Botswana Country Program Assistant 131 views7 applications

Position Required: Botswana Country Program Assistant

Overview

The USAID Southern Africa Trade and Investment Hub (USAID TradeHub) engages with partners across the region to increase sustainable economic growth, global export competitiveness, and trade in targeted Southern African countries. USAID TradeHub supports these objectives by (a) increasing exports from Southern African countries to South Africa, (b) increasing exports from targeted Southern African countries to the United States (under the African Growth and Opportunity Act [AGOA]), (c) boosting capital and technology flows from South Africa to other Southern African countries, and (d) providing targeted trade facilitation support to Zambia. The USAID TradeHub works with market actors to identify and resolve enterprise constraints and to implement sustainable solutions through market-based trade and investment facilitation services. The USAID TradeHub’s programming closely reflects the U.S. Government’s partnership with Southern African private enterprises, U.S. government agencies, Southern African Development Community (SADC) member states, local and regional trade associations, and other development partners. The USAID TradeHub partners with the USAID Bilateral Missions through the Regional Mission in the successful delivery of its objectives.

Objectives and Duties:

The Country Program Assistant for Botswana will work closely with the Country Representative and the USAID TradeHub’s technical teams on the management and implementation of work plan activities to achieve key results. S/he will be responsible for providing administrative, communications, event management, payment requisitions, report writing, budgeting, monitoring and evaluation support to the USAID TradeHub’s technical components: S/he will also support the country representative by supporting activity data collection, analysis, and entry using the Technical Administrative Management Information System (TAMIS) platform.

S/he will support information management and reporting as well as perform administrative tasks assigned by the country representative. S/he will:

• Support data entry by compiling field reports for programmatic activities and reporting in TAMIS.
• Draft reports or other communication products for review by the country representative/technical staff.
• Provide coordination support between the Pretoria staff on the communications, monitoring and evaluation teams.
• Work with Communication team in organizing webinars, zoom and other virtual meetings, coordinate the USAID TradeHub events
• Undertake technical literature reviews, compilation of country profiles, and sector summaries.
• Attend technical meetings and take minutes of deliberations, including follow-up communications.
• Assist in conducting performance reflection, learning, and review meetings with technical leads.
• Make appointments and maintain a group calendar coordinating with USAID TradeHub Pretoria Office.
• Handle calls, mail, and electronic communications for the country representative.
• Keep office supplies in stock, ensure that staff have data, work with vendors, and ensure timely payments
• Keep the records of the timesheet and submit them timely for payroll processing.
• Provide support to all travelers in/out of the country including relevant information required for coordination of country clearance processing and dissemination of field activity information to respective countries for bilateral mission collaboration and participation, hotel reservations, airport pick up, and travel logistics.
• Follow up with the country representative to submit technical and trip reporting deliverables, prepare weekly activities and events tracker and ensures compliant with USAID regulations, project policies, practices and regulations.
• Oversee and manage the physical office space management in the country. Make sure that office facilities are clean, orderly and safe.
• Monitor aspects of procurement in the country ensuring compliance with policies and standards. Oversees vendor relations, negotiates service contract agreements and maintains accurate documentation. Ensure that all items are invoiced and paid on time.
• Work closely with Human Resources (HR) and Administration Manager to maintain local staff personnel files, leave and any HR updates, ensuring that the country employee manual is consistent with policies and local laws.
• Maintain project petty cash as per DAI guidelines.
• Maintains inventory records, property allocation and conducts physical checks for accuracy of country office.
• Other duties as assigned by the Country Representative and the Portfolio Manager.

Qualifications & Skills:

• Bachelor’s degree in business administration, development, economics, or similar field
• Monitoring and Evaluation (M&) qualification will be of advantage.
• Excellent IT and research skills.
• Two or more years of experience in project monitoring and evaluation.
• Experience with USAID- or other donor-funded programs preferred.
• Sound analytical skills.
• Good organizational and multi-tasking skills.
• Strong writing abilities.
• Familiarity with Microsoft Word, Excel, Project Management  and powerpoint required.
• Fluent English required.

Supervisory Responsibilities:

• The Country Program Assistant will have no supervisory responsibilities.

Base of Operations and Report: 

• The Country Program Assistant for Botswana will be based in Gaborone and will report to the Country Representative for Botswana.

Applications for this position will be reviewed on a rolling basis. Interested candidates should submit their CV to [email protected] before September 28,2020. Only short-listed candidates will be contacted.