The postholder will support coordination across the division’s matrixed structure including technical sector teams and geographic/regional structures. You will work closely with Country Teams (including Country Heads and sector experts). The role provides a broad insight into TBI’s governance work in Africa and will focus on the analysis of geopolitical trends, project results and providing insight into how TBI can increase its impact across the region, scoping support to regional structures and policy initiatives. Although, country teams will stand-up implementation and delivery teams, you will guide and support teams to track progress and provide surge support as needed bringing familiarity of country programmes, objectives and key results, and regional knowledge.

In addition, this position will support some aspects of Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) activities for the Region and/or country-level support. You will work across various practice/sector teams and engage with the Africa Advisory MEL team, located in London, to support monitoring and evaluation strategies, as needed, to capture the impact of our advisory work in Africa. As Programme Associate, you may be engaged in data collection, verification, and analysis of data either from project teams or sectorial practices in the Region to aid in the internal and external reporting and potentially help craft stories of impact.

This is an initial two-year fixed term role.

Key Responsibilities

The key responsibilities of this role will include:

Programme management support in oversight of TBI’s portfolio of Africa projects

• Support regular country project budget, planning and strategy exercises, by providing quality assurance and conducting first reviews
• Provide direct inputs into dashboards to ensure timely management of the regional portfolio
• Review management accounts to track expenditure against budget
• Anticipate, identify and elevate challenges/roadblocks to Africa ExCo and internal stakeholders (e.g. Country Heads), proposing courses of action for consideration
• Input to strategic projects (including new initiatives and regional collaborations between country projects)
• Contribute to the development and iteration of the Africa-wide systems and processes and guide teams in their adoption

Delivery support to country projects on priority initiatives

• Support Country Heads and their teams in the completion of project design analyses from initial scoping through to project start-up, including support to work-planning
• Play a hands-on role in facilitating opportunity scoping and relationship building to enable the expansion of TBI to new geographies in Africa, including developing presentations for new country clients and senior government officials
• Support new projects in their inception phase and gap-fill to support implementation as in-country teams are put in place

Support country project resource mobilisation through fundraising and people processes

• Review and contribute to country project fundraising and partnership proposals and track regional funding opportunities and progress
• Review recruitment proposals and ensure recruitment notices reach appropriate global networks
• Support the induction process of new joiners arriving in the region

Support the MEL team in consultation with regional leadership, in capturing the impact of our advisory work in Africa, specifically to

• Manage strategy review process with country teams and internal MEL reporting
• Support the preparation and dissemination of a MEL newsletter, as well as other external communications products that showcase the impact of the Africa Advisory work
• Support the organisation and facilitation of MEL reflection sessions and helping the MEL team to produce summary reports on challenges and lessons learned
• Coordinate with the MEL team and country MEL focal points to provide updates on project monitoring activities; including support with the development and dissemination of project management dashboards and alignment with OKR internal reporting

Develop analyses and written inputs to briefs and presentations

• Provide political-economic monitoring and analysis of regional trends and events
• Contribute to and develop written briefs—including written briefing for our Executive Chairman—ahead of trips to the region or as part of regular project updates

Person Specification

The successful candidate should demonstrate the majority of the following:

• At least three years’ experience as an advisor or project manager in a consulting firm, foundation/NGO, or private sector organization supervising and executing across multiple workstreams simultaneously
• Experience with international development, public sector, and technology for development programming is highly desired
• Demonstratable strength in project management, structured problem solving, top-down communication, and portfolio thinking
• Excellent communication skills, from executive office level through to technical level, and adept at speaking to senior leadership, knows how to navigate ambiguous environments and is comfortable at managing up and beyond hierarchy
• Experience developing executive and senior level briefings for internal and external audiences
• Experience in maintaining dashboards to facilitate nimble performance tracking and coordination
• Insatiable curiosity; great taste in data, with a proven ability to process and triangulate it; attention to detail
• Direct experience working in LMICs is highly desired
• Experience in working in entrepreneurial and matrixed environments and comfort working in ambiguity while closely collaborating with global functional and geographic teams
• Commitment to business objectives and pulling out the stops to make sure they are always met
• Fluency in English required

Candidates must have the right to work in the location noted on their application.