MAFITA is a large-scale, six year youth employment programme operating in Nigeria’s northern states, funded by DFID and implemented by Adam Smith International in partnership with City & Guilds and Making Cents. Through a combination of innovative skills development and job creation interventions, MAFITA will support over 60,000 marginalised young people to find employment or become entrepreneurs by 2021.
MAFITA is a flagship youth employment programme for DFID and Adam Smith International. We are seeking an exceptional full-time Deputy Team Leader (DTL) to join the team from April 2017 and play a key role in delivering this exciting programme.
Position Overview
Reporting to the Team Leader, the DTL will play an important technical and strategic leadership role, supporting delivery of interventions across all four programme components. In addition, the DTL will hold line management responsibility for research, Monitoring & Results Measurement (MRM), and the stakeholder engagement unit. Together with the Team Leader, the DTL will represent MAFITA to external stakeholders and play a key role in building and managing effective partnerships.
Responsibilities
- Contributing to setting the programme’s strategy together with the DFID, and the Project Director and the Senior Management Team.
- Liaising closely with the Team Leader and providing strategic and technical input across the programme as needed.
- Line management of specific programme functions. Example responsibilities include:
- MRM: overseeing delivery and continual upgrading of MAFITA’s MRM system, with a focus on both rigorously proving programme results and continually improving performance, as well as value for money measurement.
- Research: effectively integrating research and evidence into programme interventions and the MRM system, running new analysis and diagnoses (e.g. assessing intervention opportunities in Jigawa state), ensuring research is accessible and useable by all programme components.
- Other functions as required.
- Inputs to strategic and operational planning. Leading design and delivery of new programme activities.
- Managing project resources to effectively and efficiently deliver outputs.
- Ensuring that the principles of the project are maintained in all activities.
- Identifying new partners for the project and together with the Team Leader in developing suitable offers of support.
- Together with the Project Managers, representing the project in the Team Leader’s absence.
Duration and Location
This is a full time position, commencing by April 2017 with an expected commitment of at least two years. The DTL will be based in the Kano project office with some travel to the focal states (Kaduna, Katsina, and Jigawa), as well as Abuja. If based outside Kano, there will be scope for the selected candidate to make periodic visits home.
Selection criteria
- A demonstrated track record in a field relevant to the duties and accountabilities of the position
- An undergraduate (and preferably postgraduate) degree in a relevant field
- Experience in international development for a consultancy firm, development agency or NGO
- Strong technical experience in at least one of the following areas (experience in more than one area is desirable):
- Youth employment / empowerment
- Skills development / general education
- Local economic development / job creation / value chains and market systems development
- Substantial experience in effectively managing complex, multi-stakeholder projects or large organisations
- Experience in designing and managing project-centred monitoring and evaluation work
- Preferably experience living and working in Nigeria or elsewhere in Africa
- Fluency in English, knowledge of Hausa is desirable
- Excellent interpersonal skills, communications and writing skills
About MAFITA
MAFITA is a 6-year DFID-funded programme that aims to improve the livelihoods of marginalised young people in Kano, Kaduna, Katsina, and from 2017, Jigawa. MAFITA sets out to enable over 60,000 marginalised young people – with a particular emphasis on women and marginalised adolescent girls and Almajirai – to find full time skilled employment or self-employment. Commencing with a design phase in April 2015, MAFITA is currently in its pilot intervention phase which runs until April 2018. Following the pilot phase, MAFITA will run three years of full-scale implementation between 2018 and 2021. MAFITA’s pilot interventions include:
- Component 1 (Community Skills Development Centres – COSDECs): MAFITA will support the re-modelling of business apprenticeship training centres in the target states. The COSDECs will be designed to operate as a ‘One-Stop-Shop’ skills delivery facility offering foundational skills, vocational, entrepreneurial, life skills training, incubation facilities to the beneficiaries, as well as a community-based governance structure.
- Component 2 (Apprenticeships): MAFITA will also champion skill delivery mechanism in the informal sector that will be tailored to suit the specific circumstances of the marginalised youth. Technical and vocational education and training (TVET) facilities will be used to train master craftspeople (MCPs), who will then educate beneficiaries through apprenticeship schemes.
- Component 3 (TVET): MAFITA will support selected technical colleges to build their capacities in terms of human resources and equipment to meet the minimum requirement of the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) to be able to deliver relevant and quality skills delivery at level 3 of the national qualification framework for MAFITA beneficiaries.
- Component 4 (LED and MSE support): Improving local economic development to ensure demand for target beneficiaries in self- or wage-employment. Access to Finance: MAFITA will facilitate the design of effective access to finance strategies that will help micro-lenders deliver financial products that serve beneficiaries and micro and small enterprises (MSEs). Access to Business Development Services: MAFITA will support graduates of the training programmes that opt for self-employment to develop their ideas into viable start-ups. Training to Work: MAFITA will facilitate the provision of information on job opportunities and requirements, simplifying the access to the labour market for graduates seeking employment.
ASI’s presence in Nigeria
ASI’s regional office for West Africa is Abuja and there is also a substantial presence across the northern states, including four major programmes operating from our Kano office and project offices in MAFITA’s other focal states. 18 ASI Managers, 100 other staff and over 200 Associates work in Nigeria where we deliver projects for DFID, EU and the World Bank. Our in-country positioning allows us to be as close to our clients as possible and to leverage existing platforms and networks to deliver high quality programmes. We also operate a shared-operations function in Nigeria which is responsible for security, operations and logistics across the programme portfolio.
Living and working in northern Nigeria
MAFITA is a close-knit team of over 30 full-time Nigerian and international team members, most of them based in the project’s Kano headquarters. Kano is Nigeria’s second biggest city with a history of over 1000 years. Reminders of its past can be found in the old city with its UNESCO World Heritage city wall and traditional indigo dye pits. Recent news headlines have brought the attention of the general public to the spill-overs from the fading Boko Haram insurgency in north-eastern Nigeria or the on-going clashes between Muslim and Christian in the middle belt. While there is a heightened security alert and movement outside of Kano can sometimes be restricted, daily life in Kano is re-awakening. Leisure offers include a good selection of Indian, Chinese, Lebanese and local restaurants and bars, West Africa’s oldest golf course, one of Africa’s best football teams, polo, football pitches, quirky markets and a modern mall with a movie theatre and a well-equipped South African grocery store.
Job Location
Kano, , Nigeria
More Information
- Job City Kano
