Job for Farm Africa at Monitoring and Evaluation Coordinator in Nairobi Kenya June 2014
Farm Africa is a different kind of charity, working to end hunger and bring prosperity to rural eastern Africa. Our sustainable, community-led projects help Africa’s farmers feed Africa’s people – for the long-term.
We want to double our impact by 2015 and are looking for talented staff to help us achieve this. We can reach more farmers by being experts in our field, pushing boundaries, working flexibly and sharing knowledge.
Job Title: Monitoring and Evaluation Coordinator
Reports To: Country Director
Staff Reporting to Post holder: None
Location: Nairobi with regular domestic travel and potential for some international
Duration & Hours: Fixed term, full time
Purpose of the Role: The Monitoring & Evaluation Coordinator is a technical post responsible for ensuring the consistent and high quality collection, use and reporting of results data across the programme, throughout the project cycle.
The post holder will ensure that all projects develop and implement appropriate M&E plans, based on robust logical frameworks that are suitably updated to reflect changing situations.
The post holder will develop appropriate tools and systems to support field teams to use robust evidence of project results as a vital input to management decision making.
The M&E Coordinator will provide critical analysis and technical input to project evaluation processes, ensuring Farm Africa can maximise the learning potential of all evaluations.
The role also acts as an interface between the Kenya and London offices on issues relating to results measurement and reporting, working closely with the Head of Programme Quality and Impact to ensure continual improvement of organisational systems and processes.
Key Tasks and Responsibilities
- Coordinate and facilitate the development of appropriate project level M&E systems and plans and provide technical guidance and leadership to managers in implementing them
- Take responsibility for ensuring the Kenya programme’s full compliance with donor and organisational requirements for reporting results, and ensure that project teams are familiar with these
- Coordinate the implementation of baseline surveys and evaluation exercises
- Build capacity of local communities, partners and staff on data collection, management, analysis and results-based monitoring principles
- Coordinate the Quarterly Report process, providing a ‘quality assurance’ function to ensure that data reported by all projects is relevant, accurate and verifiable
- Ensure regular and sufficient communication with other country programmes and London on overall M&E development and coordinate and cascade any learning that will enhance M&E activities at Country Office and project level.
- Work with Head of Programme Quality and Impact to develop tools and methods for capturing and documenting lessons learned from projects implementation and ensure that future programming reflects such lessons
- Ensure that project lessons are shared with communities and partners, in collaboration with other M&E staff, policy advisor and communication officer
- Ensure that all projects have baselines in place within the first 3 months of implementation
- Work to ensure project teams are able to disaggregate data by gender and age, where appropriate, by devising and disseminating simple data collection methods.
- Ensure periodic reports produced from each of the projects have case studies, success stories and lessons learnt so that there is continuous information that will feed into the overall learning process.
- Contribute to the design of new projects, providing quality control function for log frames, ensuring that proposed targets are SMART and that indicators will provide data that can easily be aggregated for institution-wide results reporting.
- Coordinate with Project Coordinators and senior managers to adequately budget for and utilize resources to undertake M&E activities.
Education, qualifications & other knowledge
Essential
- Relevant academic qualification in numerate/ analytical subject (e.g. statistics, economics, econometrics, applied social science)
- Knowledge of the development & policy environment in Kenya
- Demonstrable knowledge of rural development issues in Kenya
Desirable
- Academic qualification relevant to Farm Africa’s areas of operation (preferably agriculture)
- Awareness of broader trends in international donor landscape, relating to M&E and results-monitoring
Experience
Essential
- Demonstrable understanding of monitoring and evaluation principles and practices, including the application of the log frame approach
- Proven experience conducting quantitative and qualitative field research and analysis
- Experience in synthesising data and drafting clear written reports/ briefings
- Proven experience in training and capacity building in M&E practices
Desirable
- Previous NGO work experience in rural development
- Experience conducting field research in a rural context
- Communicating technical information to ‘lay’ audiences
Skills & abilities
Essential
- Strong communication skills (verbal & written)
- Good interpersonal skills and ability to work effectively as part of a team
- Ability to provide challenge and critique others in a constructive and open manner
- Fluency in written and spoken English
- Methodical, thorough approach with attention to detail
Desirable
- Managing partner relationships
- Using evidence for fundraising and policy influencing
- Capacity building of organisations and individuals
Values
Farm Africa seeks to employ those who believe, as we do, that farmers can and will play a key role in achieving long-term rural prosperity in Africa and who seek to deliver on those beliefs by:
- being experts in our field, delivering insightful/impactful evidence-based solutions
- pushing boundaries, being creative with new and old solutions
- acting for the long-term, building relationships and delivering long-lasting change for farmers
- working flexibly, taking advantage of the most effective solutions, whether from the communities, private sector or government
- sharing knowledge with others, reaching more farmers than we do alone, ensuring effective technologies are widely accessed.
How to Apply
If you would like to apply please submit your CV, salary history and one-page application letter with the reference being the post title in the subject line to: kenyarecruitment@farmafrica.org by 17:00 on 25 June 2014.
Incomplete applications will not be considered.
Please note that due to the high volume of applications we receive we are only able to contact shortlisted applicants.