Regional Cash Implementation Specialist – East & West Africa at International Rescue Committee

Sector: Economic Recovery & Livelihood

Employment Category: Regular

Open to Expatriates: Yes

Job Description

The Economic Recovery and Development Technical Unit (ERD TU) is responsible for providing dynamic, innovative support to IRC’s field offices for their economic and livelihoods programming. This unit provides technical assistance, ensures innovation, promotes best practices, and helps to improve data collection and analysis for economic and livelihoods programming within the organization. 
 
Cash and voucher assistance (CVA) programming is an important mechanism for delivering effective and efficient assistance to affected households. The IRC is a Grand Bargain signatory, active in the Cash Workstream, and has committed to scaling-up cash relief. To support the continuation of this scale-up in use of CVA, the IRC is recruiting a Regional Cash Implementation Specialist to support CVA programming across East and West Africa. The East and West Africa Regional Cash Implementation Specialist will work closely with regional ERD Technical Advisors to comprehensively support IRC country teams in the assessment, design, and implementation of high quality CVA programs throughout the regions. 
 
The position will be based in a country within West Africa or East Africa where the IRC operates, with responsibility to provide regular in-person and remote support to each priority country office team. The position will involve working closely with finance and supply chain teams and ERD program teams to support the use of cash in basic needs, food security, or livelihood programming; as well as to provide technical support to Health, Environmental Health, Protection and Governance teams to effectively use cash to help achieve other sectoral outcomes. The position will play a critical role in strengthening IRC and partner staff capacity to deliver CVA programs, promoting preparedness to deliver CVA rapidly when crises happen, designing or improving M&E systems, and enhancing CVA program operations by strengthening practice and procedure between programs, finance and supply chain teams.   
 
Major Responsibilities: 

• Assist ERD or other sector teams in IRC country offices in the assessment, design, implementation and monitoring of CVA programs. The position is expected to be heavily involved in supporting program delivery, assisting country teams in troubleshooting implementation challenges, and using monitoring data to improve program design.
• Develop tools, resources and program guidance materials as needed in order to support assessments, program implementation or monitoring efforts, including cross-sectoral implementation of cash programs, in close conjunction with program staff and regional M&E and ICT Coordinators.
• Ensure effective CVA tracking system and continuous monitoring of CVA activity plans for each country in collaboration with Finance, operations and M&E teams.
• Implement a capacity building plan for the regions to ensure all program, finance and supply chain staff involved in CVA programming have appropriate knowledge and skills related to CVA programming. 
• Where not yet existing, support the development, adaptation and standardization (if appropriate) of operating procedures for CVA implementation across the region, and support linkages with regional finance and supply chain teams to deliver high quality programming. Ensure country teams know IRC’s cash procedures and tools so that they can use them independently.
• Support country teams in developing CVA preparedness plans and pre-positioning CVA programs in order to be prepared to rapidly and effectively deliver cash relief when emergencies happen.
• Support country offices to adopt digital payment systems for the administration and processing of CVA programs, including enabling program teams to define digital payment needs and program requirements, identifying potential vendors and supporting the contracting process as well as developing systems and operating procedures to effectively manage digital payments. 
• Regular check-in of CVA activities and ensure an effective follow-up of action plans for each country requesting any support.
• Support the design, development, piloting and roll-out of monitoring systems for cash and voucher programming in close collaboration with monitoring and evaluation and ICT staff at TU, regional and country levels, to ensure harmonized M&E approaches and efficient data collection and management systems are in place.
• In partnership with the ERD Technical Advisors that support the West and East Africa Regions, coordinate and encourage sharing and learning between country programs, including sharing knowledge, skills, tools and best practices by engaging country office staff in active cross-country and cross-sector communication. 
• Provide technical advice related to CVA and markets into research or policy and advocacy initiatives lead by country and/or regional teams. 
• Promote and facilitate peer learning/exchange in order to maximize the potential for sharing knowledge, good practices and tools between different countries through mentoring staff and providing opportunities for high performing staff to provide support to other country programs.
• Work towards ''cash across outcomes'' by identifying CVA possibilities throughout all sectors and guiding the setup of cash in those sectors (Health, WASH, Education, Nutrition, and Protection). 
• Provide necessary CVA support to high-risk countries (Ethiopia, Cameroon, CAR, Mali, Niger, Somalia, South Sudan, and Yemen) to develop solid prevention plans, mitigating risks associated with CVA.
• Ensure gender and protection mainstreaming in CVA tools and methodology.
• Support the roll-out of IRC’s ''Good & Great Standards” for CVA by ensuring that country teams are trained and able to consistently meet them.
• Establish and maintain IRC networks (regional and international) and effective relationships with IRC partners.
• Support assessments, program design, and start-up activities for new emergency responses in the region, including in locations where IRC does not yet have a presence, as applicable.

 
Key Working Relationships: 

Position Reports to:  ERD Cash Technical Advisors for West Africa and East Africa
Position directly supervises:  N/A
Indirect Reporting: Other Internal and/or external contacts: 
Internal: East Africa and West Africa Deputy Regional Directors, ERD Senior Technical Advisor for Cash and Emergencies, Cash Preparedness TA, ERD Markets Specialist, Regional Emergency Advisors, Regional M&E and ICT4P Advisors, Country-level SMTs, ERD Coordinators and other sector Coordinators as needed.

Qualifications

Education: Undergraduate degree in social science, international relations, humanitarian affairs, nutrition, food security, logistics, Business Administration, Financial Management, or related field and technical accreditation or equivalent
 
Work Experience: 3-6 years of work experience in the humanitarian or development sector with progressive management and decision-making responsibility, including a minimum of 3 years of international experience implementing cash and voucher activities, including mobile money and e-vouchers. Experience working in diverse emergency, recovery, post-conflict or development contexts.  
 
Demonstrated Skills and Competencies:

• Strong demonstrated experience implementing CVA programs in a variety of programming contexts, and in-depth knowledge of various types of CVA approaches (conditional and unconditional grants, vouchers, Cash for work, etc.).
• Demonstrated assessment, data collection and analysis skills, including needs assessments, market assessments and incorporation of gender analyses into assessment approaches.
• Demonstrated ability to work across function and sector to build strong working relationships and to ensure high-quality market-based program delivery. Demonstrated ability to communicate technical expertise and standards and implement best practice approaches to implementing rapid, consistent, high quality projects
• Superior communication and coordination capabilities and capability to operate independently and as a team member. 
• Experience writing proposals for donor funded programs and grants.
• Proven capacity building, facilitation and coordination skills required
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• Language Skills:  English and French required; knowledge of local languages spoken in the region preferred