Strategic Learning Advisor

Job Description

Scope and Objectives

The Kaizen Company is seeking a Strategic Learning Advisor for the four remaining years of a five-year USAID-funded Development Food Security Activity in Niger. The goal is to improve food and nutrition security and resilience among extremely poor and chronically vulnerable households and communities in a sustainable manner.

The program is a highly integrated, multi-sectoral food security intervention. The Strategic Learning Advisor will work closely with the Chief of Party and the Monitoring, Evaluation, Learning, and Accountability Manager to ensure collaboration and linkages with external stakeholders across the program’s intervention areas, as well as to integrate active and intentional adaptive learning exercises. The Advisor is responsible for: creating linkages between program participants and outcomes with other programs, institutions and stakeholders in the implementation area; supporting program impact and sustainability; establishing and implementing a program learning agenda; and ensuring collaborating, learning, and adapting (CLA) processes and activities within the program.

The Strategic Learning Advisor will be based in Niamey, with frequent (50%+) travel to and work in Zinder. Applicants should share their immediate availability as well as long-term interest and availability.

Responsibilities

Short-Term Deliverables

• Complete and populate a Collaboration and Linkages Plan and narrative to track and guide collaboration with other programs, initiatives, and institutions to ensure collaboration between local actors, USAID-funded activity stakeholders, host country government stakeholders, donor agencies, the private sector, and other implementing agencies managing programs and creating policy in the target geographic areas.
• Complete the activity’s Learning Agenda through close collaboration with technical leads and in keeping with the activity’s theory of change
• Complete the Collaboration, Learning, and Adaptation (CLA) Strategy for the activity
• Provide support to the Communications Coordinator in preparing for the December Culmination Workshop in Niamey

Long-Term Position Responsibilities

• Contribute significantly to host country government relationship building and collaboration.
• Lead the implementation and updating of the activity’s Learning Agenda.
• Manage learning events and processes. Work with Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEAL) team members to ensure adaptations to the program theory of change as new information comes to light.
• Lead the creation and management of a detailed program knowledge management platform, ensuring full integration with Resilience in the Sahel Enhanced (RISE/ RISE II) and other relevant knowledge management platforms.
• Create guidelines for CLA in the context of the program. Manage CLA ‘pause and reflect’ events and resulting adaptive management analysis, decision-making, program/ approach adjustments, training, and follow-through.
• Contribute to the creation of a culture of openness, trust, and continuous improvement within the program team and with partners. Train team members on CLA in addition to ensuring peer-to-peer learning, knowledge sharing and application, activity-based capacity strengthening, and evidence and data utilization within the team.
• Lead the production and dissemination of documentation pertaining to the above.

Requirements

• Excellent written communication and presentation skills in French and English (French being the activity’s primary working language and English the primary reporting language)
• Advanced degree (Master’s or PhD) in a relevant field.
• At least five years of demonstrated experience in food security, knowledge management, organizational learning, and/or capacity strengthening.
• Ability and willingness to travel regularly.
• Strong tool/curriculum development and training skills.
• Demonstrated, structured approach to coordination, sustainability planning, and linkage formulation.
• Demonstrated understanding and application of USAID’s CLA approach preferred.
• This position is open to both locals and expatriates.

About the Organization

The Kaizen Company (Kaizen) is a development consulting firm that cultivates innovative, scalable solutions that address emerging market challenges and opportunities. For more than a decade, Kaizen has brought innovation into the world of donor-funded international development in Africa, Central Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America/Caribbean, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.

In parallel, Kaizen has been incubating innovations to scale through market forces to achieve development objectives without the need for donor funding. Our proven solutions catalyze locally driven organizational and institutional performance improvements and establish communities of practice that facilitate peer-to-peer learning and the achievement of shared goals.

We leverage existing knowledge, technology, and new media, and local peer networks to support local reforms. Since our inception, we have provided support to more than 100 government, private-sector, and non-profit organizations in markets worldwide.