Program Development Officers at the North East Regional Initiative (NERI)

North East Regional Initiative (NERI) - An International Development Organization, is seeking applications from qualified Nigerian nationals for the position below:

Job Title: Program Development Officer

Location: Abuja
Position Start Date: Immediately

Position Summary

• The Program Development Officer (PDO) will develop and oversee flexible, innovative, and rapid national programming activities.
• The primary function of this position will be to identify, articulate and propose new areas of work. The PDO will report to the Program Director/Deputy Chief of Party and will work closely with the State Program Development Managers.
• S/he will advise the SMT and the Program Director/DCOP on the evolution of the political, legal and economic situations that impacts the Project nationally and as developments in the national agenda affect the program’s focal states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe.
• The PDO will provide strategic guidance on how to continuously adapt the program to ensure that it remains relevant, effective and immediately takes advantage of windows of programming opportunities as they arise.
• The PDO will work to goals and targets established under the guidance of the Program Director/DCOP towards achieving program and work plan objectives.
• The PDO will ensure that all processes comply with existing international development regulations, Task Order specifications and the project’s policy and procedures.
• The position will coordinate closely with Grants, Finance, and Procurement departments in Abuja to ensure adequate operational support to national level activities and oversee timely and compliant program and grants management processes.
• The PDO will coordinate with the Monitoring & Evaluation team to ensure that lessons learned are captured and incorporated program-wide. The position will be based in Abuja with possible travels within Nigeria.

Reporting & Supervision:

• The Program Development Officer reports to the Program Director/DCOP and will manage national level program activities under his guidance, assisting in activity development, activity implementation and reporting.

Primary Responsibilities
Primary responsibilities include but are not limited to the following:

• Contribute to the overall national-level program development strategy through constant news monitoring, contacting USG partners, other donors, and regional staff;
• Manage national-level activities and ensure compliance with Activity Flowchart, Creative’s and USAID’s requirements
• Manage processes and pipeline of national-level activity development and maintain responsibility for proposal submission, data entry, development of proposal content and finalization of budgets to ensure continually high standard of objectives, focus, accuracy, efficiency and feasibility of grants to be approved;
• Oversee the programmatic implementation and monitoring of each national-level activity in coordination with providers, Consultants and national partners. Also ensure the non-partisan implementation of each activity and the achievement of outputs as stated in the activity agreement using secondary sources of information;
• Input to grant and procurement award processes to ensure that activity deliverables are achieved, including drafting scopes of work for service providers and implementing partners, evaluating and approving technical deliverables and setting deadlines to ensure on-time delivery of project outputs;
• Gather lessons learned from the M&E teams and periodically incorporate these into the national-level program, and work with Program Development Managers (PDMs) from Borno, Adamawa and Yobe States to ensure lessons learned are incorporated across the program, resulting in overall improved project design;
• Ensure that activity implementation is in accordance with USAID rules and regulations and Creative policies and procedures;
• Identify, review and manage lessons learned and best practices for program activities through thorough completion of Final Evaluation Reports to conclude project activities;
• Coordinate with Reporting and Communications team to provide inputs to weekly reports and success story products to donor;
• Respond to requests from the Client as needed;
• Initiate and manage after-action reviews in coordination with Investigation and Compliance team as needed for activities after close-out.

Qualifications

• Minimum of five (5) years professional experience working in complex and challenging field operational contexts;
• University degree in Political Science, Law, Sociology, Development or other related Social Sciences field is required; Master’s desired;
• Pior experience with international development organizations, particularly with transition programming, and/or programs that have both national and community-level engagement is required;
• Familiarity with policies and procedures in regards to financial management, financial reporting, procurement processes, systems and grants management at international organizations is required;
• Willingness to travel as and when the need arises, especially, to North East region of Nigeria;
• Strong analytical, organizational and communications capacity; and
• Fluency in oral and written communication skills in English language

Application Closing Date
19th October, 2016.

Method of Application
Interested and qualified candidates should submit the following documents to: [email protected] before the closing date above:

• A current resume or curriculum vitae (CV) listing all job responsibilities;
• A cover letter;

Note

• Please reference the job title and location on the subject line, your cover letter and resume/CV.
• Only short-listed candidates will be contacted.