Senior Manager – Francophone Africa
• CDI
• Dakar, Senegal
• Management - Gestion de Projet


Microsave
Microsave hiring Senior Manager – Francophone Africa.

Job description
Are you a bilingual go-getter? Keen to play a catalytic role in the development of financial services and agriculture in Francophone Africa? We are in search of a team leader who can nurture, grow, and realize the full potential of our francophone team to deliver first-class consulting services and help governments, regulators, financial service providers, and FinTechs utilize the digital revolution. We expect this team to grow—professionally and in numbers—and you can be at the forefront of this change!

Essential Skills
We are looking for a seasoned Project Manager with multi-country experience in Francophone Africa ideally from a consulting firm and has managed multi-cultural teams in Africa. Demonstrated 7-12 years of experience in project/program management and management consulting. In the role of Practice Group Leader, the candidate will be responsible for successful contracting, following up with internal staff, project execution, operational support on administrative processes, reviewing work plans of the team members, project budgets, and schedules interface with clients/check-in meetings and following project payments. Our team is still in start-up mode, thus requires a candidate with strong facilitation skills, cross-functional group coordination and collaboration, and a self-starter working effectively independently and within a team environment. Being detail-oriented, process-oriented, results-driven are core requirements. The candidate must be able to focus on projects full life-cycle change management across all stakeholders and business functions, always thinking several steps ahead. Additionally, seeking a candidate with exceptional ability to implement and evangelize the use of project management best practices (e.g., project plans, weekly status reports, and meetings, prioritized issues resolution log, risk log including mitigation measures, transition plans).

Responsibilities:
• Lead the planning, implementation of assignments involving project teams,
• Develop and submit proposals to generate business, particularly for the francophone markets, in collaboration with domains across Asia and Africa,
• Provide solutions to complex business problems for areas of responsibility where the analysis of situations requires an in-depth knowledge of organizational objectives and the development and presentation of prioritized findings from the project gap analysis (e.g., when aligning requirements against proposed internal or commercial solutions),
• Conduct landscape assessments of key project stakeholders to determine relevant stakeholder knowledge, gaps, or challenges, as well as other risks or obstacles to success, and mentor the team members in these tasks. Further, develop execution, risk mitigation, and transition plans to create a repeatable framework for quality project execution,
• Develop strong working relationships with the client and fulfill their expectations, including in-scope deliverables, format, status reporting content and cadence, feedback, and transition plans,
• Work in a trusted adviser capacity for the client and provide thought leadership beyond their expectations,
• Focus on the full life-cycle change management of the project across all stakeholders and business functions and always think several steps ahead,
• Lead stakeholder meetings and provide follow-up minutes (as appropriate), utilizing best practices,
• Conduct “Quality of Delivery”/Feedback assessments with team members after assignment execution in line with the quality control guidelines and supporting the domain leader in regular staff assessments,
• Deliver training courses on quality control, prepare research papers, develop a curriculum, and provide technical assistance to clients,
• Draw broader lessons, insights, and opportunities from projects and share them formally and informally with colleagues at MSC in both French and English,
• Develop blogs, research reports, and other thought leadership materials to showcase MSC’s areas of expertise.

Qualification
• MBA or any other relevant professional qualifications in line with areas of specialization.

Skills and competencies:
• Ability to lead assignments involving diverse project teams and to work with minimal supervision,
• Ability to develop client relationships and win business,
• Ability to develop and implement training programs,
• Proficient in excel, word, and PowerPoint,
• Strong field orientation and proven interpersonal skills,
• Leadership skills, decision-making skills, problem-solving skills, people-management skills,
• Drawing broader lessons, insights, and opportunities from projects and shares them formally and informally with MSC colleagues in both bilingual French and English,
• Excellent spoken and written English – particularly for documenting the progress of Microfinance programs.