Programs Lead At DAI

February 28th, 2022 at 08:27 am

Job Description

• Contract Name: USAID/Feed the Future Policy LINK
• Status: Long Term Project Staff (1-year Fixed Term Contract subject to renewal for duration of Ghana program activity, which is anticipated 5 years starting on/around October 15, 2021)
• Start Date: April 1, 2022
• Supervisor: Ghana Country Lead

Project Background

The Feed the Future Policy LINK project will strengthen the capacity of local actors and institutions to lead and manage the agricultural transformation process and contribute effectively and collectively to improved, broad-based food system policy outcomes.

Specifically, the program aims to strengthen food system policy systems by investing in and reinforcing productive human and social capital and developing strategic partnerships that help bring these innovations and capacity investments to scale to achieve a critical mass of local actors with the ability and opportunity to effect positive policy change through collective action.

Policy LINK’s general approach is grounded in facilitative leadership and collaborative governance, which emphasize engaging stakeholders from civil society and public and private sectors in consensus-oriented decision making, collaborative problem solving, and adaptive learning.

Policy LINK in Ghana

USAID/Policy LINK Ghana is a five-year activity with the overall objective of fostering behavior change that strengthens the capacity and ability of Ghanaian stakeholders to participate in a more transparent, inclusive, and evidence-based agriculture and food system policy process that leads to improved food and nutrition outcomes and broad-based economic growth. Specifically, the activity will facilitate the transition towards a policy development paradigm driven by multiple stakeholders.

This approach to policymaking will strengthen the capacities of Ghana’s main agricultural policy system actors and institutions, and support them to engage stakeholders traditionally excluded from decision-making, including academia, financial institutions, the judiciary, Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and private sector representatives from the national, regional, and local levels.

This approach is underpinned by Policy LINK’s overarching theory of change focused on increasing human and social capital, engaging policy system actors in collaborative processes, and developing mechanisms for collaborative governance and dynamic learning systems and platforms to sustain collective action.

Position Objectives

The Ghana Programs Lead will be responsible for overseeing delivery of field activities implemented under Feed the Future Ghana Policy LINK Agricultural Policy Activity. This position is expected to support the design, implementation, and monitoring of key technical activities and supervise team of regional program managers and coordinators, within the framework of Policy LINK’s established activity team structures, processes, and systems.

In addition to leading and participating as a member of activity teams, the Field Program Director provides cross-program coordination and support for Agricultural Policy Activity planning and implementation. She/he will work closely with other senior leadership staff such as the Country Lead, Ag & Food Security Lead, Climate Change Lead, MEL & KM Lead, Communications Specialist and Finance & Operations Manager to ensure that quality assurance and compliance systems are put in place/adhered to during the program design and execution so that activities are delivered according DAI and USAID requirements.

S/he will continually reinforce Policy LINK’s agreed-upon core purpose and principles, and ensure all decision-making is rooted in those purposes and principles. S/he will contribute to foster a learning environment in which personal and team growth is supported, with a shared understanding that the “team” always comes before the “individual.”

The Ghana Programs Lead will be responsible for the following:

Activity Design:

• Play a leading role in conceptualizing and designing new field activities across the key technical components of the Activity, ensuring activities are demand-driven, well designed, represent an efficient use of team resources, and are sustainable and appropriately leverage technical specialization/inputs from target stakeholder groups.
• Oversee the development of clear, realistic, well organized and well written activity descriptions, ensuring that activity planning is integrated into annual workplan submissions and ongoing activity planning tools and processes.
• Oversee development and implementation of disciplined tracking systems to manage ongoing activity tasks, M&E, and learning, working with the Knowledge & Learning Manager to ensure after-action reviews and other activity lessons learned are applied to the design of new activities.

Staff and Program Management (Activity Implementation):

• Oversee technical activity implementation, periodically reviewing the activity lifecycle from a quality assurance perspective.
• Ensure that sub-activity teams are well-established with adequate representation from technical and non-technical (MEL, operations) staff, and that systems for monitoring, evaluation, and learning are in place.
• Ensure activity teams use DAI’s tools and systems for activity management, such as Office 365 (Outlook, SharePoint, Teams…) and TAMIS Pro.
• Ensure that program staff contribute regularly to Policy LINK’s Activity Calendar.
• Ensure that program staff work efficiently with operations colleagues to procure and pay for activity expenses in compliance with DAI and USAID policies and procedures, including timely submission of purchase requisitions/requests.
• Co-design and/or flag the need for new systems or tools to enable monitoring of activities to keep implementation on track at high quality and adopt corrective measures in a timely manner.
• In coordination with operations staff, monitor projected and actual spending on technical activity implementation across the Activity, helping revise activity budget inputs for the Policy LINK-wide budget pipeline upon request.
• Remotely supervise, mentor and evaluate a team of approximately eight (8) Regional Program Managers and Regional Program Coordinators, communicating clear performance goals and standards, offering regular performance feedback, and promptly resolving management issues.
• Represent the Agricultural Policy Activity team in meetings with external stakeholders, including USAID, to report out on activity progress and coordinate activity implementation with other implementing partners as appropriate.
• When required, recruit, supervise, and assess the technical performance of consultants and other short-term staff.
• Implement other relevant activities as may be assigned by the program leadership.

S/he will also contribute actively to recruitment efforts throughout the contracted period of performance by serving on agreed-upon interview panels, according to Policy LINK’s recruitment policy and process.