Country Engagement & Health Financing Specialist, Africa Frontline First

Please submit your application via the following link: https://tinyurl.com/yc3fbttp

Position Title: Country Engagement & Health Financing Specialist (Portuguese speaking)
Reports to: Africa Frontline First Country Engagement Manager
Duration: Yearly contract with possibility for extension 
Location: Flexible within the Sub-Saharan African region with travel ~30% of the time

FINANCING ALLIANCE FOR HEALTH OVERVIEW

Financing Alliance for Health (FAH), partners with the government on all steps of financing to strengthen, and sustain community health systems, leveraging primary health care to attain universal health coverage. (FAH partners long-term with Ministries of Health and Ministries of Finance teams to develop different and changing financing sources). FAH draws on private sector knowledge of financial structuring and access to private sector and development finance opportunities to increase and diversify funding options for governments to scale and sustain community health systems.

The aim of our work is to increase access, coverage, and utilization of quality primary health services at household level, in a culturally appropriate manner to reduce morbidity and mortality. Community health systems have a proven track record of economic, social and health impact through the thousands of jobs created for predominantly female, marginalized, and young community health workers (CHWs).

AFRICA FRONTLINE FIRST INITIATIVE OVERVIEW

The Africa Frontline First (AFF) Initiative is a collaborative initiative that supports the scaling and strengthening of integrated and sustainable community health delivery in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Under the leadership of H.E. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the Financing Alliance for Health, Last Mile Health, Community Health Acceleration Partnership, and Community Health Impact Coalition are currently the key driving partners of AFF. Through unique partnerships between governments, donors, implementers, and technical allies, AFF will support ten countries in Sub-Saharan Africa in building high-functioning, resilient, country-led community health service delivery systems. These systems will aim to triple the number of institutionalized and professionalized 200,000 community health workers across Sub-Saharan Africa by 2030. AFF works cross three pillars:

• Financing: Advocate, design, and support implementation of sustainable funding mechanisms that enable transformed financing
• Political will: Cultivate regional political will and champions to support accelerating community health reforms, including domestic financing.
• Community leadership: Partner with countries to ensure that financing mechanisms contribute towards achieving national community health goals.

The AFF is currently in the operationalization and execution phase for two financing opportunities through the Catalytic Mechanism workstream:

1. Africa Frontline First Catalytic Fund (AFF-CF) which aims to improve the systems supporting community health in 8 African countries to improve performance, unlock bottlenecks to scale frontline community health workers, and provide health for all. The AFF-CF will be available to countries from January 2024 until December 2026
2. Project BIRCH (Building Integrated Readiness for Community Health), which is a Global Fund mechanism whose main goal is to provide technical assistance and community health systems strengthening grants in approximately eleven countries between January to December 2023, with potential for extension. Ultimately, country support will empower countries to enhance the design and effectiveness of existing and upcoming Global Fund investments in CHWs for pandemic preparedness, including investments through the AFF-CF.

The AFF team is leading a consortium of organizations to implement BIRCH across the 11 countries, and in collaboration with regional institutions such as the Africa CDC.

POSITION DESCRIPTION

This is an exciting opportunity for the right candidate to pioneer a transformative initiative, dedicated to scaling and sustaining integrated, resilient community health systems across 11 African countries. The Country Engagement & Health Financing Specialist will co-design country engagement strategies and program implementation approaches for the various phases of the AFF, whilst overseeing and coordinating the day-to-day roll-out to a portfolio of participating AFF countries. The Country Engagement & Health Financing Specialist will work directly with country implementing partners and provide them advice, guidance, oversight, and monitoring in executing their program workplan. They will also work closely with the Program Director or other senior leadership to ensure that all country implementation is well aligned to the priorities of the AFF Catalytic Mechanism. They will also work closely with AFF’s Scaling Mechanism, Influence, and Impact teams as well as interface with in-country sub-grantees and representatives from regional institutions. The Country Engagement & Health Financing Specialist will work with the rest of the AFF Catalytic Mechanism team to allocate responsibilities across the 11 countries.

Key scopes of work will include:

• Introduce and socialize AFF financing mechanisms (including Project BIRCH, AFF-CF, and the scaling mechanism) at country level alongside AFF and Global Fund teams.  Support in development of communication material for initial country engagement including AFF overview presentation and discussion guides.
• For each country, develop a contextualized engagement approach for Project BIRCH and AFF-CF investment, following assessment of countries’ investment readiness and technical capacity needs (including AFF’s approach for building and maintaining relationships with key stakeholders). Develop risk assessment and mitigation strategy across Project BIRCH and AFF-CF countries.
• Facilitate development of country work plans, results frameworks, monitoring framework, and other project initiation documents with Implementing Partners, Ministry of Health, and other relevant actors including Global Fund teams. Implementation activities may include Project BIRCH implementation and AFF-CF investment readiness support (GC7 funding request development and other health programming and financing technical support)
• Support in the due diligence process and review and approval of workplans and budgets and supporting the development of purchase and task orders (POs and TOs)
• Work closely with the finance team track fund utilization and compliance to funding requirements support in budget implementation tracking and compliance.
• Support to the AFF team to onboard implementing partners
• Plan, supervise, monitor, and follow up, together with in-country implementing partners, all aspects of AFF in-country activities for the countries in your portfolio – ongoing monitoring activities contingent on contract extensions.
• Review progress reports from country implementing partners to make recommendations for review by senior leadership.
• Support implementing partners capacity development including strengthening of organizational structure to facilitate program implementation.
• Act as a thought partner to the MOH and implementing partner in the design of program implementation materials such as TORs, assessment tools and report.
• Serve as a liaison between AFF’s financing, political prioritization, and impact teams and the 3-5 countries in your portfolio.
• Develop templates for implementation status updates for sharing information with AFF leadership team, the Global Fund, and other stakeholders including funders, regional institutions etc.
• Support in collecting, synthesizing, and presenting data and information of countries in your portfolio on strategic focus areas such as sustainability.
• Draft strategic partnership approach for successful engagement of in-country funders, policy, and technical organizations (Africa CDC, WHO, UNICEF, World Bank, EU, USAID, etc.)
• As a startup secretariat, the Country Engagement & Health Financing Specialist may be called upon to perform duties over and above what has been stated here and these will be discussed on a need basis.

PERSON SPECIFICATION

Required:

• Master’s degree in health economics, economics, or public health with a health financing focus, or related field
• Several years working in health financing and health economics.
• Experience working with ministries of health and finance, donors and implementing agencies, and strong communication skills to knowledgeable and effectively interact with key actors.
• Established track record of carrying out analytical work and preparing high-quality technical reports, policy briefing materials, and presentations.
• Strong and compelling writing skills.
• Culturally nuanced with extensive experience across multiple countries/regions on the African continent, with high preference for experience working with Francophone countries in Africa.
• Diplomatic and patient, with ability to understand specific nuances of country contexts (political, cultural, economic, etc.
• Working proficiency in English and Portuguese Additional proficiency in French will be an added advantage.

Preferred:

• Experience with the Global Fund funding request development process, including previous experience as part of writing teams, country coordinating mechanisms, technical guidance to Ministries, or in review of funding requests.
• Previous experience implementing, overseeing, or guiding the implementation of Global Fund grants.

Compensation 

This position offers a competitive compensation package linked to the background and experience of the candidate.

Timing 

Applications are accepted and reviewed on a rolling basis.

Application Requirements 

Please submit a resume through the link https://tinyurl.com/yc3fbttp.

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.

FAH values the diversity of the people it hires and serves within the community. Our diversity is committed to fostering a work environment where individuals’ strengths and uniqueness are recognized, appreciated, respected, and responded to in ways that fully develop their potential.

FAH has a zero-tolerance approach to any harm to, or exploitation of, a vulnerable child or adult by any of our staff, partners, or representatives. We are committed to preventing all undesirable behavior at work. This includes, child abuse and exploitation, sexual harassment, and abuse.