MEAL Specialist - Sustain Africa Programs - Office of Programs at International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC)

Position summary 

The Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, and Learning (MEAL) Specialist will lead and provide technical expertise in designing, implementing, and managing the overall Sustain Africa MEAL system. This role includes responsibility for performance analytics, results reporting, and identifying strategies to leverage findings to enhance program performance and reporting. The Specialist will ensure timely delivery of project reports to management and donors, as needed. Additionally, the Specialist will offer technical leadership, oversee data management processes, and provide ongoing training to MEAL field officers from implementing partners.   

Responsibilities 

Monitoring inclusive development at partnership level 

• Work with respective country program implementation organizations on the development of M&E tools to enable tracking of program delivery against targets and outcomes in line with the Sustain Africa M&E framework; 
• Ensure project scope and activities are compliant with Sustain Africa policies; 
• Build Sustain Africa and partner capacity by training others in MEL skills; 
• Oversee a rigorous system of data collection, management, and develop relevant graphical formats to present data in user-friendly formats that support Sustain Africa to assess performance and make evidence-based decisions on technical direction; 
• Conceive, visualize and broker partnership specific impact pathways and theories of change, initially with partnership facilitator and subsequently deliberated and agreed upon by partners; 
• Identify and agree with partnerships on and develop ways to monitor impact pathways tailored to the specific conditions under which partnerships operate; 
• Integrate secondary baseline data on sector or regional dynamics into deliberations with partners during the diagnostic phase of partnerships. This includes monitoring impact pathways and fostering inclusive development, as well as supporting the establishing target values for Sustain Africa’s universal impact indicators. 

Case Based Analysis of Inclusive Agribusiness Models and Partnership Development  

• Provide technical leadership to the timely capture and communication of program results and ensure high-quality, timely, valid, and verifiable data collection, reporting, analysis, and learning across all projects funded by Sustain Africa across Sub-Saharan Africa; 
• Design, test, and assure quality of data collection instruments, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Logic Models, Performance Measurement Frameworks (PMFs), Theory of Change (TOC), reporting tools, database management, and performance monitoring plans; 
• Assess the capacities of partnerships to co-create, direct and realize inclusive development and incorporate these insights in program-wide learning processes; 
• Conduct in-depth case study research documenting the different modalities in which partnerships align business models of leading commercial actors, smallholder farmers and/or micro-enterprises in the making of inclusive development. 

Providing MEAL leadership to the processes of replicating and accelerating Program initiatives  

• Lead the design, creation, and implementation of Sustain Africa’s comprehensive digital MEL framework and information systems, including the MEAL plan, to track delivery against program targets, outcomes, and impacts, including clearly defined objectives, indicators, learning mechanisms, and the implementation of appropriate MEL procedures; 
• Represent the program in national sector, industry or knowledge networks and at relevant national/ local events, enabling connections to other (area-based) programs, industry platforms or business associations. 

Requirements 

• Master's degree in any field related to quantitative studies such as agricultural/development economics, statistics, applied sociology, economics, or any other relevant subjects with significant training in quantitative methods; 
• Minimum of 5 years or more demonstrated progressive professional experience in MEL positions; 
• Demonstrated experience in leading the MEAL of large, funded initiatives;  
• Knowledge of monitoring and evaluation standards, survey methodologies and results Based M&E Systems; 
• Well experienced in MEAL plans development, Theory of Change development, data modelling, data quality assurance, data utilization, presentation, and visualization; 
• Proven track record in developing annual plans and reports for donors; 
• Ability to perform complex data management and analytics utilizing Microsoft Excel, ODK, Kobo Collect and other business intelligence tools; 
• Ability to perform complex data quality analyses and make program recommendations; 
• Ability to prepare expert quality data visualizations from complex data; 
• Experience working with and supporting counterparts and training partner organizations and/or staff in MEL concepts and activities; 
• Demonstrated leadership, versatility, and integrity; 
• Prior experience in managing impact evaluation; 
• Good research experiences within a project implementation cycle; 
• Excellent writing and speaking skills in English is a must and ability to speak French is an added value; 
• Ability to travel to country implementation sites and regional meetings as required;