Director of Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL Director)

Job Description

Background:

SoCha, LLC is bidding on an active competitive procurement known as the Prosper Africa Trade and Investment (PATI) that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will award in 2021. Prosper Africa is a U.S. Government (USG) initiative that connects African and American businesses with new buyers, suppliers, and investment opportunities.

Primary Functions of the Position:

The MEL Director reports directly to the PATI Chief of Party. The position oversees the collection, analysis, and reporting of trade and investment data. The MEL Director manages a small team regional MEL Specialists distributed across Africa. The position also develops evidence-based recommendations for PATI’s technical leadership to improve its impact and expand its outcomes. The MEL Director also promotes programmatic learning by collecting lessons from PATI’s implementation teams and promoting best practices.

Illustrative Functions of the Position:

• Delivers MEL services for trade and investment programming across Africa to meet the need of PATI’s leadership, the USAID Africa and Middle East Bureaus, and the Prosper Africa Executive Secretariat.
• Establishes and manages a robust, gender-informed MEL plan to measure and analyze PATI’s impacts and results
• Manages PATI’s MEL systems that monitor, measure, support, and assess the activity’s ability to increase trade and investment and improve business environments in Africa.
• Creates and disseminates evidence-based learning products.
• Produces summary reports for PATI stakeholders, quarterly newsletters, and annual reports.
• Tracks PATI initiatives and coordinates data collection and sharing among USG agencies, host country governments, non-governmental organizations, multilateral banks, regional institutions, the private sector, and other donors.
• Promotes iterative learning and adaptive management to improve PATI implementation.
• Supports knowledge management by generating analytics and learning products for targeted audiences.
• Develops MEL capacity building guidance for grantees.
• Designs data requirements and evaluations, if necessary, for major grants.
• Performs other duties as assigned.

Skills, Knowledge, Education and Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree or higher.
• 10+ years of experience with MEL.
• 5+ years of experience with management.
• Experience with USAID’s approach to collaboration, learning, and adapting (CLA)
• Proven experience managing staff and running effective teams.
• Experience working on or overseeing complex projects. Multi-country experience preferred.
• Experience with data management platforms.
• English language proficiency. Must be able to write clearly in English.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills.
• South African Nationals preferred.

About the Organization

SoCha (a portmanteau of Social and Change) is an independent Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (ME&L) firm that provides bespoke solutions to social challenges. We are a veteran-owned small business, registered in the United States, and headquartered in Mauritius. SoCha is structured to be nimble and flexible, where we can rapidly respond to evaluative and analytical requests globally and have a well-established network across Africa and Asia. Since our inception in 2010, we have grown from a consortium of globally recognized experts who specialize in evaluating the effectiveness of development assistance, to a full-fledged ME&L services firm that specializes in advancing innovative methodologies and changing the way donors find solutions to social problems.