Senior Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning (MEL) Consultant

Reports to: Senior Programme Lead

Location: Hybrid – Working from Home/ London (Islington) Office

Contract: Part-time, fixed-term external Consultant (2 days per week until March 2023, with potential for extension)

Daily rate: Negotiable

About Amref Health Africa UK

Amref Health Africa is Africa’s leading health charity. Headquartered in Nairobi, we partner with communities in 35 countries to sustainably strengthen health systems and improve access to life-saving care. Our belief that health is a human right underpins everything we do. Since March 2020, we have been at the forefront of the COVID-19 response in East, West, and Southern Africa.

Amref Health Africa UK (Amref UK) is one of a dozen offices in Europe and North America that are primarily responsible for raising the organisation’s profile, brokering partnerships, and mobilising funds to support our programmes in Africa.

About this role

The UK Government (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office – FCDO) has a vision of a world free from Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) by 2030, in line with the SDGs. A programme has been established entitled ‘Support to the Africa- led movement (ALM) to end FGM/C’ to contribute to global efforts to achieve that vision. Amref Health Africa is delivering an ambitious outreach workplan in Kenya, Senegal and at regional and global levels. As part of the management and coordination of the programme, Amref UK is engaging a Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning (MEL) Consultant to support the Senior Programme Lead to develop and implement a comprehensive ALM programme MEL strategy, evaluation framework and ensure mapping of data to the results framework.

Working closely with the Senior Programme Lead, the MEL Consultant will design and develop Amref’s programme-level monitoring, evaluation and learning across Amref’s delivery units. This will include supporting country teams to articulate their desired Programme Results, while developing clear MEL plans to ensure the results are captured, evidenced and interventions adapted based on learnings. There will be a specific focus on creating clear systems and tools to track and demonstrate global progress and results, while ensuring data and content is collected and verified at the country level.

Responsibilities:

Strategy & Planning

• Establish and implement a robust MEL strategy and evaluation framework for the ALM programme for Amref globally
• Interpret and develop strategic level Theories of Change for the programme
• Represent Amref at consortium level MEL meetings/workings groups, demonstrating thought leadership for the organisation

Systems, Frameworks & Tools

• Working with Country Offices, Establish frameworks for MEL quality assurance
• Support the development of country level results frameworks, MEL workplans and MEL tools
• Develop a data management system to inform analysis, learning and reporting
• Analyze and quality assure MEL data collected by Country teams ensuring it is systematically filed

Research, Evidence & Learning

• Ensure the timely and quality collection of data across the programme
• Develop and roll out of research initiatives across the programme – baselines, PEAs, cross-border research, longitudinal panel studies, outcome harvesting
• Develop a systematic approach to adaptive learning for the programme, ensuring interventions are informed by clear evidence-based learning
• Support Country teams to conduct mid and end evaluations
• Ensure learnings are generated and used to inform programme adaption
• Conduct data/ quality assessment audits ensuring verified data responds to RF indicators

Knowledge Management & Reporting

• Co-ordinating across teams, develop and compile monthly, quarterly and annual reports – gathering information from a range of stakeholders, working to strict timelines
• Develop and maintain an internal programme dashboard highlighting performance and risk areas
• Support country teams to ensure data is disaggregated by gender, age, disability and other inclusion criteria
• Develop evidence, results and learning communication products and reports and share with relevant stakeholders

Person Specification:

Essential Experience

• Minimum 6-8 years’ experience in Monitoring, Evaluation, Data Management and Learning on a large-scale multi-country programme
• Developing programme performance, learning and evaluation measurement tools and systems
• Supporting in-country teams to develop evaluation and research methodologies
• Interpreting data and presenting results

Essential Knowledge

• Degree level or higher education in a relevant field, or qualified by experience.
• Knowledge of a range of qualitative and quantitative data collection and evaluation methodologies

Essential Skills

• Proficient in Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Outlook, Power Point, Teams)
• Excellent verbal and written English
• Ability to work well with others, across teams, while holding initiative to work independently and manage own time and priorities

Desirable Experience, Knowledge & Skills

• Experience of Consortium working
• Experience of MEL in gender and rights-based programming
• Experience of MEL for commercial funded programmes