Responsibilities: 

• Strategic leadership and people management: provide overall leadership, technical direction and management oversight to staff and the overall programme team including staff, consultants and consortium partners. Plan, direct and coordinate strategic plans, annual and quarterly workplans and overall management of the programme to achieve programme objectives in line with the donor requirements and Options policies.
• Technical and operational oversight: Provide overall technical and administrative leadership to the programme implementation team, including development of strategies, theories of change, logframes, workplans, budgets and reporting. Responsible for meeting contractual obligations, producing deliverables and targets and achieving programme results.
• Relationship management: Primary point of contact with the donor, consortium implementing partners, and stakeholders at regional and national level including government ministries, civil society, private and public sector actors. Maintain strong relationships with external stakeholders, delegating country-level relationship management as and when appropriate.

Person specification: 

• University degree in a relevant subject
• Significant knowledge and experience in government health systems in sub-Saharan Africa, including fragile states
• Specialist knowledge in demographic transition and expertise in ensuring demographic data informs policy, planning and budgeting at national and sub-national levels.
• The specialist knowledge of one or more aspects of health systems strengthening, including data for decision-making, leadership and governance, planning and budgeting etc.
• Strong experience in managing international donor-funded technical assistance projects, ideally in a Team Lead or programme leadership role
• Strong knowledge of good practices in capacity building and experience of applying in the design and delivery of technical assistance
• Minimum of ten years experience providing technical assistance, including long-term, embedded technical assistance to government ministries/departments
• Specialist knowledge RMNCAH, including family planning and sexual and reproductive health and rights
• Proven experience in mixed-methods research, including analysing large-volume quantitative data sets and distilling key insights into accessible formats to influence policy
• Proven ability to represent organisations and programmes at the highest levels internationally, regionally and nationally.
• Fluency in English and French preferred