Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Officer

Background

The African Climate Foundation (ACF) is the first and only African-led climate change re-granting organisation on the continent. Through a combination of grant making, fellowships, transformational research, technical assistance, coalition building and advocacy the ACF seeks to support interventions at the nexus of climate change, and development that have the greatest potential to deliver long-term socio-economic transformation and inclusive development.

ACF’s Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Framework supports the effective implementation of the ACF Strategic Framework (2021-2025) by providing the mechanisms and tools with which to measure our progress in realizing our ambition of “a vibrant and climate-resilient Africa in which inclusive socio-economic development delivers sustainable and equitable growth”. The ACF’s MEL Framework seeks to:

1. Support a culture of learning by providing the tools and creating the process with which to monitor and track progress, build on successes, and learn from mistakes.

2. Foster collaboration and co-creation by working with partners, grantees and funders to align MEL Strategies to improve data collection (both quantity and quality) and enable knowledge sharing.

3. Strengthen decision making by providing and building the evidence with which to assess the effectiveness of strategies, the impact of programs, the efficiency of spending and organizational health.

4. Support ACF’s grant makingby providing tools and enabling continual improvements to the grant-making system by integrating learnings from grantees, partners and the ACF team.

Purpose

The MEL Officer, working across the ACF’s programmes, will:

1. Work with the ACF’s Programme Leads and Grants Unit to implement the ACF’s learning-focused Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Framework to track our progress towards the realisation of the ACF’s organisational strategy and objectives.

2. Provide guidance on the development of programmatic results frameworks, theories of change, and/or support evaluations both internally and externally.

3. Provide support across the ACF’s programme areas to implement the monitoring, evaluation and learning components of proposals and reporting processes to funders.

Key responsibilities include but not limited to:

· Ensuring there is alignment between the ACF's MEL framework and donor reporting requirements.

· Capacitate and support the ACF staff to integrate MEL into daily operations and grant management.

· Support the ACF’s grantees in developing tools to monitor and evaluate their programmes of work.

· Ensuring the ACF’s compliance with donor MEL reporting requirements.

· Analyse the ACF’s performance against KPI and advise Senior Management Team and programme leads accordingly.

· Design and facilitate learning within the ACF and with partners and the ACF grantees.

· Identify the ACF’s MEL resource and capacity needs.

· Facilitate collaborative design of inputs to proposal and reporting processes (e.g., theories of change, KPIs, outcomes, indicators and other metrics, etc.)

· Support the management of contracts or grants related to impact and learning. Ability to commission evaluations.

· Support the management and oversight of external service providers in programme evaluations as needed.

· Support the incorporation of data and evidence into programmatic strategies and organizational priorities.

· Support efforts to enable decision making, including synthesizing and summarizing operational and programmatic data.

· Produce reports, memos, presentations, or other materials to communicate learnings to a variety of stakeholders.

Requirements:

· A Masters or advanced degree in Statistics or Data Management

· 5-7 years of relevant, professional experience focused on monitoring, evaluation, and learning

· Experience working in climate change, public policy, international development, and/or social justice in philanthropic, NGO, coalition, legislative or advocacy communities

· Proven track record of implementing MEL systems

· Excellent analytical skills and the capacity to analyse complex qualitative and quantitative data coming from multiple sources and create visual representations

· Ability to apply and communicate complex findings and analytical outcomes to diverse audiences and across different mediums

· Competent in database applications for data collection, analytics and reporting; spreadsheet software (e.g. Excel, Stata, SPSS, R) data visualization software (e.g. Tableau, Power BI)

· Excellent organisational and time management skills

· Ability to understand and interpret stakeholder requirements

· Proven track record of adjusting in a fast-paced and wide-ranging work environment

· Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English

· Excellent presentation skills

Start date: A.S.A.P

Location: Remote working will be considered with a preference for candidates based on the African continent.