Summary
Date Posted: Wednesday, February 03, 2021 , Base Salary: Not Disclosed

JOB DETAILS:
The Aga Khan Foundation (AKF), an agency of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), was established by His Highness the Aga Khan in 1967. AKF is a private, not-for-profit international development agency that seeks to provide long-term solutions to society’s problems. AKF brings together human, financial, and technical resources to address challenges faced by the poorest and most marginalised communities in the world. AKF has a special focus on investing in human potential, expanding opportunity, and improving the overall quality of life, especially for women and girls. AKF’s primary areas of focus are Education; Early Childhood Development (ECD); Health and Nutrition; Civil Society; Agriculture and Food Security; and Economic Inclusion.
AKF is committed to ensuring girls and boys, women, and men, are equipped with the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values to help them interact effectively with the world and be contributing members of a pluralistic society. This demands AKF to assume a holistic, life-long, and systems approach to education, youth programming, and economic inclusion. AKF ensures all interventions are globally informed, locally rooted, are embedded in government and community interests and structures, and work to promote social inclusion, equity, and pluralism.
Position Description
The Coast Region Programme Manager (CRPM) will provide overall leadership and management for the programme portfolio for AKF in the Kenya Coast Region. Under the direct supervision of the Area Manager – Coast, the CRPM will develop strategies and project targets. S/he will be responsible for designing, periodically adjusting, and/or reviewing programme/project progress and learning with the AKF EA Regional Office Programme Team, as well as effectively developing and monitoring the work plans and validating the budgets for approval of the respective projects.
S/he will also oversee compliance and implementation of relevant institutional procedures, policies, and systems by programme teams and in alignment with donor compliance requirements and eligibility regulations in coordination with the operations team. The CRPM will manage project resources and funding strategies in the Coast Region to achieve their targets and maximise the effectiveness and efficiencies.
Overall, the CRPM will be responsible for initiating and setting goals for the programme and/or projects according to the strategic objectives of AKF, planning the projects from start to completion involving deadlines, milestones, and processes, and developing budgets and operations. S/he will supervise a wide range of projects with the responsibility for the delivery and overall success of each project as part of a coordinated programme portfolio. S/he will supervise project leads and inform management on progress and performance. .

Principle Responsibilities
1. Project and Programme Management
• Lead all aspects of the project management cycle ensuring high-quality inception, work plans, implementation, and reports that comply with internal and donor requirements and ensure cross-functional collaboration among programme team.
• Ensure all project funds are fully accounted for and financial reports and documentation are accurate and in-line with project delivery.
• Support project leads to write all narrative reports and review these to ensure quality and accuracy. Ensure all narrative and financial reports are submitted through AKF’s reporting structure on time and with quality.
• Effectively line manage, hold accountable, and support project leads to deliver impactful projects that are coordinated and aligned to deepen impact and collaboration as a programme portfolio meets the needs of the communities AKF serves.
• Ensure all project operations and interventions adhere to government legal requirements, internal policies, and donor compliance. Manage all operations to maximise efficiencies in management and delivery.
• Ensure all project management processes comply with AKF’s gender and social inclusion and child and community safeguarding policies.
• Resolve programme high scope issues and liaise with the Area Manager to initiate corrective actions
2. Programme Quality, Learning, and Communications
• Ensure the Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) team has established and operationalise project M&E frameworks and tools within a programmatic strategic framework and deliver high-quality M&E compliant with donor minimum requirements. Ensure all frameworks are gender-responsive and data collection tools are integrated into project activities, not parallel to them.
• Ensure the M&E team effectively establish a high-quality M&E data management system integrating ICT where appropriate. Ensure all data management systems adhere to AKF’s safeguarding and data protection policies.
• Ensure the M&E team input accurate M&E data into all donor and AKF reports (quarterly, semi-annual, and annual). This will include the timely data input into AKF’s internal programme management systems.
• Apply change, risk, and resource management principles to improve the quality of programme implementation.
• Ensure data management system has feedback loops to enable all project staff to access and understand project progress and challenges and promote participatory project planning and reviews.
• In collaboration with the M&E team, lead on ensuring project learning is effectively communicated internally to the project team, AKF East Africa (EA) senior leadership, and relevant technical advisors. Ensure this learning is responding to and promotes gender and social equity in AKFs programming and the broader socio-economic and political ecosystem.
• Collaborate with AKF (EA) senior leadership and technical advisors to establish and manage a gender-responsive programme quality system to assess programme quality and project decisions, interventions, and proposed changes are informed by data and evidence.
• Conduct project site visits to validate project quality.
• Work with the Coast Area Manager and broader AKF EA team to ensure programme learning and evidence are being effectively communicated at the local, regional, national, and international levels to inform policy, practice, and broader education discourse, particularly concerning gender politics, social inclusion, equity, and pluralism. This will explicitly include the communities and institutions in which AKF is operating.
3. Partnerships
• Manage operational partnerships with all implementing partners to ensure the timely and impactful implementation of all interventions and projects.
• Actively seek out and identify partnership opportunities able to increase AKF’s impact and influence on the Coast and in Kenya. Contribute to developing these into funded projects.
• Establish and develop, with the support of the Coast Area manager, positive and collaborative partnerships with key ecosystem actors operating in the social programming space in the Coast Region.
• In collaboration with the Coast Area Manager, AKF EA senior leadership, to establish and develop collaborative partnerships with government, non-government, and development partners at the national level.

Required Experience and Skills
The successful candidate must have a broad knowledge of programme management principles with a strategic mindset as well as be able to lead and develop their direct reports. The overall goal of this position is to ensure every project will be delivered successfully while ensuring the quality of implementation.
The key requirements are:
• Graduate degree in social development, international relations, political science, or management. Post-graduate highly desirable.
• Proven experience in managing high impact social programming in challenging contexts. Minimum of eight years of project experience, five in management.
• Proven experience in managing complex and high-impact projects in partnerships with other organisations. Excellent planning, conceptual and strategic thinking and problem-solving skills are required.
• Proven experience in managing diverse budgets and financial management capacity.
• Excellent knowledge and understanding of gender and social inclusion issues and proven experience of delivering programmes that explicitly address these inequalities.
• Excellent knowledge and understanding of child and community safeguarding issues and proven experience in operationalising relevant policies and procedures.
• Evidence of drawing on learning and evidence to inform and improve internal project delivery.
• Evidence of developing strong partnerships with government, development partners, and no-government partners to increase impact and influence in practice and policy.
• Strong inter-personal skills and working collaboratively with internal teams and project and non-project partners.
• Ability to manage culturally diverse teams and demonstrate non-discriminatory behaviours.
• Strong communication skills, written and oral, and fluency in English.
• Strong leadership skills with diverse competencies in an organisation, multi-tasking, critical thinking, and M&E.
• Strong ICT skills and experience operating with Microsoft and emerging new software.

Job Qualifications: Not Specified

Job Education Requirements: Not Specified

Job Education Experience: Not Specified

Work Hours: 8

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Job application procedure
Candidates interested in this unique career opportunity with AKF should submit a cover letter and maximum three-page CV including the names and contact information of three professional referees by 9th February 2021. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.
AKF Is an Equal Opportunity Employer and is committed to Safeguarding and Promoting the Welfare of Children and Vulnerable Adults and Expects all Staff and Partners to Share this Commitment.
The Aga Khan Foundation is an agency of the Aga Khan Development Network: www.akdn.org 

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