Demand Team Lead at Adam Smith International

Adam Smith International is an award-winning global company that delivers impact, value and lasting change through economic growth and government reform. Our reputation as a global leader has been built on the positive results our projects have achieved in many of the world’s most challenging environments.

Adam Smith International has a strong corporate presence globally, with 146 current projects across 49 countries and over 1,000 staff and associates. Headquartered in London, our regional offices are based in Africa (Nairobi, Abuja and Pretoria), Asia Pacific (Sydney) and South Asia (Delhi), with numerous registered offices across Africa and Asia.

We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: Demand Team Lead

Tracking Code: 1188-112
Location: Kano
Department: Private Sector Development
Position Type: Full-Time/Regular

Programme Background

• Mafita is a large-scale, six-year youth employment programme operating in Nigeria’s northern states, funded by DFID and implemented by Adam Smith International.  Through a combination of innovative skills development and job creation interventions, Mafita will support over 60,000 marginalised young people to find employment or become entrepreneurs by 2021.
• Within the above scope, Mafita is mandated to support the economic empowerment of Northern Nigerian women, whose economic disenfranchisement has direct and adverse impacts on the country’s economic prosperity and development at the national, regional and community levels
• Through its work, Mafita seeks to support women to access economic resources both directly by supporting women’s entrepreneurship, employment and access to finance, and indirectly by creating a more enabling environment for women.
• Safeguarding: Mafita is committed to meet its legal and moral responsibility to ensuring the safety and welfare of its staff and beneficiaries. This includes protecting them from any form of exploitation, abuse, harassment or violence (which includes that of a sexual nature).

Areas of Responsibility

• Reporting to the Team Leader, the Demand Team Lead will play an important technical and strategic leadership role, supporting and guiding the delivery of interventions on job placement and economic development
• The position will hold line management responsibility for the Private Sector Engagement/Local Economic Development (PSE/LED) and Cluster Development Interventions
• Together with the Team Leader, the position will represent Mafita to external stakeholders for all activities under his/her purview and play a key role in building and managing effective partnerships.

Main Tasks

• Contributing to setting the programme’s strategy together with DFID, the Project Director and the Senior Management Team.
• Liaising closely with the Team Leader and the Skills Lead, and providing strategic and technical input across the labour market supply side and cross-cutting activities of the programme as needed.
• Line management of specific programme functions. Example responsibilities include:
  • Local Economic Development: oversee the activities of the LED team to ensure that suitable jobs and adequate financial products are available and up taken for primary beneficiaries after graduating from Mafita. Also ensure entrepreneurship support is provided to the both beneficiaries and Master Crafts Persons (MCPs)
  • Cluster Development: oversee the activities of the cluster team to ensure that adequate support is provided to MSEs and MCPs to grow their businesses and adequate financial products are available and up taken.
  • Private Sector Engagement: provide strategic input and oversee the private sector engagement activities. Strategically guide and serve as the line manager of the team members. Ensure that the job placement activities are harmonised with other interventions.
• Plan in detail the activities and responsibilities, including the costed workplans and forecasts of the demand side activities.
• Ensure annual strategy is timely and adequately implemented in all states, including without limitation private sector engagement across all our activities, jobs creation and access to finance.
• Provide overall technical leadership in the design and implementation of all the demand related interventions with special emphasis on the change management and swifts required in the new strategy.
• Ensure that the demand activities are aligned and harmonised with other interventions and are properly coordinated to effectively and efficiently deliver outputs to ensure timely delivery and Value for Money.
• Constantly review and sense-check all intervention strategies to ensure beneficiaries have access to adequate support for access to the job market through wage employment or self-employment.
• Work with the Skills Lead to ensure Communication and MRM units are integrated into the demand activities wherever necessary.
• Liaise regularly with the Communications Specialist on developments and dissemination of relevant communications material.
• Identifying new partners for the project and, together with the Team Leader, developing suitable offers of support.
• Prepare, coordinate and ensure effective reporting and communications for all demand side interventions.
• Relate all new or revised policies, procedures and /or processes to team members to ensure they have the most up‐to‐date and current information.
• Facilitate team operations by discussions through the sharing of information and knowledge, identification of teamwork issues, development of problem‐solving recommendations, and recommendations of standardizing team operations.
• Coordinate individual and team member’s work schedules and leave requests to ensure proper coverage within the team in accordance with Mafita procedures and with close coordination and explicit approval by the team leader.
• Revise/update Demand Side Manuals and tool kits, where deemed necessary.
• Identify practices that are and are not working and make recommendations to the management.
• Serve as a resource and content expert to team members; providing them with guidance and being available to answer questions to clarify the work activities.
• Provide guidance to staff interacting with other stakeholders on demand side -related issues; train program staff on working with demand side interventions from the northern region.
• Supervise and support short-term consultants assigned to the demand side interventions.
• In discussion with Team Leader and project managers, provide flexible project assistance where needed for successful project delivery, especially during times of milestone delivery.
• Work closely with the MRM Manager to develop results chains, baselines, indicators, measurement plans and impact projections for Mafita demand side systems and ensure timely and accurate updates of demand side data is provided to the MRM team.
• Work with the MRM team to ensure the disaggregation of data on all results reported as well as on effects of demand side interventions.
• Devise and implement intervention strategies to increase the impact and reach of different approaches on the transition to work; build strong synergies across the Mafita programme to ensure all demand side interventions are demand driven and with clear and tangible results.
• Inputs to strategic and operational planning. Leading design and delivery of new programme activities.
• Managing project resources to effectively and efficiently deliver outputs.
• Ensuring that the principles of the project are maintained in all activities.
• Identifying new partners for the project and together with the Team Leader, work in developing suitable offers of support.
• Facilitate the dissemination of learnings and lessons learned in the demand side area (in cooperation with communications team).
• Other functions as required.

Application Closing Date
Not Specified.

How to Apply
Interested and qualified candidates should:
Click here to apply online