Chief of Party

Chemonics seeks a Chief of Party for the anticipated, five-year $30-$35 million USAID-funded Resilient Cities Limpopo Activity. The purpose of this activity is to increase access to safely managed and reliable critical services—namely water, sanitation, and solid waste management— for urban residents in the Limpopo River Basin. The activity will achieve this by partnering with municipalities and entities that are responsible for service delivery, as well as with national governments, to:

• Improve operations and management of water, sanitation, and solid waste services, including natural resource and infrastructure asset management;
• Build institutional capacity for cost-effective service delivery, including a national capacity for policy implementation and municipal support, as well as ensuring a focus on gender, equity and social inclusion;
• Increase and optimize private sector participation in provision or investment in service delivery and associated infrastructure; and
• Improve public financial management for sustainability of service delivery improvements.

The Chief of Party will provide strategic vision, leadership and management in the design and implementation of all technical interventions for the project and serves as the primary liaison with USAID on Activity implementation and managerial matters. The COP is anticipated to be based in Pretoria, South Africa. This position is contingent upon Chemonics receiving the award and funding. We are looking for individuals who have a passion for making a difference in the lives of people around the world. Citizens of Botswana, Mozambique, and South Africa are strongly encouraged to apply.

Key Responsibilities:

• Direct and oversee technical design and implementation of the Activity’s strategic long-term vision and interventions to achieve results and impact.
• Provide technical leadership, guidance, supervision, and management to staff, consultants, subcontractors and grantees.
• Lead and manage a range of activities, with numerous counterparts and participants per country, including but not limited to relevant regional organizations, national governments, municipalities, local actors, NGOs, academia, informal sector organizations, labor organizations, other donors and implementing partners to exchange information, develop professional relationships, and avoid duplication of efforts.
• Strengthen the capacity of national and subnational institutions to deliver critical water, sanitation, and solid waste management services.
• Serve as the primary liaison with USAID/South Africa, the national governments of South Africa, Botswana, and Mozambique as well as select municipalities per country.
• Lead coordination among sub-contractors, grantees, and other partners in Southern Africa.
• Oversee the design, preparation, and timely implementation of work plans.
• Ensures completion of all deliverables and timely reporting to USAID
• Delivers verbal or written presentations, as requested, to various audiences.
• Ensure that cross-cutting issues such as gender, equity, social inclusion, resilience, climate resilience, corruption mitigation, and climate-sensitive approaches are effectively integrated into the Activity.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree and 15 years of progressively responsible international development experience or Master’s degree and 10 years of progressively responsible international development experience or PhD and 8 years of progressively responsible international development experience.
• Minimum 8-10 years of progressive experience working in one or more relevant areas such as drinking water and sanitation services (urban and peri-urban water and sanitation experience a plus), solid waste management, municipal and/or national government institutional capacity strengthening, policy development, and/or municipal financial management or other relevant technical area.
• Proven leadership in the design, management, and implementation of similar sized programs.
• Demonstrated ability to build, motivate and lead multi-cultural, and multidisciplinary teams across multiple countries.
• Extensive partnership building experience, especially those requiring large programmatic flexibility.
• Significant experience working with counterparts at various governmental levels (national and municipal), the private sector (multinational and local), civil society and community-based organizations, informal sector organizations, academia and other stakeholders to provide comprehensive civic engagement, capacity, participation, to foster social behavior change.
• Demonstrated skills to ensure coherence and consistency in a fast-paced environment under tight deadlines, including quality control and timeliness of all deliverables.
• Demonstrated experience managing similar programs in Africa; experience in Southern Africa preferred.
• Previous experience managing USAID or other donor funded projects of similar size and scope preferred.
• Strong interpersonal and oral/written communication skills.
• Demonstrated leadership, versatility, and integrity.
• Fluency in English (written and verbal) required. Local language skills a plus.