Senior Program Officer 244 views0 applications

The African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC) is a leading Africa-based, African-led, international research institution headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya. APHRC generates and supports the use of evidence for meaningful action to improve the lives of all Africans through:

· Research that emphasizes health and wellbeing;

· Capacity strengthening that deepens the skills of African researchers, scholars and institutions within the continent; and

· Policy engagement and communication that supports greater influence of evidence in policy – and decision-making across sub-Saharan Africa.

The APHRC seeks to recruit a Senior Program Officer within the Research Capacity Strengthening (RCS) Division, to work on a large scale initiative whose goals are to transform the Research and Development (R&D) ecosystem in Africa through:

1) Designing and running a matching service between universities/research institutes based in all the regions of Africa and funding agencies for R&D.

2) Configuring and running Africa-wide platform-based capacity-building for universities/research institutes based in all of Africa’s regions, to increase their capabilities to do more and perform better on a sustained basis along the spectrum of implementation research.

3) Designing and developing prototypes in selected countries, to link country decision-making systems with national research systems for adoption/scale-up of R&D innovations.

4) Strengthening the African innovation-research ecosystem by developing and deploying connectors – platforms that have cross-cutting benefits to researchers and decision makers.

The overall responsibility of the Senior Program Officer is to support the management of a large-scale capacity strengthening initiative by leading and coordinating specific components of the initiative and supporting the overall Program Manager in the day-to-day running of the initiative.

Responsibilities:

· Coordinate the implementation of specified activities from the overall work plan. This entails reporting and tracking project implementation and expenditure for the assigned activities;

· Participate in specific program activities including desk reviews, in depth analysis, partner mapping and capacity assessments;

· Coordinate submissions of proposals for support by potential grantees in academic/research institutes from all over Africa and organize high quality reviews of the submissions;

· Organize capacity strengthening activities in diverse areas and for diverse participants within the African R&D ecosystem;

· Work with grantees to ensure the execution of assigned research capacity strengthening and evaluation projects to ensure timely implementation of activities;

· Coordinate outreach activities to various stakeholders including funding agencies, academic/research institutes and national/regional/continental policy making bodies;

· Draft technical reports from the various activities;

· Participate in learning forums about the initiative, sharing lessons and findings with appropriate audiences;

· Represent the Center in high- level national and regional forums including relevant technical working groups and expert committees on implementation research and research capacity strengthening;

· Support recruitment efforts for consultants and other program staff;

· Contribute to grant writing and fundraising for the program; and

· Publicize the initiative to relevant audiences.

Qualifications and Experience:

· Master’s degree in a Developmental Research or Public Policy related professional area with a minimum of 7 years’ post-qualification experience.

· Experience managing large scale (multi-year, multi-team, multi-country) projects preferably in research, research capacity strengthening, or policy and advocacy.

· Good understanding of the Higher Education/ R&D/ Policy landscape in sub-Saharan Africa.

· Experience working in a research or academic institution or a policy making body in sub-Saharan Africa.

· Experience conducting implementation research will be an added advantage.

· Excellent written communication and presentation skills.

· Experience in grant writing.

· Excellent interpersonal and organizational skills and ability to work in a culturally diverse team.

· Bilingual language skills (French and English) will be an added advantage.