PROGRAMME MANAGER, WASH SYSTEMS STRENGTHENING

About Self Help Africa
Self Help Africa (SHA) is an international development organisation headquartered in Dublin, Ireland and dedicated to the vision of ‘Sustainable livelihoods and healthy lives for all in a changing climate’. We have almost 50 years of experience working in Africa, including over 20 years in Nigeria (as United Purpose and Concern Universal).

In 2021, Self Help Africa merged with United Purpose (UP), doubling our size. The organisation now works in 17 programme countries. 15 of these are in sub-Saharan Africa while subsidiary organisations, ‘Self Help Brazil’ and ‘Self Help Bangladesh’, have been created for our programmes in the two countries where we are working outside of Africa.

In early 2023, we launched a new five-year organisation strategy, which defines shared mission as the alleviation of hunger, poverty, social inequality and the impact of climate change through community-led, market-based and enterprise-focused approaches, so that people can have access to nutritious food, clean water, decent employment and incomes, while sustaining natural resources.

Our wider organisation also includes social enterprise subsidiaries: Partner Africa, which provides ethical auditing and consultancy services, TruTrade, an innovative trading platform in East Africa, and CUMO, Malawi’s largest micro-finance provider.

Our three core values are:
▪ Impact: We are accountable, ambitious and committed to systemic change.
▪ Innovation: We are agile, creative and enterprising in an ever-changing world.
▪ Community: We are inclusive, honest and have integrity in our relationships.

To achieve our organisational mission, we work across numerous sectors, such as Agriculture, Climate & Environment, Enterprise, Energy, Nutrition, and WASH. Our global WASH portfolio currently spans 10 countries, 25 active projects, and has reached 5 million people with safe water, and 5 million for sanitation to date. In Nigeria, we have a strong reputation in the WASH sector for our work on rural sanitation, having achieved the country’s first ODF LGA, and our systems strengthening approach to sustainable WASH service delivery.

Programme description

SHA is anticipating the award of a GBP£5m programme focused on WASH systems strengthening, covering Nigeria and Sierra Leone. We would lead the overall consortia, and the work in Nigeria, whilst another INGO would lead work in Sierra Leone, under our oversight and overall consortia leadership.

The aim of the programme is to strengthen the systems needed to establish and sustain reliable, resilient and inclusive WASH services. The programme is anticipated to start in Quarter 1 of 2024 and expected to be 4 years duration.

The precise intervention locations in Nigeria will be finalised during the inception phase, and may include (but not necessarily be limited to) northern states such as Kano, Jigawa and possibly Kaduna. This role is to be based in Abuja, with regular travel to project intervention sites in Nigeria.

The three broad focus areas of the programme are:
Priority 1: Strategic planning and budgeting for sustainable service delivery using defined Service Delivery Models and strengthening capacities and processes for accountable and inclusive planning and budgeting for WASH.

Priority 2: Support decentralised implementation of the Clean Nigeria Campaign in pursuit of the elimination of open defecation nationwide, demonstrating effective approaches to ODF, Market-Based Sanitation and ODF sustainability, in target LGAs, for scaling.

Priority 3: Facilitate systems leadership and support the mobilisation of a network of WASH champions by strengthening nationwide non-governmental sector organisations and networks, and their respective capacities and mentoring processes.

Job Purpose:

SHA is looking for a dynamic WASH professional with significant programme management and system strengthening expertise to lead the programme in Nigeria while promoting the organisation’s mission and vision and deepening our impact through delivery of high-quality intervention. The Programme Manager will be responsible for providing overall leadership, technical and strategic management to the programme team in Nigeria.

S/he will ensure effective and efficient planning, implementation, monitoring, evaluation and learning. S/he will manage staff, partners, resources, and interface with external stakeholders to achieve the programme’s targets, and objectives on time, within scope and budget in compliance with donor requirements. The post-holder will be responsible for providing strategic direction for the programme’s technical and administrative components, and will work closely with SHA’s Nigeria and Global WASH team.

Key Responsibilities:

Strategic Leadership and Programme Management
▪ Develop overall strategic plan for the programme, in collaboration with government and partners.
▪ Lead programme implementation, and work closely with the Head of WASH programmes and Global WASH Advisor on the overall programme strategy. The overall programme approach is systems strengthening, utilising sustainable models of market-based approach, systems analysis, resilience and permanent systems change.
▪ Develop, implement, monitor and evaluate innovative strategies for increased effectiveness of WASH Systems.
▪ Ensure high level of accountability to participants, stakeholders and donor ensuring effective feedback mechanism, regular communication, timely production and submission of plans, reports and assessment.
▪ Ensure security of project team and resources in compliance with contract management procedures and systems. Communicate with relevant programme actors in the field and provide timely report/alert to the Senior Management on changing contexts in safety and security across programme locations.
▪ Ensure compliance with security procedures and policies as determined by country leadership.
▪ Proactively ensure that team members operate in a secure environment and familiar with the organization’s policies.

Effective Implementation and Programme Quality
▪ Ensure programme quality assurance and oversight, which includes regular field visits in Nigeria.
▪ Oversee effective implementation of Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning framework for the programme.
▪ Ensure monitoring and evaluation, including climate resilience, WASH access surveys, service delivery model assessments, feeding information into costed plans, and strengthening of monitoring processes. Particular focus will be on climate resilience and generation of data to inform routine programme decision-making while also capturing results at the impact level.
▪ Ensure learning and knowledge sharing are central to the programme – facilitating capacities and resources well channelled and integrated to a circle of reflection, adaptation and actions across the programme.
▪ Establish and manage robust programme management systems that integrate Value for Money (VFM) and enable adaptive management based on field level monitoring and feedback.
▪ Monitor risks that arise in the course of project implementation, and implement rapid risk mitigation measures including effective communication to all stakeholders.

Representation, Networking and advocacy
▪ In collaboration with Head of WASH Programmes and MEAL team, conduct participatory WASH systems analysis and identify specific areas of sector strengthening support required to improve WASH delivery at federal and state levels; and use the evidence from this analysis to shape influencing and advocacy activities targeting diverse sector actors.
▪ Establish and maintain strong relationships, and regular communication with multiple stakeholders in Nigeria through co-planning and co-delivery of activities with the permanent actors of the system (government, civil society, private sector), to the full extent possible, maximising ownership.
▪ Represent the Programme and where needed SHA more broadly, at national networks and events; NTGS, CNC Technical meetings as well as state and regional clusters – with INGOs, UNICEF, World Bank and other relevant stakeholders at both national and state levels and provide necessary information to support external representations.
▪ Ensure a good coordination between sub-grant partners in terms of programme delivery and coherence of implementation outputs.
▪ Animating a regular communication between partners to raise and follow key issues, strategic development and ensure integration across partners and within the sector.
▪ Support networks and clusters of operational independence in strengthening systemic accountability, including CSO network partners who will operate as critical partners to the government of Nigeria.

Finance and Compliance Management
▪ Ensure compliance with donor and SHA’s policies and procedures related to programme implementation.
▪ Draft and/or review scope of work for hiring and management of technical consultants, including review for technical efficacy and contract budget.
▪ Ensure consistency between programme budgetary and operational planning, aligning budgetary compliance with grant agreement and SHA financial policies and procedures.
▪ Lead on programme budget amendment/realignment by closely working with the finance and operations teams.
▪ Employ the highest standards of openness, transparency and accountability to ensure good financial management in line with SHA’s zero-tolerance approach to fraud, bribery and corruption.
▪ Control the quality of the overall administrative and financial monitoring of the project and regularly reviewing the commitments, disbursements and budget forecasts.

Team Management and Safeguarding
▪ Provide team members with information, tools and other resources to improve performance and reach objectives.
▪ Manage the performance of line-managed staff through objective setting, regular performance review, managing feedbacks and regularly monitoring performance development plans.
▪ Support the continual growth and professional development of all line-managed staff, ensuring that appropriate support and development mechanisms are in place.
▪ Promote accountability, communicate expectations and provide constructive feedback via regular performance reviews.
▪ Demonstrate experience in and commitment to safeguarding, protection, gender mainstreaming and inclusion of vulnerable population including people with disabilities.
▪ Establish feedback, complaints and response mechanism across communities of implementation to ensure programmatic and operational decisions are informed by local perspectives and priorities, and contribute to the protection of program participants.

Key Relationships:

Internal: Head of WASH Programmes, sub-grant partners, Global WASH team, Programme, MEAL, Operations, Finance & Compliance and Security teams.

External: Consortia members, Ministry of Water Resources & Sanitation, Ministry of Budget & Planning, State Governments, development partners and professional networks.

Knowledge, Experience and Other Requirements

Education and other qualifications:
▪ Tertiary qualification, preferably at Master’s degree, in Engineering, social science, public health or related field.
▪ ICT operation, and proficiency in MS Office.

Experience
▪ At least 8 years’ working experience with INGO/NGO in the WASH sector or equivalent position.
▪ Demonstrated experience in successfully managing large and complex programs in the WASH sector.
▪ Experience and conceptual understanding in systems strengthening, market-based sanitation, government planning and budgeting, accountability and advocacy, resilience and community-led approaches.
▪ Experience coordinating and leading sub-grant partners and working with multiple partners.
▪ Experience working collaboratively with state, local, and ideally national government in Nigeria.
▪ Experience in development of high standard advocacy briefs, learning products, and quality donor reporting.
▪ Strong grasp of MEAL, and using monitoring and learning information to adapt programmes for maximising efficiency and effectiveness.
▪ Experience in Government engagement and policy coordination especially empowerment and capacity building of systems.
▪ Experience working with culturally diverse teams.

Skills:
▪ Project management and implementation
▪ Excellent leadership and coordination skills (and ability to coordinate several tasks at once and managing priorities)
▪ Effective communication, problem solving and decision-making skills and diplomacy in communication
▪ Respect for cultural diversity and gender sensitivity
▪ Team leadership and mentoring
▪ Monitoring, evaluation and learning
▪ Communication, networking, facilitation and mobilisation
▪ Organisational developmentReporting and documentation

Language Requirements:
Excellent written and oral proficiency in English language is required and relevant local language competency is an added advantage.