Palladium

MEL Regional Manager, Africa

About Palladium:

Palladium is a global company working to design, develop and deliver positive impact on the lives and livelihoods of people around the globe; broaden access to health, water, power, and infrastructure; build enduring, sustainable, and transformative institutions and market systems to address global challenges; and conserve the natural world. We operate in over 90 countries and have a workforce of 4,000 talented, motivated, and diverse staff of all religions, races, languages, and gender identities. 

This Opportunity:

Palladium is recruiting for an experienced Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning (MEL) Regional Manager with a passion for tackling climate change to join our UK PACT team in Africa. The UK PACT programme aims to improve the effectiveness of key institutions (public, private and civil society) in partner countries so that they can deliver accelerated emission reductions and raise the ambition of their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) targets. Specifically, the programme will deliver the following results:

• An increase in the capacity and capability of partner institutions (national, sub-national and civil society) to deliver enhanced and accelerated climate actions
• An increase in in-country buy-in to urgently facilitate low-carbon development

UK PACT is a complex, multi-country and multi-sector programme, which delivers impact through a combination of grant funding for longer-term capacity-building projects and the rapid mobilisation of short-term expertise for targeted skills and knowledge transfer.

Location:

The position will be based in Kenya, Nigeria or South Africa.

You and Your Career:

If you are a problem-solver, collaborator, and doer, and you have expertise in designing and managing MEL strategies and have experience in gathering, organising, and analysing large amounts of quantitative and qualitative data across multiple countries and sectors/intervention area, we are interested in hearing from you.

We are a learning organisation and provide growth opportunities from the start. We pride ourselves on giving you the freedom, resources, and guidance to chart a fulfilling career!

Reporting Lines:

• The position will report to the UK PACT programme MEL Manager, in Coordination with the UK PACT Regional Africa lead, and will also be expected to contribute to cross-programme MEL activities as needed.

Primary Roles and Responsibilities:

The UK PACT MEL Regional Manager will be responsible for managing the monitoring of results for the Africa region and aspects of learning across the relevant country and regional funds. The position will be based in one of the UK PACT focus countries in the region with some travel expected.

The MEL Regional Manager will be responsible for the implementation of the monitoring and learning activities across all country funds in the region, currently covering Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa. They will lead the implementation of the UK PACT monitoring plan and learning framework, ensuring programme level guidance and tools are adapted and applied appropriately at the country (and regional) fund level. This will involve facilitating annual strategy testing and theory of change refresh sessions; ensuring that country fund MEL systems generate measurable results and impact that feed into programme level reporting; ensuring timely and high-quality reporting from each country fund; supporting learning and adaptation processes for decision making; and providing technical backstopping support to country teams.

Specifically, the UK PACT MEL Regional Manager will:

Monitoring & Learning Strategy Development, Technical Expertise, and Implementation

• With the support of the central UK PACT MEL Manager, adapt and apply programme level guidance and frameworks, including Theory of Change (ToC) and results framework (logframe), at the country (and regional fund) level, ensuring these reflect country fund level specificities and needs
• Lead facilitation of country and sector level ToC development sessions in Latin America, and annual refreshes
• Drive and be ultimately responsible for quarterly and annual data collection, quality assurance and reporting of results from across relevant regional and country funds.
• Advise UK PACT Implementing Partners (grantees) on project reporting (technical and results), ensuring reporting meets FCDO and programme requirements, providing a coordination and quality assurance function
• Assist UK PACT Implementing Partners and UK PACT team colleagues in country in monitoring and learning activities that include applying assessment tools, designing case studies, implementing capacity building strategies and providing training, assisting with data analysis and presentation, developing data-informed action plans and other technical assistance as requested
• Facilitate processes to ensure learning is identified and captured across all areas of the programme, and fed back into strategic decision making to facilitate adaptive management
• Support in identifying and advising on the potential to extend, scale up or replicate successful projects, and enhance strategic portfolio development to deliver impact, through provision of relevant research, evidence and learning pieces

Stakeholder Relationships

• Maintain a strong working relationship with the client, working collaboratively to ensure MEL frameworks and systems are relevant and tailored to individual country and regional fund contexts, and providing insight into the delivery details of the programme in an open and transparent manner
• Provide a key support function to in-country teams for all MEL issues and bottlenecks
• Be responsible for flowing down monitoring and reporting excellence to grantees via the country teams, including provision of guidance, tools coaching and training where necessary to deliver MEL successfully

Key Competencies and Professional Expertise/Competencies Preferred:

• Demonstrable experience in designing and managing MEL strategies, approaches and plans – including ToC and logframes – to enable and support adaptive management and learning in large climate and development programmes (at least 5 years)
• Strong experience in gathering, organising, and analysing large amounts of quantitative and qualitative data across multiple countries and sectors/intervention areas (at least 3 years)
• Technical understanding and knowledge of climate mitigation themes, including but not limited to energy, transport, low-carbon policy, nature-based solutions and green finance
• Demonstrated experience in knowledge management and dissemination.
• Strong stakeholder management and engagement skills, including capacity development related to MEL approaches
• Strong reporting skills, with proven ability to engage with and manage both donor client formal reporting and ad-hoc requests
• Excellent communication skills, including demonstrated ability to capture and communicate results and impact in a clear, compelling and cogent manner
• Knowledge and understanding of the local contexts in the priority countries, including socio-economic context and development challenges and priorities
• An ability to see both the big (strategic) picture, identifying opportunities for innovation and value addition for UK PACT, as well as keeping alert to programme delivery risks linked to the monitoring and learning aspect of the programme
• Highly collaborative and committed to close working and open communication with colleagues in post and in the UK, and other UK PACT partners
• A high degree of personal resilience, flexibility and ability to work under evolving circumstances
• Professional fluency in English, both written and spoken. Knowledge of other regional languages a bonus but not essential

Equity, Diversity & Inclusion - Palladium is committed to embedding equity, diversity, and inclusion into everything we do. We welcome applications from all sections of society and actively encourage diversity to drive innovation, creativity, success, and good practice. We positively welcome and seek to ensure we achieve diversity in our workforce; and that all job applicants and employees receive equal and fair treatment regardless of their background or personal characteristics. These include: (but are not limited to) socio-economic background, age, race, gender identity and expression, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, nationality, veteran, marital or Indigenous status. 

Should you require any adjustments or accommodations to be made due to a disability or you are a neurodivergent individual or for any other circumstance, please email our team at accessibility@thepalladiumgroup.com and we will be in touch to discuss.

Safeguarding - We define Safeguarding as “the preventative action taken by Palladium to protect our people, clients and the communities we work with from harm”. We are committed to ensuring that all children and adults who come into contact with Palladium are treated with respect and are free from abuse. All successful candidates will be subject to an enhanced selection process including safeguarding-focused interviews and a rigorous due diligence process.