As the Governance Technical Advisor for West Africa, you are responsible for ensuring high quality technical assistance to one IRC region comprised of 7 country programs. You will promote and collaborate with relevant stakeholders to achieve high quality, high impact interventions that are informed by evidence and best practice, contextually appropriate, driven by client and partner voices, and widely inclusive.

Program Design & Business Development:
You will support country programs to design winning submissions and generally position IRC for continued success in our technical domains:

• Support designated country programs’ proposal technical lead through participation in and/or facilitation of program design meetings
• Promote and support design collaboration with partners and clients
• Advise on program modalities, and strategic partnership development based on how we can best support, complement, and reinforce local systems
• Advising and/or providing hands-on support on assessments, including application and contextualization of technical standards
• Reviewing technical design quality, including alignment of narratives, log-frames, and budgets to IRC standards and outcomes


Implementation Support:
• You will support country program staff and other key stakeholders in implementing technical interventions:
• Support country programs and other stakeholders with the recruitment and training of technical coordinators
• Assess program quality and inform improvements, providing follow up support to country programs as needed
• Collaborate with country program colleagues to monitor and analyze key indicators to inform periodic review, program adaptation, and course-correction as needed
• Provide technical capacity strengthening through ongoing mentoring, coaching, and trainings with country program focal points


Knowledge & Learning: You will support continuous sectoral learning and IRC technical leadership:
• Document learnings from program activities and sharing takeaways and opportunities
• Share cross-contextual learnings with country program staff across the region
• Refresh the sectoral evidence-base in collaboration with global and regional staff to influence approaches
• Collaborate with other technical advisors within the region to promote integrated programming leadership
• Contribute to the delivery of Governance Technical Unit’s strategic priorities
• Maintain currency with sectoral best practices through continual learning and development


Professional profile
Success in this position requires an individual with expertise in designing and delivering technical assistance to Governance programs, and with a deep understanding of the cultural, societal, and political contexts in at least one of the regions where IRC operates.


Work Experience:
• A minimum of 5 years of relevant experience in implementing and/or managing Governance programs, with on the ground programmatic experience in a service delivery organization, NGO or comparable international agency required.
• Experience and familiarity with related donors, peer agencies and national contexts required, preferably in humanitarian and transitional, post-crisis contexts.
• Demonstrated expertise in technical program design, monitoring and evaluation, with the ability to turn concepts and strategy into measurable action.

Demonstrated Skills and Competencies
• Excellent verbal and written communications skills
• Strong organizational and time-management skills; proven ability to prioritize and deliver projects on time and independently.
• Demonstrated ability to navigate a dynamic, cross-functional, global team structure in a large multi-national organization.
• Demonstrated ability to work effectively with internal and external stakeholders at all levels.
• Strong analytic problem-solving skills.
• Highly proficient in Microsoft Office suite.
• Ability to manage and work through change in a proactive and positive manner.

Education: Master’s/post-graduate degree in public administration, development economics, conflict management, public policy, political science, international development, or another relevant field.


Language Skills: Excellent spoken and written English and French is essential.
Key Working Relationships: This position reports to the Senior Technical Adviser, Governance and Systems Strengthening based in Brussels. This position may potentially supervise occasional consultants and/or interns. Regular communication with other Technical Units staff, regional and country program teams, awards management and grants management staff, and other internal stakeholders.

Working Environment: Standard office working environment. This role may have some international travel up to 40% of the time. This role is based in one of our international hubs in Dakar. Other IRC locations such as Abidjan and Abuja are possible.