POSITION DESCRIPTION

This is an exciting opportunity for the right candidate to pioneer a transformative initiative, dedicated to scaling and sustaining integrated, resilient community health systems across at least 11 sub-Saharan African countries. The Country Engagement & Health Financing Specialist will co-design country engagement strategies and program implementation approaches for the various phases of the AFF, whilst overseeing and coordinating the day-to-day roll-out to a portfolio of participating AFF countries. The Country Engagement & Health Financing Specialist will work directly with country implementing partners and provide them advice, guidance, oversight, and monitoring in executing their program workplan. They will also work closely with the Program Director or other senior leadership to ensure that all country implementation is well aligned to the priorities of the AFF Catalytic Mechanism. They will also work closely with AFF’s Scaling Mechanism, Influence and Impact teams as well as interface with in-country sub-grantees and representatives from regional institutions.

Key scopes of work will include:

• Introduce and socialize AFF financing mechanisms (including Project BIRCH, AFF-CF and the scaling mechanism) at country level alongside AFF and Global Fund teams.  Support in development of communication material for initial country engagement including AFF overview presentation and discussion guides.
• For each country, develop a contextualized engagement approach for Project BIRCH and AFF-CF investment, following assessment of countries’ investment readiness and technical capacity needs (including AFF’s approach for building and maintaining relationships with key stakeholders). Develop risk assessment and mitigation strategy across Project BIRCH and AFF-CF countries
• Facilitate development of country work plans, results frameworks, monitoring framework, and other project initiation documents with Implementing Partners, Ministry of Health, and other relevant actors including Global Fund teams.
• Support in the due diligence process and review and approval of workplans and budgets and support the development of purchase and task orders (POs and TOs)
• Work closely with the finance team to track fund utilization and compliance to funding requirements support in budget implementation tracking and compliance
• Support to the AFF team to onboard implementing partners
• Plan, supervise, monitor, and follow up, together with in-country implementing partners, all aspects of AFF in-country activities for the countries in your portfolio
• Review progress reports from country implementing partners and make recommendations to strengthen the implementation of activities in the portfolio of countries
• Support implementing partners capacity development including strengthening of organizational structure to facilitate program implementation.
• Act as a thought partner to the MOH and implementing partner in the design and adoption of program implementation materials such as TORs, assessment tools and report
• Serve as a liaison between AFF’s financing, political prioritization, and impact teams and the 3-5 countries in your portfolio
• Prepare implementation status updates for your portfolio of countries for sharing with the AFF leadership team, the Global Fund, and other stakeholders including funders, regional institutions etc.
• Support in collecting, synthesizing and presenting data and information of countries in your portfolio on strategic focus areas such as sustainability.
• Draft strategic partnership approach for successful engagement of in-country funders, policy and technical organizations (Africa CDC, WHO, UNICEF, World Bank, EU, USAID, etc.)
• As a startup secretariat, the Country Engagement & Health Financing Specialist may be called upon to perform duties over and above what has been stated here and these will be discussed on a need basis

PERSON SPECIFICATION

Required

• Master’s degree in health economics, economics, or public health with a health financing focus, or related field
• Several years working in health financing and health economics
• Experience working with ministries of health and finance, donors and implementing agencies, and strong communication skills to knowledgeable and effectively interact with key actors
• Established track record of carrying out analytical work and preparing high-quality technical reports, policy briefing materials, and presentations
• Strong and compelling writing skills
• Culturally nuanced with extensive experience across multiple countries/regions on the African continent, with high preference for experience working with Francophone countries in Africa
• Diplomatic and patient, with ability to understand specific nuances of country contexts (political, cultural, economic, etc)
• Working proficiency in English is required for the Anglophone roles, proficiency in French will be an added advantage.
• French language proficiency is required for the Francophone role, proficiency in English will be an added advantage.

Preferred

• Experience with designing, implementing, overseeing or guiding the implementation of Global Fund grants, including previous experience as part of grant application teams, providing technical support in the implementation of grants.

Compensation 

This position offers a competitive compensation package linked to the background and experience of the candidate.

Timing 

Applications are accepted and reviewed on a rolling basis.