| This is a unique opportunity to play a pivotal role in delivering UK’s objectives in Zambia including the embassy’s Country Business Plan (CBP). You will help in the process to set strategic direction through your involvement in the development and monitoring of the CBP of some of UK’s regular bilateral development programme in the world. You will play a key role in supporting the implementation of the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) wide and the British High Commission (BHC) Lusaka’s strategy for results, evaluation, and evidence. The mission’s portfolio covers some of the major challenges of our time, including humanitarian support, , education, , economic growth and good governance. Your role will be to define and refine the mission’s approach to results, evidence, and evaluation, and to build Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) capability across the office. In addition, you will work closely with other His Majesty’s Government (HMG) partners, the Zambian Government, donors, and delivery partners, gaining a full and all rounded experience. The role sits in BHC Lusaka ’s Finance and Delivery Team, in the M&E branch of the team. Finance and Delivery is responsible for coordinating coherent delivery of all the mission’s financing, maximising Value for Money and synergies across the portfolio while promoting excellence. It leads on programme compliance, financial management, commercial, risk management and monitoring and evaluation. It is a key element of the mission’s set up to deliver UK’s strategy in Zambia. You will report to the Team Leader and will also work closely with other key stakeholders within the mission. You will be responsible for coaching and mentoring colleagues on programme delivery as an essential part of the job. | Roles and responsibilities: In this role, you will be responsible for driving excellence in results and M&E areas on the mission’s portfolio. Key responsibilities include: 1. Results Management: - Country Business Plan (CBP) results: Maintain the mission wide results framework, tracking the achievement of outcomes. Support the Team Leader of the Finance and Delivery Team and the Development Director to facilitate good discussions and strategic decision making in different governance bodies within the mission. (e.g., Country Board).
- Business Case (BC) Development: Proactively support teams to develop and update their Theory of Change for projects based on evidence available internally and externally. Ensure that appropriate/ practical M&E approaches are incorporated in the design of Business Cases .
- Log-frames (LFs): Support the development of LFs at BC stage, considering inclusion of appropriate results, indicators, baseline values, milestones, and targets. Promote timely updating of LFs, ahead of reviews. Provide a challenge function to programme teams on the LFs, data and evidence used for the results and scoring of achievements in reviews.
- Project Reviews: Input and quality assurance of the office Annual Reviews (AR) and Project Completion Reviews (PCR) (with primary focus on output reporting) before submission to the Development Director.
2. Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning (MEL) - Monitoring: Build the capability of teams and partners to maintain MEL systems that meet the mission’s internal requirements. Participate in regular field visits to enhance our internal monitoring, review of partner organisations technical reporting to validate against data reports, etc. Support the development and implementation of third-party monitoring and beneficiary feedback mechanisms (e.g., Partner Voice) and disseminate lessons learned to the mission.
- Evaluation support: co-design evaluations, supporting the preparation of Terms of References (ToRs), reviewing bids, inception reports, data collection processes and final reports. Support the development of a communication approach for evidence findings.
- Promote active lesson learning: Lead and contribute to the learning agenda through the design and implementation of a systemic way of documenting and disseminating lessons learnt (e.g., from ARs). Highlight most significant change stories and good practices internally and externally and help increase mission wide knowledge. Promote and build capacity for the use of research and adaptive learning within our programme portfolio and ensure learning is mainstreamed at all levels.
| 1. Statistics Support - Promote use of data for key decision making: Collaborate with staff and partners to ensure that planning, monitoring, evaluation and learning systems capture and transmit data according to standards, definitions, and processes.
- Support teams in the review and consolidation of monitoring data for reporting against the log-frame and performance indicators for mission reporting and internal programme reviews.
- Provide support to the mission on the use of national and international statistics within the country portfolio and projects.
- Engage with partners on key statistical needs, including national surveys and Census (plus quality assurance of any project support provided).
- Conduct due diligence on the quality of data from project partners and work with them to seek improvements and alternatives as needed. Maintaining key relations with the statistical community and promoting the collection and analysis of key data to inform wider programming.
- Act as key point of contact to the West and Southern Africa Research Hub and research on Centrally Managed Programmes with a Zambia country footprint.
- Liaise with the Statistics cadre and Evaluation network, representing the mission in internal discussions, including influencing Headquarters thinking in key areas. Distribute documents and best practices produced by the cadre/network and cascade new developments.
| Key behaviours required for the job: This role requires both strong technical skills to take forward a Monitoring and Evaluation Strategy for the mission and also leadership and management skills to drive the approach across the mission. You will be given the opportunity to represent the mission in external discussions and building capability in evaluation and results of our delivery partners. You will need to be able to understand the bigger picture, understanding the political issues and UK priorities in Zambia, seeing links across the mission’s portfolio and with the wider FCDO. You will be a creative, well-networked, assured, and influential self-starter, with an ability to conceptualise, form, challenge and lead debates on policy and practice and develop evidence products, with excellent writing and interpretive skills. | ADDITIONAL NOTES AND TECHNICAL COMPETENCIES REQUIRED This post is available to both Statistics and Evaluation Advisers, ideally you will have a background in both. The competencies to use are: 1. Acquiring data and understanding customer needs Working with policy colleagues to understand their needs and identifying/ promoting use of appropriate data sources. 2. Analysis Having strong analytical knowledge and the skills to carry forward descriptive and common statistical analyses of widely used data sets such as the Demographic and Health Survey, knowing the limitations of Zambia’s work and promoting use and re-use across the department. 3. Best Practice in Evaluation Approaches and Methods Advising on the most appropriate methodology to answer specific research questions. Awareness of limitations of specific data collection and evaluation techniques. Know who to approach for support in specific evidence topic areas. 4. Leading, Managing and Delivering Evaluations Designing and managing development evaluations. | | | | |