Creative Associates International provides outstanding, on-the-ground development services and forges partnerships to deliver sustainable solutions to global challenges. Its experts focus on building inclusive educational systems, transitioning communities from conflict to peace, developing sustainable economic growth, engaging youth, promoting transparent elections and more. Creative is recognized for its ability to quickly adapt and excel in conflict and post-conflict environments.
We are recruiting to fill the position below:
Job Title: Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) Director
Location: Abuja (FCT)
Employment Type: Full-time
Project Summary
- The USAID-funded West Africa Trade and Investment Hub Project (hereinafter referred to as the Trade Hub) is a five-year, $140 million trade and investment facilitation activity that seeks to improve private sector competitiveness in West Africa through a market-based approach.
- By working in partnership with the private sector and fostering co-investments, the project will generate new private-sector capital investment into key sectors to create jobs and increase trade between the U.S. and West Africa, including through increased utilization of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). The project comprises of three main components:
- Design and administration of a Co-Investment fund for private sector partnerships, including a portion for partnerships in Research and Development (R&D) towards innovating and modernizing practices in Nigeria across five targeted value chains;
- Technical assistance (TA) that directly supports, coordinates, and engages with qualifying recipients (i.e., partners and grantees) to achieve USAID’s trade and food security objectives;
- Urgently respond to the secondary economic impacts of COVID-19, notably to increase the access of working capital with financial actors, prevent job loss, and respond to supply shortages by scaling up local response.
- Through this Co-Investment fund and technical assistance, the Trade Hub will improve companies’ abilities to expand business operations, increase productivity, and create jobs that build on the talents and aspirations of West Africa’s growing population.
- The Trade Hub will collaborate on specific commercial opportunities with firms, service providers, research organizations, as well as other business network actors to access private capital that will contribute to large-scale jobs, exports and investment, particularly with strong demonstrated or potential links to the U.S. companies and investors.
Position Summary
- The objective of the West Africa Trade and Investment Hub Activity is to improve private sector competitiveness with a focus on increasing the agricultural productivity and profitability of smallholder farmers in Nigeria, and promoting West Africa’s regional and international trade.
- The Activity comprises of three main components:
- Design of a Competitiveness Fund for private sector partnerships;
- Administration of the Competitiveness Fund to develop private sector partnerships and provide grants; and
- Technical assistance (TA) that directly supports, coordinates, and organizes qualifying recipients (i.e., partners and grantees) to achieve USAID’s trade and food security objectives.
- The Trade Hub contributes to both USAID/Nigeria’s Feed the Future objectives related to increasing the agricultural competitiveness of smallholder farmers in Nigeria as well as USAID/West Africa’s objective to increase broad-based growth and resilience
Reporting & Supervision
- Reporting to the COP, the Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Director is responsible for all MEL activities for the Trade Hub. The MEL Director supervises the MEL Managers based in Nigeria and Senegal and oversees the work of all MEL staff and consultants across the region.
- The Director must ensure that all activities are performed in line with the USAID Feed the Future evaluation policy, as well as the ADS and monitoring and learning best practices.
Expected Outcomes
- Delivers MEL plan meeting all requirements by USAID;
- Maintains learning agenda for the project;
- Achieves MEL deliverables; and
- Ensures timely completion of quarterly and annual progress reports and annual workplans.
Primary Responsibilities
- Provides broad support on MEL design and implementation, monitoring strategies, partner organizations, and organizational capacity assessments;
- Manages the project'sweb-based M&E database, ensuring quality and streamlined data entry in the Creative corporate web-based MEL platform MEDAL (Monitoring and Evaluation Database for Adaptive Learning);
- Leads the process of analyzing data and creating user-friendly dashboards in Power Bi (in MEDAL);
- Reviews and updates performance monitoring plans;
- Works with the MEL team in maintaining MEL systems already in place, including data quality assurance procedures, processing, and analyzing of activity performance data;
- Ensures regular and consistent documentation and that reporting on deliverables is met on time and in compliance with USAID rules and regulations;
- Leads the development of the Annual Work Plan, Quarterly Reports and Annual reports.
- Prepare and annually update the MEL Plan in alignment with project’s expected deliverables and results;
- Ensures on-time entry of all Trade Hub MEL data into DIS and/or other USAID database systems;
- Supports the MEL team in monitoring project activities, outputs and progress towards anticipated results;
- Leads the process of MEL data collection, storage, and analysis, in particular, ensure performance indicators and output, outcome, impact and GIS data are prepared and collected properly in targeted geographic and thematic areas;
- Identifies and provide in-country MEL training and ensure STTA needs for Trade Hub MEL and grantees are met;
- Works with the MEL team to conduct project site visits to collect and validate quantitative and qualitative data, including site visits for primary verification and confirmation of data results;
- Collaborates with the Gender & Social Inclusion Manager to integrate gender and youth data into MEL by identifying key GESI indicators and ensuring lessons learned are collected to inform future program design and implementation;
- Supervises and coordinate with the Environmental Compliance (EC) Manager to collect, store, and analyze EC data to report on EC and it’s indicators;
- Supports the project’s Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting (CLA) approach;
- In coordination with the COP, reports to USAID on specific MEL progress and DIS and other USAID system data entry; and
- Performs other tasks as assigned by the COP.
Required Skills & Qualifications
- At least a Master's Degree in Program Evaluation, Business, Economics, Statistics, International Development, or a related field (or, alternately, a Bachelor's Degree in a relevant field and 5 additional years of relevant experience);
- At least 8 years’ technical experience in developing and implementing MEL and results-based management for USAID-funded projects, of which 4 years should have been supervisory experience.
- Experience working in multiple West Africa countries preferred.
- Experience conducting primary data collection exercises required, including using both qualitative and quantitative techniques.
- Excellent computer skills, particularly with Microsoft Excel, SPSS, Nvivo and other statistical packages as well as familiarity with GIS concepts and packages.
- Demonstrated experience in MEL report writing.
- Excellent interpersonal and teamwork skills;
- Excellent spoken and written communication skills in English and ideally in French as well.
- Willingness to travel across the region (up to 25%).
- Experience working in Nigeria is required.
Application Closing Date
3rd March, 2023.
How to Apply
Interested and qualified candidates should send their CV and Cover Letter to: [email protected] using the Job Title as the subject of the email.
Note
- Candidates that are readily available to resume as soon as possible and are local, are strongly encouraged to apply.
- Only finalists will be contacted. No phone calls, please.
- Creative Associates International Inc. is an Equal Opportunity Employer: Disability/Veteran.
https://www.hotnigerianjobs.com/hotjobs/504487/monitoring-evaluation-and-learning-mel-director-at.html