Manager, Impact Monitoring and Reporting

Want to make a positive difference to the future of people and our one shared home, the Earth? Working with WWF could be your opportunity of a lifetime:

All around the world, people are waking up to the deepening crisis of nature loss. A growing realization that nature is our life-support system. And that nobody will be spared from the impacts of its loss. Here at WWF, we are helping to tackle this enormous global challenge.

Our people come from hugely diverse backgrounds and with a variety of expertise, ranging from HR and finance to advocacy and conservation science. We welcome applications from anyone who believes they can help us create a better future for people and wildlife.

What we do:

We are an independent conservation organization, striving to sustain the natural world for the benefit of people and wildlife. From individuals and communities to business and government, we are part of a growing coalition calling on world leaders to set nature on the path to recovery by 2030. Together, we seek to protect and restore natural habitats, stop the mass extinction of wildlife, and make the way we produce and consume sustainable.

For our Congo Basin, we are looking for a dynamic and committed Manager, Impact Monitoring and Reporting.

Reports to: Regional Head, Impact Monitoring and Reporting – Africa
Supervises: Interns, consultants, as and when needed

Location: Yaounde, Cameroon

Duration: one (01) year renewable

Mission of the Department:

The WWF International Regional teams are responsible for supporting and providing oversight to WWF International Managed Country Offices to ensure that the offices have the required capability and resources to deliver high conservation impact and outcomes while meeting required high standards for operations and project delivery, monitoring and evaluation.

Major Functions:

The Manager, Impact Monitoring and Reporting for the Congo Basin region will significantly contribute to the ability of Country Offices (COs) in the region to track and report progress and achievements against the strategic plans and project delivery, in line with the Country Office Management (COM) impact team’s commitments to strengthen approaches to conservation design, performance, and impact monitoring.

Specifically, they will provide technical leadership in strengthening Planning, Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning within the Congo Basin Country Offices. This position will be responsible for supporting the Country Offices with the monitoring of the life cycle of the Strategic Plans, from strategic planning and implementation to monitoring and adaptive management.

The role will also support and ensure COs have well designed PMEL framework for strategic plans, programs/projects and grants, and their alignment with the office strategic plan, in line with WWF’s Network’s Standards of Conservation Project and Programme Management (PPMS) and ensuring compliance with the WWF International Country Office Strategy and Impact Monitoring policy.

The role will play a pivotal role in leveraging data insights from monitoring and evaluation to advise Regional and CO Senior Management in areas such as evidence-based management, adaptive management, cost-effectiveness design and management, accountability, knowledge management and learning initiatives.

Finally, the role will champion professional excellence and provide thought leadership, to ensure the proficiency of the PMEL team and will conduct routine monitoring of the PMEL capacity development in COs, to ensure staff are highly skilled and able to uphold network level or WWF International COM level PMEL standards and systems.

Major Duties and Responsibilities:

1. Planning:

• Lead the development and oversight of Country Offices strategic plans in the Congo Basin region and ensure the related monitoring data are collected in a timely and rigorous manner.
• Support the COs’ overall process of developing and updating the Office Strategic Plans, PMEL frameworks and annual work plans in line with WWF’s Network’s Standards of Conservation Project and Programme Management (PPMS).
• Support the COs with the costing of the strategy monitoring and evaluation plan, ensuring the inclusion of the budget for all monitoring activities in the office, including Conservation activities, ESSF, Risk, QA and others.
• Provide technical guidance to COs in developing strategic and programs/project levels Theory of Change, logical frameworks and PMEL frameworks according to PPMS standards and ensure that these are well documented.
• Provide technical advice to COs and facilitate the process of developing clear and measurable goals, outcomes and indicators for the Office strategy, project and grants, while ensuring alignment to the Country, regional and secretariat strategy.
• Supports the development of a structured PMEL framework for all CO Strategic Plans and all associated projects, inside the WWF International PMEL solution.
• Facilitates utilisation of the WWF International PMEL solution for programme/project design, in compliance with WWF International standards and policies.

1. Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting

• Support the COs with the design of data collection methodologies, tools, and systems to monitor and inform the progress of programs/projects and grants and Office Strategy on time.

• Facilitates using of the WWF International PMEL solution for data management and reporting in compliance with WWF International standards.

• Support the COs with collection, collation and analysis of quality data to inform progress and for adaptive management.

• Support the review of information and data collected to ensure it is of quality, accurate and timely to inform decisions.

• Supports the evaluations and reviews done by COs, including advising on the appropriateness of approaches and methodologies.

• Ensures adherence to Network-wide and secretariat-specific policies, standards and protocols.

• Lead the internal and external reporting efforts of the Congo Basin Region and their consolidation and/or synthesis. e.g., technical reports, impact reports, donor reports and other information from projects and programmes.

• Work in close collaboration with the ESSF Manager and CO PMEL leads to integrate the ESSF framework and monitoring needs inside the annual monitoring plan of the offices.

  2. Learning and Adaptive Management

• Promote a culture of results-based adaptive management in the COs, including developing a CO learning agenda.

• Actively participate in the regional, International, and network-level PMEL Community of Practices (CoP) for sharing and learning.

• Facilitate the quarterly review of progress against the annual work plan milestones for COs.

• Guide the development of dashboards and other business intelligence products to support learning and tracking progress toward KPIs for the Regional and CO Senior Management team to track progress and inform decision-making.

• Support coordinating the PMEL Community of Practice to promote and facilitate dissemination of results, knowledge sharing and collaboration for continuous learning in the country office.

• Supports coordination and collaboration with research, academic and other institutions in the Congo Basin in developing publications and contributing to the conservation knowledge.

• Lead and coordinate capacity development of COs on PMEL.

This job description covers the main tasks and conveys the spirit of the type of tasks that are anticipated by staff. Other tasks may be assigned as necessary according to organizational needs. This role will require travel as needed (approx. 20% of the time).

Required Qualifications, Skills and Competencies:

Required Qualifications:

• Master’s degree in natural resource management, environment, conservation management, bioregional planning, social sciences, development studies, Statistics, Monitoring and Evaluation or relevant fields.
• 5-7 years of practical experience in PMEL methodologies, project cycle management, Quality Assurance, Financial Management, Data analysis and report writing.
• Demonstrated ability to lead and motivate PMLE staff and foster cross-country collaboration, and manage consultants.
• Further qualifications in Monitoring and Evaluation and experience with Result-based management. Familiarity with PPMS or Open Standards would be an advantage.

Required Skills and Competencies:

• Advanced and proven experience with data analytics and utilising monitoring and evaluation data for impact reporting.
• Experience in working with people at multiple levels and diverse backgrounds, and demonstrated ability to translate concepts into tangible and actionable plans
• Knowledge of using Microsoft suite tools (word, excel etc.) is a must. Experience using advanced tools such as PowerBI, Tableau, R, Python, etc., is an advantage.
• Experience in applying Knowledge Management and learning principles.
• Professional Level command of written and spoken English and French is a must for this position.
• Flexibility to travel within Africa as required.

Values & Behaviors:

• Embraces the WWF mission and values of the organisation: Courage, Integrity, Respect & Collaboration.
• Demonstrating behaviors: Strive for impact, listen deeply, collaborate openly and innovate fearlessly
• Acts with highest integrity, accountability, and transparency.

Working Relationships:

Internal – Under the supervision of the Regional Head, Impact Monitoring and Reporting in the Country Office Management Unit the role will liaise with WWF Congo Basin leadership team, and Country Office Teams, including Country Directors, Conservation Directors, Landscape Managers, Science Team, Resource Mobilisation Team, Project Managers and M&E focal points.

External – Interacts with stakeholders and partners particularly at the regional level, including national governmental institutions, non-governmental organisations, academic institutions, multilateral and development banks, the media, donors, specialists/consultants, and other stakeholders, in collaboration with the Country offices and Regional Director, Congo Basin.

This job description covers the main tasks and conveys the spirit of the sort of tasks that are anticipated proactively from staff. Other tasks may be assigned as necessary according to organizational needs.