Country Director 239 views0 applications

International Alert is one of the world’s leading peacebuilding  organisations, with over 30 years of experience supporting communities,  advising governments, organisations and companies on how to build  peace. Alert works with people in conflict-affected and threatened areas  to make a positive difference for peace; to improve the substance and  implementation of international policies relevant to peacebuilding; and to  strengthen the peacebuilding sector.

We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: Country Director

Location: Nigeria

Job Purpose

• The purpose of this job is to lead Alert’s peacebuilding work in Nigeria, managing Alert’s Nigeria team and ensuring that projects deliver quality peacebuilding outcomes.
• Alert’s portfolio in the Nigeria includes programming and partnerships in the northeast and technical assistance in the northeast, northwest and southeast.
• The Nigeria Country Director manages programme staff based in Abuja and field offices, and oversees partners in the contexts in which we work, ensuring quality and impact of programme implementation, and compliance in finance and operations.
• The postholder will play a pivotal role in implementing the Nigeria country strategy.
• They will be responsible for expanding our work in the Nigeria in new thematic and geographic areas, and in ensuring financial and operational stability for the programme. The postholder is a member of International Alert’s Global Leadership Team, contributing to organisational thinking and priorities.

Duties and Responsibilities
Strategic Leadership:

• Lead the strategic development of Alert’s role in the Nigeria. Ensure the programme strategy is aligned to organisational priorities, adapted to local and regional dynamics, and informs strategic decisions.
• Lead the team to undertake context-specific conflict analysis and ensure that feeds into peacebuilding strategies.
• Keep informed of up to date analysis and changes in the context, as well as key events and opportunities within the policy community.
• Nurture collaborative relationships with a wide array of stakeholders including with government and political leaders, private sector, international agencies and institutions, civil society, national and international NGOs and key bilateral donors.
• As a member of Alert’s Global Leadership Team, contribute to organisational development, raising and engaging on organisational issues.

Programme Implementation:

• Ensure Alert’s programming in the Nigeria is high quality and delivers impactful and timely peacebuilding. Directly support project implementation and grant management where needed.
• Lead on implementing an influencing strategy for the Nigeria programme. Ensure visibility of Alert in various peacebuilding and NGO platforms, and work with the Advocacy and Communications team to deliver Alert’s influencing strategy.
• Ensure the programme has effective monitoring and evaluation plans; create the space for learning lessons and ensure effective knowledge management within the team and communication of impact and results to various audiences.
• Conduct scoping and monitoring visits, ensuring these visits lead to sound conflict and peace analysis that can inform programming options.
• Ensure a thorough process for identifying new local partners and invest strategically in partner accompaniment.
• Review and contribute to internal and external reports in a timely manner, highlighting programme impact and lessons learned. Contribute to Alert’s global knowledge base, sharing lessons learned and joining organisational events.

Fundraising:

• Lead the fundraising strategy, programme design and fundraising, including developing relationships with donors, pitching ideas and writing funding proposals and budgets in line with organisational policies.
• Ensure the sustainability and the growth of the Nigeria programme. Lead the identification of new areas of intervention for Alert’s programme in the Nigeria, thematically and geographically.
• Represent International Alert and liaise regularly with donors in country and the region.

Human Resources Management:

• Provide internal leadership and communicate the vision and mission of Alert in the Nigeria. Support staff to feel ownership of the organisation’s mission and our Nigeria strategy.
• Ensure the team is well staffed, with the appropriate mix of talents, knowledge and skills, gender equity and that the management structure enables staff to work effectively.
• Ensure all staff have clear roles and responsibilities.
• Line manage senior staff, providing support, encouragement and performance management.
• Provide opportunities for staff to learn and develop, and monitor staff’s progress in capacity, knowledge and insight as much as in performance and skill.
• Promote coordination and cross learning within the Nigeria team, regionally and organisationally.
• Hold staff accountable for responding to the requirements of other teams in the organisation.
• Ensure respect for Alert recruitment, retention and staff performance management policies.
• Ensure HR and administrative procedures comply with relevant laws, Alert global policy and donor-specific requirements.

Financial and Operational Management:

• Ensure compliance of budget holders with local legislation and procedures as well as donor regulations, in particular to ensure a ‘do no harm’ approach when contracting local partners and consultants.
• Oversee the programme budget and take corrective measures to minimise and/or fill identified gaps. Review actual and forecast expenditure and negotiate with partners and donors to make necessary adjustments to activity plans and budgets. Ensure that budgets and forecasts are realistic and accurate.
• Ensure that programme finance management policies and practices are in line with Alert’s global finance manual, ensure efficient use of financial resources by staff and partners, and minimize the risk of fraud.
• Following Alert’s security procedures, manage staff security in the Nigeria, including evacuation or relocation of staff, decisions to limit movements to/from or within certain areas. Ensure security manual and procedures are kept up to date and all Nigeria staff are informed about and respect Alert’s security procedures.

Contribute to Alert’s Organisational Development:

• Play an active role in the generation and dissemination of knowledge throughout the team and Alert as a whole.
• Contribute to the wider development of Alert as an organisation, raising and engaging on organisational issues, through engagement in policy development and staff development, regional strategic workshops and organisation-wide discussions.
• Take proactive steps to ensure that effective relationships are created and maintained with staff across the organisation.

Travel Requirements:

• The role is based in Abuja, Nigeria with frequent travel to field sites within the country and occasionally to Europe for organisational events and key stakeholder engagement.

Person Specification
Talents

• At Alert, we have introduced Talent Management to our business model as we believe talented people are crucial to the success of our work. We believe all individuals are talented and success comes in matching the right talents to the right roles.
• For this role, the skills, qualifications and experience listed below are important, but we believe that to be successful in this job you will have a talent for managing a mixed and challenging portfolio of projects whilst being entrepreneurial in developing new ideas and concepts into practical programmes on the ground.
• You will have highly fine-tuned analytical capacity, the ability to communicate well and build relations with a wide range of interlocutors.
• You will have excellent interpersonal skills and able to work at a high level in politically sensitive context. You will be adept at building consensus amongst people with strong and sometimes diverse opinions.

Essential Requirements:

• Experience implementing peacebuilding or conflict transformation work and working in conflict environments.
• Significant knowledge of the political, social and cultural context in the Nigeria, and of conflict dynamics in the region.
• Experience leading teams to implement and monitor programmes.
• Strong financial management experience, including managing grants and budgets.
• Proven track record of success in developing and implementing fundraising strategies to secure programme funding, including developing project ideas, managing relationships with donors, and writing proposals and budgets.
• Strong management skills, including ability to prioritise, plan, delegate and flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances.
• Strategic thinking ability, strong analytical skills, excellent at grasping complex ideas and communicating effectively.
• Excellent interpersonal communication, influencing and networking skills, with the ability to engage with a wide spectrum of actors, including community members, political and civil society figures, security forces, diplomatic missions and donors.
• Experience developing and maintaining strategic partnerships with other NGOs
• A high degree of emotional intelligence, open to learning, non-judgemental, able to remain impartial and understand different perspectives.
• Excellent writing skills, including experience of writing reports and analysis.
• Excellent written and spoken English.
• Existing permanent right to work in Nigeria.

Desirable Equipments:

• Experience working with commercial contract funding mechanisms.
• Experience working on the Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus.
• Existing strong relationships with major donors in Nigeria, such as FCDO, UN agencies, the EU and US government.
• Experience and networks in the broader Lake Chad Basin.
• Experience overseeing and contributing to qualitative and quantitative research.
• Fluency in Hausa and/or other languages spoken in northeast and northwest Nigeria.