Job Summary:
The Senior Monitoring Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Manager, Coffee Africa is tasked with providing leadership across the MEL function for TechnoServe’s Coffee Practice, ensuring the foundational building blocks for managing to impact are in place. The Senior MEL Manager supports innovation in monitoring and evaluation of specific interventions, providing strategic and technical oversight for our coffee practice in Africa. The Senior MEL manager will manage three direct reports.
The Senior MEL Manager position requires strong technical MEL expertise, but is also fundamentally a leadership position. Success in the role requires effective communication with senior staff, an ability to build and manage relationships remotely, strong project management skill, and strategic thinking.
Program Overview:
The Coffee Africa portfolio includes more than 6 programs across Sub-Saharan Africa and Puerto Rico. The programs are large scale with multiple MEL staff across several countries. The position will collaborate closely with Coffee Practice leaders to develop and advance the MEL strategy. The position will also collaborate with the Global Impact team and ensure insights from MEL feed into organizational learning. This position sits within TechnoServe’s Coffee Practice Africa and will report to the Global Coffee Sustainability Director. The position will be Remote (GMT - GMT+3), with East Africa as the preferred location.
Primary Functions & Responsibilities:
Provide leadership within the coffee practice :(40% LOE):
• Work closely with the global Impact team to develop detailed indicator guidance that are inline with TechnoServe standards and allows for seamless internal and external reporting.
• Advance MEL best practices, in line with TechnoServe’s global standards, and ensure successful adoption across the coffee portfolio. This includes analysis guidelines, database standards, monitoring dashboards, and data collection tools.
• Ensure data quality practices such as data verification, back checking, and other data quality routines are thoroughly integrated into all projects.
• Facilitate the analysis and dissemination of findings for Coffee Practice and play a leading role in developing a practice area learning agenda.
• Collaborate with country coffee teams to systematically improve the structures, processes and resources that enable application of good MEL practices, including standardization of tools and technology use,
• Coordinate the planning of MEL activities, storing of MEL documents, and tracking of MEL deliverables.
• Manage the hiring process country MEL staff.
• Manage Regional MEL and PIMA team.
• Lead Corporate Measurement annual impact reporting from the Africa coffee programs and present the results to the global impact team for review.
Manage the coffee practice digital monitoring system - PIMA:(30% LOE):
• Develop and oversee PIMA strategy (agronomy and wet mil) by adopting appropriate technology, setting goals and priorities and determining actions to achieve specified goals through resource mobilization
• Define strategy to design, test and roll-out new features in the PIMA system to track performance of field teams and the efficiency of program interventions
• Support program teams in adopting PIMA technologies (training, monitor usage etc)
• Create yearly plans aligned with Coffee Practice goals and objectives
Provide direct technical assistance to projects (20% LOE):
• Lead the development, management, analysis, reporting, and sharing across the practice of R&BL assessments.
• Lead the development of Focus Group protocols and trainings
• Lead internal evaluations or special studies; Eg seedling distribution, stumping incentives, cool farm tool, farm inventory survey, living income surveys etc.
Support the management of impact evaluation within the Coffee Practice (10% LOE):
• Assist in selecting the impact evaluation team in line with donor requirements
• Contribute to the design of the impact evaluation by reviewing survey tools and training materials to ensure alignment with project KPIs
• Review deliverables from the impact evaluation team, including regenerative practice assessments, demo plot yield surveys, and annual audit reports
Basic Qualifications:
• A bachelor’s degree in a relevant field, such as economics, public health, business administration, statistics, evaluation, data science, or other; and a minimum of 10 years of experience designing, managing and implementing multidisciplinary and results-based MEL systems in an international context.
• Or a master’s degree and 7 years of similar experience.
• Expertise in evaluating projects that are focused on agriculture
• Experience with project management systems that allow for effectively planning, tracking, and ensuring quality for complex projects.
• Background in a range of monitoring and evaluation methodologies, including both quantitative and qualitative research approaches
• Hands-on capacity-building experience, including development of training materials, as well as delivering actual training sessions.
• Fluent in STATA programming language
Required Languages: Excellent oral, written, and interpersonal skills, including fluency in English.
Travel: Travel up to 20%
Preferred Qualifications:
• Experience with mobile-based data collection tools (ODK, CommCare, or similar), databases (SalesForce or similar), and dashboards (Looker or similar).
• Experience managing large data sets, migrating data between platforms, performing merges, and creating automations.
• Experience with user centered design, or other design frameworks for developing technology solution.
• Experience integrating gender into project approach
• Experience delegating responsibility and thinking creatively about how to use the available resources to achieve the best results
Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:
• Proven ability to translate research, methodologies, and data into accessible formats for colleagues with non-technical backgrounds
• A commitment to developing and promoting MEL staff skills.
• Outstanding written and oral communication skills and a demonstrated track record of producing high quality, well-written deliverables
• A demonstrated ability to effectively multi-task and manage projects, including staffing, work plans, deliverables, timelines and budgets
• A demonstrated ability to coordinate and communicate effectively and diplomatically with a range of external and internal colleagues including donors, partners and senior and junior team members across diverse cultures
• An ability to value and respect voices of staff at all levels, external stakeholders, and the men and women we work with.
Supervisory Responsibilities: The Senior MEL Manager will supervise a team of 3 Regional MEL staff including the PIMA manager.
We encourage all qualified individuals who share TechnoServe’s vision of improving the lives of others through proven business solutions to apply.
With our commitment to diversity, we are proud to be an equal opportunity employer and affirmative action employer and do not discriminate on the basis of gender, race, color, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, HIV/AIDS status, protected veteran status, disability and all other protected classes.
We are also proud of our commitment to protecting staff, partners, and beneficiaries from abuse and exploitation and thoroughly vet all final candidates through rigorous background and reference checks.
If you have a disability that affects your ability to use our online system to apply for a position at TechnoServe please contact the Human Resources at recruitment@tns.org or call +1 202 785 4515.
About TechnoServe:
At TechnoServe, we believe that everyone deserves the opportunity to build a better life. For over 50 years, we have given smallholder farmers and entrepreneurs the skills, connections, and confidence to lift themselves out of poverty. We leverage the power of markets and the private sector to create sustainable economic growth to benefit people and the planet. Our unique mix of business solutions, deep knowledge of local contexts, and data-driven insights is helping to fight poverty across Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
TechnoServe staff are local–95% are from the countries in which they work. We put a high premium on collaboration and entrepreneurship. We hold ourselves and each other to the highest standards of integrity and transparency. And we focus on delivering lasting impact for our mission.
