Programme Director at Amref Kenya

Job Description

Africa’s population is growing rapidly, with young people forming an increasing share of the workforce. Yet job creation has not kept pace, leaving millions - particularly young women - without access to stable, dignified livelihoods due to barriers such as limited education, social norms, and unpaid care responsibilities.

At the same time, Africa’s health sector is expanding and presents a powerful opportunity to create sustainable livelihood pathways. This programme focuses on transforming community-based health work into respected, viable career pathways for young people, especially women. Starting in Kenya, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Tanzania, and Malawi, the programme aims to professionalise community health workers, create dignified employment, and strengthen systems - contributing to both youth livelihoods and healthier communities.

Position Summary

The Programme Director leads the overall delivery of this multi-partner and multi-country programme that aims to turn community-based health work into a respected and sustainable pathway for young people, particularly young women. The role is responsible for ensuring that programme objectives related to youth employment, entrepreneurship and stronger systems are achieved across all participating countries. The Director is accountable for converting vision into viable models that deliver livelihood outcomes, strengthen systems, and attract sustained investment.

The Director provides strategic direction, oversees performance and risk, and builds strong partnerships with governments, donors, and implementing partners to ensure effective and coordinated programme implementation.

Key Responsibilities

• Strategic leadership: Shape and evolve programme strategy with an entrepreneurial mindset, balancing innovation, scale, and sustainability in a multi-partner and multi-country environment; make bold, evidence-informed decisions to pivot, stop, or scale initiatives based on performance and learning, and translate complex challenges into practical, market-aware solutions that create employment and enterprise opportunities.
• People & Performance: Empower leaders within own team and country programmes to make decisions, take ownership and innovate responsibly; model courage, accountability and learning in tough environments; sustain team energy, creativity and resilience over short and long-term horizons; mentor, coach and manage staff performance through structured feedback mechanisms, break down silos by facilitating clear cross-functional communication channels to drive collaboration. Build, embed and protect a culture and environment that advocates for others in the face of challenges, removing barriers to trust, and rewarding others for demonstrating programme values, an entrepreneurial mindset, and the ability to seize opportunities that result in unique and differentiated solutions.
• Change leadership and adaptive programme stewardship: Provide proactive change leadership across the programme lifecycle, anticipating and responding to shifts in political, regulatory, legal, and programmatic environments over time; lead and support teams through periods of uncertainty and transition, maintaining clarity, confidence, and alignment across countries and partners; ensure change is managed deliberately and inclusively, balancing the need for responsiveness with strong governance, communication, and risk management.
• Programme performance and innovation: Provide executive oversight of programme delivery across multiple countries, ensuring quality, consistency, and accountability, while holding country programmes accountable for results, timelines, and outcomes, and drive a culture of experimentation, accountability, and results, not compliance-only delivery; and build the capability of country programme leadership to manage consortium relationships effectively, including when and how to escalate issues.
• Partnerships and ecosystem building: Provide regional leadership in building and stewarding strategic partnerships with governments, relevant regional bodies, private sector actors, training institutions, and donors to unlock employment pathways and business opportunities. Position the programme as a credible platform for innovation, co-investment, and scale; navigate complex multi-country regulatory, political, institutional, and market dynamics with confidence and diplomacy - identifying risks and opportunities that may positively or negatively affect sustainable livelihoods. 
• Financial, Grant and Risk stewardship: Exercise strong executive judgment over programme investments, balance innovation with accountability, ensure financial sustainability considerations are embedded in programme design and decision-making.
• Learning, Evidence and Adaptation: Champion evidence-informed innovation, using data and learning to refine models and inform strategic choices, ensure MEL systems support decision-making and adaptation, build credible evidence to support scale, policy influence, and future investment.
• Stakeholder leadership & engagement: Lead and manage strategic relationships within the consortium, address questions of leadership, mandate, and decision authority with clarity and confidence, and navigate and influence complex consortium dynamics, identify stakeholder interests, power relationships that may affect programme delivery; and safeguard programme coherence and delivery by ensuring consortium engagement supports agreed objectives, governance arrangements, and timelines.

Key Performance Indicators (Success Measures) – Building the right platform and creating lasting impact

• Programme and impact: Design and development of a regional delivery plan operational across HQ and programme countries, clear definition and tracking of youth employment jobs created with gender disaggregation, standardization, and professionalization of community health roles (in at least Proof of Concept form), functional partnerships with key stakeholders, consortium partners and other implementing partners, on-time delivery, and minimal compliance or delivery escalations. 
• Operational excellence and risk management: Ensure operational efficiency and quality delivery; establish and actively manage the regional risk register, including financial, operational, security, safeguarding, etc.; develop and monitor mitigation strategies.
• Financial and grant management: Develop, manage, and utilize budgets within acceptable variance, 100% grant compliance, and clear investment decisions taken on Proof of Concept vs non-performing activities.
• Leadership behaviours: Strategic mindset – articulates a clear programme narrative linking jobs, health, and systems, makes timely, defensible decisions under uncertainty, clarifies and ensures functionality of regional leadership roles, and manages pressure without reactive leadership.
• Programme scale and sustainability: Ensure adoption of proven, scalable models across programme countries, policy or institutional uptake of professional community health roles; create meaningful, dignified, and relevant, engagement with youth and women in communities who have historically not been the target audience for similar programmes; activate private sector participation in livelihoods pathways; and secure follow-on funding or co-investment.
• Enterprise and portfolio leadership: Clear decisions to scale, adapt, or exit initiatives, cost-per-job or cost-per-outcome improvement, programme recognition as a viable platform for innovation and scale, strong programme governance with minimal escalations.

Qualifications

• 10- 12 years of relevant experience, with at least six (6) years of senior leadership experience in social enterprise, international development, or mission-driven organisations;
• Master’s degree in Public Health, Public Policy, International Development, Business Administration, Economics, Social Sciences or a related field;
• Programme or Project Management certification (PMP, PgMP, PRINCE2 Practitioner or equivalent);
• Change Management certification e.g PROSCI, CCMP;
• Track record of setting strategic direction for large, multi-country and multi-stakeholder programmes preferably across diverse regulatory, political and market environments in Africa;
• Demonstrated ability translate strategy into executable models that deliver sustainable livelihood, workforce or systems-change outcomes;
• Strong financial and commercial judgment in donor-funded or blended-finance contexts;
• Proven experience building and managing high-value partnerships with key stakeholders, regional bodies, private sector actors, consortium and implementing partners;
• Experience in health systems, workforce development, or youth employment; and
• Exposure to gender-responsive or inclusive employment models.