Senior Project Manager, AFIYA at FSD Africa

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES AND ROLE REQUIREMENTS

Programme Planning & Coordination

• Lead the development and maintenance of a single, integrated AFIYA delivery plan covering all workstreams and countries, ensuring clear sequencing of activities, identification of dependencies, and visibility of key decision points across the programme lifecycle.
• Maintain a rolling 12–18 month forward delivery horizon, refreshed quarterly to reflect programme performance, emerging risks, contextual shifts, and adaptive management decisions.
• Ensure strong alignment between AFIYA strategic priorities, approved budgets, partner delivery plans, and implementation timelines, supporting realistic planning and effective resource utilisation.
• Provide end-to-end visibility of programme delivery progress, surfacing implementation risks, bottlenecks, and cross-workstream dependencies early to enable timely decision-making and course correction.
• Strengthen programme delivery discipline through structured planning cycles, milestone tracking, and clear reporting rhythms across countries and delivery partners.
• Support the Head of Delivery by ensuring that programme decisions are informed by credible, timely performance data, delivery insights, and forward-looking risk analysis.
• Coordinate planning and delivery interfaces across technical teams, country teams, implementing partners, to ensure coherent and efficient programme execution.
• Support adaptive programme management by ensuring delivery plans are living tools that respond to learning, evidence, and evolving programme priorities.

Delivery Cadence & Governance

Design, institutionalise, and drive a clear and consistent programme delivery rhythm to strengthen accountability, visibility, and timely decision-making across AFIYA, including:

• Weekly internal delivery check-ins focused on progress tracking, risk surfacing, and immediate priority actions
• Monthly country performance reviews assessing delivery progress, financial performance, partner implementation status, and emerging risks and opportunities
• Quarterly portfolio performance and decision reviews to assess strategic alignment, resource utilisation, delivery trajectory, and key investment or course-correction decisions
• Establish and maintain strong governance standards across programme forums, ensuring discussions are focused, decision-oriented, and aligned to programme priorities and outcomes.
• Prepare clear, concise, and decision-focused agendas, high-quality pre-read materials, and structured action trackers to support productive and efficient governance engagements.
• Ensure all decisions, actions, and agreed next steps are clearly documented, assigned to accountable owners, and systematically tracked to completion.
• Strengthen transparency and information flow by ensuring governance outputs are communicated to relevant stakeholders in a timely and accessible manner.
• Continuously review and refine delivery cadence and governance structures to ensure they remain fit for purpose, proportionate, and supportive of adaptive programme management.

Risk, Dependency & Decision Management

• Maintain a programme-level risk and dependency register covering delivery, financial, facility-related, reputational, and fiduciary risks.
• Proactively identify and surface emerging risks, bottlenecks, and trade-offs, escalating them to the Head of Delivery with clear options for resolution.
• Monitor critical dependencies across workstreams, countries, and implementing partners to ensure timely interventions and minimise delivery delays.
• Support structured, evidence-based decision-making by providing credible information, timely analysis, and actionable insights to the Head of Delivery, AFIYA.
• Ensure financial and operational decisions are aligned with programme priorities, dependencies, and strategic objectives, enabling coherent and efficient delivery across all AFIYA projects.

Adaptive Management Support

• Ensure milestones and budgets are treated as adaptive tools, enabling the programme to pivot and respond effectively to emerging information, risks, and changing contexts.
• Facilitate structured learning and reflection sessions across workstreams and countries, encouraging evidence-based discussions and collaborative course-correction where needed.
• Proactively monitor assumptions underpinning programme design and delivery; trigger timely decision-making conversations when assumptions are no longer valid or when emerging issues could impact outcomes.
• Support the integration of lessons learned into planning, prioritisation, and resource allocation to strengthen programme resilience and maximise development impact.
• Foster a culture of adaptive management within the programme, encouraging teams and partners to respond constructively to change while maintaining alignment with strategic objectives.

Carry out any other duties or special assignments as assigned by the Management.

COMPETENCIES
Competencies describe the key behaviours that drive success in all of FSD Africa’s roles, regardless of technical specialism. They have been derived from systematic research correlating performance with personal attributes. 

Competency Levels 

• Level 1: Basic
• Level 2: Foundation   
• Level 3: Specialist
• Level 4: Senior Specialist      
• Level 5: Leading Expert          
• Level 6: Executive

PERSON SPECIFICATIONS

Qualifications and Education

• Master’s degree and 9 years of experience or Bachelor’s Degree and 11 years of experience in Project Management, Finance, Economics, Business or a related field.

Essential Experience, Knowledge, and Skills

• At least 10 years’ experience managing or supporting complex, multi-country development programmes
• Demonstrated experience with adaptive, market-systems or financial-inclusion programmes
• Strong ability to synthesise complex information and communicate clearly to senior stakeholders
• Proven judgement in risk identification and escalation
• High comfort operating in ambiguity and fast-moving environments
• Strong capability in planning, forecasting, and tracking project performance across multiple workstreams
• Ability to analyse complex project information, exercise sound judgement, and provide clear, actionable recommendations