The Ugandan Jobline

Job Title:    Chief of Party for Livestock for Livelihoods Project

Organisation: Farm Africa

Duty Station:  Addis Ababa, Kampala or Nairobi, with quarterly visits to project locations (South Omo, Ethiopia; Karamoja, Uganda)

DURATION & HOURS: Fixed term – until May 2022; full-time

About US:

Farm Africa is mid-way through delivering our £5m Livestock for Livelihoods (L4L) project in Uganda’s Karamoja sub-region and Ethiopia’s South Omo zone funded by the UK government (UK Aid). Under this programme Farm Africa is working with local civil society, SMEs, cooperatives and farmer organisations to develop market systems that support livestock services and enterprises for 21,000 women, contributing to women’s economic empowerment, reduced poverty and improved nutrition of women and children. The project is addressing market failures in animal health and breeding services to improve livestock productivity, building capacity and assets of herders, establishing trade and enterprise opportunities and improving household nutrition practices through behavioural change. It will also demonstrate how nutrition interventions can build on women’s economic empowerment to contribute to both increased income and improved household nutrition. The project is split in three independently managed component: the Ethiopia-project, the Uganda-project, and the overall knowledge and programme support component.

Job Summary:  The Chief of Party – Livestock for Livelihoods (CoP-L4L) will be responsible for the overall sound management of the project, including maintaining excellent donor relationship and steering the knowledge management component. Whilst responsibility for country-specific project implementation lies at country-level in the two sites, the CoP-L4L will be responsible for providing coordination and technical leadership to the country teams and will ensure that all cross-country delivery commitments are met, including synthesising and delivery of donor narrative and financial reports.

Key Duties and Responsibilities:  

Ensure cohesive delivery of the L4L project by all partners and the Farm Africa teams in accordance with contractual obligations and requirements

·        Maintain oversight of delivery and spend progress across all implementing teams and partners – identifying gaps and delays and supporting teams to address them including: • Supporting with the annual planning and budgeting process (Farm Africa and partners), ensuring the logical sequencing of the delivery of activities across the different delivery teams and alignment with donor approved budgets and plans

·        Working closely with the Project Coordinators (PCs) and Programme Managers (PMs) in each country to ensure that activities are delivered by Farm Africa and partner teams on time, within agreed budgets and in accordance with donor guidelines

·        Conducting quarterly planning and review meetings with country teams

·        Providing technical support to delivery teams to ensure that activities are delivered in accordance with Farm Africa’s technical approaches and the overall project design; and in particular, developing additional, or revising existing, technical intervention approaches, methodologies and guidelines to be used by the country project teams

·        Supporting country teams to identify, contract and manage external consultants delivering specific technical activities on our behalf

·        Supporting country teams to ensure that activity plans and associated project milestones are commensurate with the donor contract prerequisites and obligations

·        Coordinating input and support from Farm Africa’s Programme Quality Team – ensuring that budgeted time is used to achieve excellence in delivery

·        Ensuring that learnings from household surveys, community feedback and other monitoring activities are used to guide and improve delivery

·        Carrying out quarterly monitoring and support visits to South Omo (Ethiopia) and Karamoja (Uganda)

·        Proactively identifying and monitoring project risks and, where required, supporting the country teams to develop and implement mitigation plans.

·        Coordinate, and oversee the delivery of the MEL plan for the project including:

·        Coordinating support from Farm Africa’s MEL Team

·        Ensuring that country teams are delivering against their approved Monitoring & Learning Plan (MLP), and that high-quality beneficiary feedback, data, case studies and photos are being collected in a timely manner

·        Coordinating and overseeing the delivery of the annual household surveys, end of project evaluation, and leading the development of consolidated programme survey findings reports

·        Supporting country teams to prepare for the annual Project Performance Review (PPR) workshop, and attending the workshop in each country

Expenditure management and budget monitoring including:

·        Maintaining oversight of overall expenditure – ensuring that collective expenditure across the entire project is in line with contractual agreements

·        Supporting country teams with preparation and revision of annual budgets, in particular ensuring that the overall project budget is aligned with the donor approved budget

·        Coordinating the input and support of the relevant finance staff (country and head office) to ensure consolidation, review and sign-off of all budget related documents and reports

·        Reviewing monthly Budget Monitoring Reports (BMRs) for all components of the project, identifying significant variances, and ensuring mitigating actions are taken by the teams

·        Proactively identifying potential risks related to the overall programme spend and financial management, as well as needs for reforecast (internal) and budget revision negotiations with the fund manager

·        Acting as budget holder for the UK05 component of the budget (including costs of support staff, travels, knowledge management, and communications): coordinating support and cost recovery, verifying and approving all expenses, and ensuring compliance with Farm Africa and donor requirements

Manage the programme knowledge development and dissemination

Nutrition Knowledge Committee

·        Management of the nutrition knowledge committee, including: coordinating the finalisation of the learning agenda and workplan; overseeing the delivery of the workplan and development of learning documents; ensuring quarterly committee calls take place

·        Coordinating the contact between implementing partners on nutrition, ensuring that approaches and modes of intervention are standardised

·        Manage the delivery of specific research assignments including: developing the ToR, identifying and contracting a supplier, coordinating committee members reviews, and inclusion of findings into wider programme learning

Overall programme learning agenda

·        Developing and delivering the learning plan for the project, and ensuring alignment with donor requirements and guidance

·        Ensuring that learning is fed back to delivery teams to increase efficiency and impact

·        Sharing learnings from the project with external stakeholders, and contributing to sector-wide ‘conversations’ where relevant; and working closely with the Communications Team to manage the wider dissemination of programme learning

·        Participating in relevant forums

Manage donor reporting and maintain an excellent donor relationship including:

·        Coordinating the quarterly and annual reporting process for the entire project including:

·        Coordinating timely submission of narrative inputs and data from country teams

·        Consolidating country level inputs in to a high-quality, cohesive and comprehensive report for the project, and submitting to the fund manager on time

·        Coordinating timely production of accurate financial reporting information from Uganda, Ethiopia and UK finance teams

·        Consolidating financial reporting inputs from the different teams in to the donor template, and timely submission to the fund manager

·        Proactively identifying any required changes to donor-agreed workplans, objectives and/or budgets and leading contract revisions or renegotiation with the fund manager

·        Managing Farm Africa’s access to and use of the SMILE online reporting platform

·        Acting as the focal contact point with the fund manager, directly responding or coordinating responses to queries, keeping them informed of key development/changes as required

·        Identifying any potential reputational or compliance risks, and immediately raising with Farm Africa’s senior management

Build and maintain partnerships and external relations including:

·        Supporting the country teams to maintain good working relationship with the partners and consultants supporting the project implementation

·        Conducting joint progress review sessions with country project teams and partners

·        Acting as an ambassador, promoting the project, including hosting visitors, speaking at workshops and conferences, and meeting donors and other officials when required

·        Identifying and developing opportunities for partnerships with local/ national input providers, agri-businesses and other relevant PS actors in the livestock value chain

·        Coordinating with Farm Africa’s Communications Team

Play an active role as a member of the Farm Africa Programme Delivery Team

·        Supporting Fundraising and Business Development Teams in preparation of funding proposals where requested, especially for programme required match funding, and ensuring that any lessons learned during implementation are documented and built into current and future project designs

·        Participating in country-level or organisation-wide Farm Africa programme meetings, as requested by the country management teams and the Director of Operations and Delivery.

Qualifications, Skills and Experience:

·        The ideal candidate for the Farm Africa job must hold an MSc degree in a relevant field

·        A minimum of 8 years of progressive experience in relevant sectors, including at least two of the following areas: livestock, livelihoods, nutrition and private-sector services development, demonstrating knowledge of how actions and interventions can be integrated across these sectors, and experience of generating knowledge from interventions in these sectors

·        A solid understanding of the role of community-based approaches in livelihoods and nutrition interventions

·        A solid understanding of gender-dynamics, preferably in pastoralists communities in East Africa, and a demonstrated interest in the inclusion of gender-balanced approaches in all development interventions

·        A solid understanding of market systems, including market-based mechanisms for risk management, and incentives driving private sector decisions

·        High level of analytical and conceptual thinking, and ability to quickly grasp new or unfamiliar technical considerations and integrate them into project learning and implementation approach.

·        Programme and stakeholders management

·        Extensive experience and demonstrated successes in managing and implementing integrated and complex projects that involve multi-sector, diverse groups of stakeholders

·        Demonstrated leadership experience, team work, and excellent networking skills, with proven track record of working across different departments in problem solving to address complex issues

·        Proven track record of grant management, including understanding, interpreting and delivering against contract requirements, and overseeing their adherence by teams

·        Experience synthetizing project activities, outcomes and learning into compelling reports

·        Experience developing, reading and managing budgets; including a solid track record of analysing budget variances and rapidly spotting potential issues and solutions

·        Experience overseeing effective monitoring and evaluation frameworks, with a strong understanding of linear logframe and how to deliver and monitor results against those

·        Experience leading on large monitoring and evaluation exercises (e.g. household surveys, endline evaluations), including the management of external consultants

·        Excellent record of writing including briefs and project report compilation

·        Excellent coordination and prioritisation skills

·        Excellent command of basic computer software routinely used for project management (especially Excel) and ability to adapt to new simple software and collaboration platforms

·        Ability to build open and collaborative team environment, and strong communication skills and understanding of how to navigate upwards and side-ways relationships towards achieving the programme’s and organisation’s goals

·        Ability to build strong relationships with a variety of external stakeholders

How to Apply:

Those who meet the above requirements should submit their short CV (maximum of 4 pages) and a cover letter (maximum 1 page) addressing recruitment@farmafrica.org with the subject ‘Chief of Party – Livestock for Livelihoods’. Please DO NOT send additional documents such as certificates and references with your application. Due to a large number of applications, only short listed candidates will be contacted.

First round interviews are expected to take place w/c 22nd June 2020, and the second round w/c 29th June 2020. All interviews are likely to be conducted via Skype.

Deadline: 14^th June 2020 by 5:00pm EAT

NB: Only candidates with the right to live and work in the chosen/relevant location will be considered for this position. Farm Africa will not sponsor relocation or work permit application.

Farm Africa is an equal opportunity employer and promotes gender equity. We also do not charge a fee at any stage of our recruitment process.

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