Context of the Role

 Ethiopia is one of our key markets and we are in the process of expanding our work in-country. Ethiopia has locally sourced funding from several organisations including, and with plans for globally sourced funding for Nutrition, Vaccination, digital youth brands etc where we have an impressive reach through its core media product which is currently TV and soon in other digital space as this opens up for girls in Ethiopia.

Country Director will lead a multi-functional team, with a matrix reporting structure to global functions, to implement programs to bring positive changes to the lives of adolescent girls through the use of our TV brand and other touch points. S/he will be the face of Our client in Ethiopia, manage relationships with a wide range of stakeholders including, but with limited to, public sector officials, donors, service providers, and other development nonprofit organisations. The Country Director will work very closely with functional leads in the global head office in designing country strategy and programs, leading the delivery of the programs in the country and providing the leadership to the team.

Duties and Responsibility

• Collaborate with the global functional leads to designing the country strategy. Take the lead in implementing the above with the support of global functions and the local team.
• Lead the donor engagement in Ethiopia, identify fund mobilization opportunities and develop new business proposals to maximize fundraising (including both locally-driven fundraising and links to global level fundraising efforts that include Ethiopia and/or draw lessons from Ethiopia)
• Collaborate with the global program team to design country relevant programs whilst ensuring full engagement of the Ethiopia team and global technical inputs.
• Ensure the delivery of program commitments for Ethiopia with maximum impact, efficiency, and innovation
• Develop an implementation partnerships strategy to maximize opportunities with service providers, media owners, clubs and girl networks
• Network and represent Our client externally with multiple stakeholders, including NGOs, donors, service providers and the relevant ministries of the government of Ethiopia
• Lead the country office in a matrix functional reporting structure where the country functions would be reporting to global functions.
• Work closely with the global team and other network offices, to generate ideas, ensure work streams are well aligned, and rapidly update and share learning to maximise the potential for demonstrating behaviour change across our work
• Forecast, track and report on programs and partnership activities for Our client teams in Ethiopia and globally, as well as keeping donors up-to-date with the impact of our work
• Oversee budget development and tracking of spend with the support of local and global finance teams.
• Responsible for ensuring a robust control environment to manage to spend with the support of the global finance and operations team.
• Prepare for and represent at conferences and other external engagements inside and outside Ethiopia as and when required.
• Keep abreast of changes in local, national and global policy and program arena which have implications for the programmes in Ethiopia
• Lead on the development and updating of collateral for partnerships – for example, capacity statement, brochures etc.
• Effectively capture, track and record all approaches, meetings, contacts, correspondence and agreements on the Partner Portal (Salesforce CRM), and other communications channels, and ensure that other team members are brought in to conversations where necessary
• Support global efforts to develop new program management processes, systems, and tools and ensure they are implemented effectively in Ethiopia
• Ensure the smooth running of operations

• You are a senior leader with experience within the development space ideally at Country Manager level
• You have significant experience running an office and team of professionals; ideally, you have experience of managing staff from multi-disciplinary backgrounds
• You’re skilled at implementing programmes as well as project management, reporting to donors, and packaging information for internal and external audiences
• You have an extensive network of contacts within Ethiopia’s private sector, development sector, donors and senior government officials
• You have experience of programming on Economic Empowerment, and SRH and/or social and behavioural communications
• You’re a proactive team player who actively goes out to identify opportunities
• You’re financially literate and are confident in matters of budget development with experience of managing significant annual budgets
• You’re driven and able to deliver against key timelines and deadlines, through prioritisation and organisation
• You enjoy taking the initiative and making decisions as part of a complex and varied workload
• You can demonstrate a commitment to realising the potential of girls and to the vision and values of Our client
• You’re able to work with others at a distance and use systems for sharing information to support this
• You’re confident at developing presentations and public speaking to be able to externally represent the work we do with passion and energy
• You’re fluent in Amharic and English, with an extremely high level in writing in both languages
• You’re educated to degree level (minimum), ideally within a relevant field of expertise
• You’re willing to travel within Ethiopia as required, and outside Ethiopia occasionally