Senior Finance Manager, Pan-Africa at World University Service of Canada

The Senior Finance Manager, Pan-Africa is a senior management position responsible for the strategic financial management, control, and compliance of this initiative, ensuring efficient use of the approximately $34 million budget. This role manages a team of 7 finance staff between Abidjan and Nairobi and provides high-level financial oversight to all program components, including grants to partners, operational expenditures, and the successful execution of the Refugee-Led Organization (RLO) Opportunity Fund. The Senior Finance Manager is also critical in ensuring the program meets all donor and organizational financial reporting requirements.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Overall project financial management

• Provide rigorous oversight of the project’s budget and expenditures, including monitoring of outstanding commitments.  Working closely with the project’s leads to ensure timely and responsible use of financial resources.
• Develop and oversee the implementation of financial strategies, ensuring alignment with the project’s multi-year goals across various African contexts.
• Lead the annual budgeting process, providing high-level analysis and forecasting to ensure program sustainability.
• Troubleshooting and management of financial issues that arise during program implementation risk management to ensure funding is being utilized as intended and budget balances are monitored.
• Work closely with the WUSC global finance team to support the development and implementation of financial policies, procedures and internal controls.
• Oversee the project finance team to monitor and review all project accounts GL, advance reconciliations, bank reconciliations and balance sheet accounts.
• Ensures that project internal controls are in place and are followed and continuously identify opportunities for improvement
• Providing oversight over the project financial transactions, including management of foreign exchange 
• Collaborating with WUSCs global finance team to ensure accurate and timely financial reporting, forecasting and donor reporting.

Compliance and donor management

• Ensure compliance with donor regulations and local statutory laws in each operating country.
• Act as the primary focal point for internal and external audits, ensuring all findings are addressed and "clean" audit reports are maintained.
• Manage sub-grantee financial monitoring, ensuring local partners adhere to international financial standards and donor requirements.
• Support the project level risk management through the implementation of risk mitigation measures including leading the due diligence processes for local partners and grantees.

Staff management and support

• Provide ongoing coaching and mentoring to new and current finance staff to enhance competencies, ability to effectively collaborate with other project functions, agency to troubleshoot complex issues, and improve overall project support.
• Design and implement a clear Delegation of Authority (DoA) matrix that empowers finance staff while maintaining central oversight for high-risk transactions.
• Provide coaching support to senior operations and program colleagues to improve forecasting and expenditure competencies.
• Balance workload distribution across the finance and compliance staff to prevent burnout during peak audit, programming and reporting seasons.

RLO Opportunity Fund

• Manage the financial allocation, due diligence, contracting, and disbursement of resources for the project’s RLO granting mechanism, which will provide funding to over 60 RLOs across the African continent;
• Oversee the implementation of the financial component of the granting mechanism, ensuring that financial disbursements are coupled with effective institutional development support for grantees.
• Ensure financial processes, reporting, and systems for the grants are streamlined to minimize administrative burdens on RLOs, addressing capacity constraints, while ensuring strong compliance and risk mitigation.
• Support the design and delivery of the demand-driven technical assistance (TA) component of the fund, specifically focusing on financial management and sustainability for RLOs.
• In close collaboration with the RLO programs team, provide advisory support to RLO grantees on sound financial management to help them successfully implement their projects.
• Work to enhance the institutional capacity of RLOs, enabling them to secure diverse funding and expand their ability to absorb larger grants over time, with the goal of developing a pipeline of "funding ready" RLOs.
• Where relevant, conduct site visits to RLO partners to support training, monitoring and/or compliance activities.
• Ensure all RLO grant expenditures and activities are compliant with WUSC and donor financial policies and donor requirements.

QUALIFICATIONS AND COMPETENCIES

• Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance, Business Administration, or a related field preferred. 
• A professional qualification in Accounting (e.g. CPA, ACCA or equivalent qualification)
• Minimum of 7-10 years of experience in accounting or financial administration, ideally within a nonprofit or development organization;
• Strong knowledge of accounting software (e.g., Sage) and Microsoft Office, especially Excel. Previous experience with Netsuite a desirable asset;
• Proven experience in grants management, financial oversight, or fund management, preferably within a non-profit or development context.
• Demonstrated experience in capacity strengthening or providing technical assistance to local partner organizations on financial or organizational management.
• Demonstrated experience in providing coaching and mentoring support to project colleagues on effective financial management.
• Superior cross cultural and cross-functional collaboration skills, including providing mentoring and coaching support remotely;
• Strong analytical, communication and problem solving skills;
• Fluent in English; French language skills are preferred