Programme Manager – Restless Development (Salary UGX 110m Annually)

Job Title:   Programme Manager    

Organisation: Restless Development

Duty Station:  Kampala, Uganda

Salary: UGX 110,754,153 Gross per annum

Preferred start date: March 2024

Length of contract: 2 Years

Reports to: Hub Director

Direct Reports: Five (5)  In-country programme coordinator/team leads  from Uganda, Sierra Leone, Zambia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.

Geographic Scope: 15 intervention countries, 14 in Africa, and 1 in Europe. (Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Cameroon, Tunisia, Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, Southern Sudan, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Belgium)

Thematic Expertise: Climate Change and Gender with a focus on economic empowerment of girls

About Restless Development:

Restless Development is a global non-profit agency. We support the collective power of young leaders to create a better world. We are independently registered and governed in nine countries (India, Nepal, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda, UK, USA, Zambia and Zimbabwe) bound together by our vision for youth power. We run youth-led programmes to tackle the issues that young people care about the most –  We also run the Youth Collective – a growing network of over 4000 local youth civil society groups and organisations in 185 countries. We are committed to creating an agency that walks the talk on power shifting, using the power shifting checklist, both internally and externally.

About the Programme:

The four-year ‘Youth Voices Lab’ (YVL) programme seeks to create a more youth responsive and inclusive society. The programme focuses, primarily, on interventions to support young Africans in the continent and the diaspora in Europe in their journey towards increased engagement, connection, and empowerment, and interventions that support enablers/decision-makers (AU and EU, governments, CSOs, Corporates, others) in their journey to develop equal partnerships with young people and to create the conditions to address the key needs and priorities of the younger generation. In turn, these outcomes contribute to the availability and implementation of budgeted and relevant youth-responsive policy frameworks (AU-EU cooperation plans/partnerships, strategies, others), leading to a more youth-responsive and inclusive society in which the aspirations of existing and future development frameworks are delivered, leaving no one behind.

The programme is driven by a consortium of five (5) partners; OXFAM (Lead), Restless Development, SEARCH for Common Ground ( SEARCH), Youth Makers Hub (YMH),and Makesense Africa, with in-country programming in 15 intervention countries , and youth and stakeholders engagement outside the intervention countries across Africa and Europe.

The programme has two interrelated objectives:

• Young people and youth-led groups and networks effectively advocate for their concerns and priorities at various levels, including local, national, continental and cross-continental, and around the AU-EU partnership in Africa.
• Institutions, governments, partners, and corporations are more youth centered and meaningfully collaborate with youth in the development and implementation of their policies/decision-making moments and spaces.

Job Summary:   The program manager is the ultimate person responsible for the overall efficient implementation of the programme for Restless Development, ensuring objectives are met, budget is spent appropriately and results are achieved. The programme manager will act as a liaison between consortium partners, Restless Development hubs executing the programme, and the leadership team.

The programme manager will lead a diverse and geographically dispersed team to ensure overall strategic programme delivery and coherence across Restless Development’s countries of implementation, as well as contribute to global learning across the agency and establish strategic links between the Youth Voices Lab and the Youth Collective. She/he will also engage with partners and youth networks in other programme countries (Nigeria, Cameroon, Senegal, Burundi, Burkina Faso, South Sudan, Kenya, Tunisia, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Ghana) to guarantee strategy coherence, cross-learning, and collaborative advocacy.

Key Duties and Responsibilities:

Leadership and Programme Performance.

• On behalf of Restless Development, ensure that the AU-EU Youth Voices Lab performs well and achieves overall consortium success.
• Provide strategic, technical and operational oversight for programme implementation.
• Lead planning, coordination and communication efforts within the wider consortium, serving as the primary point of contact.
• Provide quality control oversight for the programme, and ensure adherence to set objectives, indicators, and targets.
• Oversee the design and implementation of monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) frameworks, ensuring continuous improvement and accountability.
• Conduct regular reviews to assess program effectiveness and identify areas for enhancement.
• Share program learning across Restless Development, enabling the agency’s learning and growth agenda while also allowing us to test and prove the value of youth leadership.
• Lead efforts for programme scale up, and integration with complimentary   AU-EU  initiatives.

Coordination and Collaboration.

• Ensure effective coordination with Restless Development in country programme leads, and consortium staff at all levels , fostering effective communication and collaboration.
• Manage monthly and quarterly strategic reviews, managing complex information flows from across the consortium.
• Develop a technical support framework for the project ensuring access  to specialised support across Restless Development.
• Collaborate with the communication team to increase the visibility of programming outcomes.
• Lead engagement  with diverse stakeholders including AU-EU youth engagement bodies, government bodies, civil society, and local partners to strengthen collaboration and garner support.
• Coordinate internal and external platforms for effective knowledge sharing, learning and networking.

Financial management and compliance:

• Lead strategic direction and support for operation  and financial aspects of the program.
• Lead rigorous budget management by tracking programming spending, ensure accurate reporting and managing variance in collaboration with  the finance team.
• Review periodic financial reports and ensure they are aligning well with the narrative project reports.
• Provide feedback where necessary from both internal and external audits as may be necessary.
• Provide strategic oversight  for  the Youth Voices Third Party Funding Mechanism (YV-TPFM)  in collaboration with the consortium partners, grantmakers and finance teams.
• Ensure compliance with key donor requirements, including sign-posting to standards and donor requirements, risk management review and reporting, and supporting preparation for due diligence, audits or donor visits as required
• Support efforts to identify and mobilize potential donors and funding mechanisms in order to broaden and strengthen the program’s scope and outcomes.

Other

• You may occasionally be required to work on weekends and/or public holidays, for which time off in lieu will be granted.
• Other duties as required.

Qualifications, Skills and Experience:

Essential

• Experience leading and managing teams, including personnel development and capability management.
• Demonstrated ability to lead large-scale strategic programmes across countries and global regions.
• Understanding of a matrix style of working and the ability to build meaningful relationships across the global agencies.
• Outcome focused and proven ability to think strategically and plan, prioritise and organise a team’s work to meet organisation-wide strategic objectives.
• An eye for detail and a concern for accuracy, together with the ability to keep sight of the broad picture.
• Experience of writing technical documents for internal/external purposes, and delivering presentations to colleagues, donors and stakeholders.
• Experience in continental and cross-continental level advocacy.
• Fluent in English – both written and verbal

Desirable

• Past experience on implementing an EU funded programme.
• Good, up to date knowledge of youth participation approaches.
• Good knowledge of global, regional, and country-level frameworks like the 2030 agenda for sustainable development, UN youth strategy , the African youth charter  and the EU youth strategy among others.
• Past experience of working with AU/EU youth engagement structures and frameworks.
• Demonstrated experience in financial management and budget oversight.

Restless Development is an Equal Opportunities employer and welcomes applications from all sectors of the community. Restless Development will ensure that no applicant or staff member receives less favourable treatment on the grounds of gender, sexual orientation, marital status, social status, caste, race, ethnic origin, religious belief, age, HIV status, disability, or any other factor that cannot be shown to be relevant to performance.

How to Apply:

Please submit your CV (2-3 Pages) and a cover letter (using no more than 750 words) that provides tangible examples of how your skills, knowledge and experience will support your ability to perform the key priorities outlined in the above job description  (For more tips on how to apply visit our website here.)

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Deadline: 21^st February 2024