The Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) is an independent philanthropic organisation headquartered in London with offices in Nairobi, New Delhi, and in Ethiopia. CIFF works with a wide range of partners seeking to transform and empower the lives of poor and vulnerable children in developing countries, with the ultimate goal of solving seemingly intractable challenges to ensure all children have the chance to survive and thrive. CIFF aims to play a catalytic role as a funder and influencer to deliver urgent and systemic change at scale. Areas of work include empowering girls and boys to control their sexual and reproductive health and to avoid unwanted pregnancies and HIV/AIDS; improving children and mothers’ health and nutrition; preventing low birthweight babies; eliminating deaths from severe acute malnutrition, nested within a more integrated approach to childhood development; and deworming efforts to break transmission for good. The organisation’s climate portfolio is driven by a vision of a climate-safe future for today’s children and future generations that also bear the benefits of cleaner air, energy security and sustainable jobs. CIFF’s child protection work focuses on ending child labour and sexual exploitation by enabling an environment that reduces vulnerability of communities and increases protection of children.
Main purpose of the role:
This role will contribute to shape the new CIFF’s DT strategy to supporting country priorities government in achieving their ambition on demographic dividend. Whilst fertility is the most influential determinant of population change, reductions in total fertility rates alone will not bring about a demographic dividend. Support for voluntary family planning must sit alongside investments in: comprehensive sex education; access to basic quality education for boys and girls; access to tertiary training and skills development; female empowerment and participation in all spheres; programmes to create good stewardship of natural resources among youth; reforms to support economic growth; support for entrepreneurship and job creation; and broader work to strengthen the rule of law, good governance and accountability. Combined, such investments alongside supportive policies offers a potential ‘demographic dividend’ of economic growth and prosperity.
This role will provide high quality performance management of portfolio, support partners, design new investments and strategy across the Girl Capital pillar of the CIFF Africa Strategy, that enables the efficient and effective delivery of its philanthropic programmes, with a significant focus on the rights-based strategy to accelerate demographic transition in countries that are at risk of being unable to achieve their demographic dividend goals.
Role purpose
Support effective management of existing investments to expand access to SRH services and increase girl human capital, establishing effective relationships with grantees and other partners, monitoring grantee performance and providing critical analysis of programme successes and bottlenecks. Provide analytic support to evaluating and building the pipeline of new investment opportunities, with an emphasis on integrated approaches that boost our credibility, market insight and portfolio in those countries where a demographic transition is most urgent to allow them to enter in the window of opportunities – specifically the Sahel, West and Central Africa. Provide administrative and knowledge management support to the team, including ensuring compliance with contracts, keeping grant management systems up-to-date, and supporting the team in developing presentations, reports and other content for internal and external communication about the programme.
Principal responsibilities
Lead sector strategies in leveraging/building platforms to link consumer demand to services:
Set the strategic direction for and define new CIFF investments in tech and digital to support user engagement, access to information, support, products and services, as well as for verification and monitoring Development/leveraging of existing demand-led tech-enabled platforms for delivery in priorities countries. Strategic and operational oversight of these platforms. Integration of new and existing user-controlled products and services from across the portfolio. Embed new standards for data collection, data protection and analysis of real-time beneficiary feedback/insights. Institutionalise new KPI and dashboards to benchmark performance across portfolios.
Strategy and planning
Under direction of Executive Director and Directors, collate and/or conduct analysis and research on projects and sector trends, as required, to support strategic priorities and operational plans. Working with director on developing strategy, portfolio and pipeline investments responsive to the Africa strategy and its priorities. Work across CIFF Africa team, partners and governments in analysing and communicating the wider impacts of demographics, (including security, employment, resource availability and poverty) and working with sectors on mitigating the impact (including economic development, governance, health, education, social development, conflict and political). Support the team in the organisation, coordination, documentation and professional presentation of outputs from the strategy and planning process. Provide support across broader Africa team strategies as needed, including our product development and market growth strategies, system strengthening and our safe abortion strategies.
Programme development, delivery & performance
Manage existing programmes investments and an active pipeline of potential investments and larger portfolio. Ensure that all new proposals adopt an integrated and sustainable approach to permanently solving the most challenging problems for Adolescents. Consistently fulfill CIFF’s grant management processes as well as planning and reporting requirements. Lead the end-to-end administration of the grants management process (from concept formation through to final payment), suggesting improvements where appropriate, to enable Adolescent Sector and Africa Teams to deliver and monitor its philanthropic activity efficiently and effectively. Lead the end-to-end administration of the grant management process, including liaising with the CIFF Finance and Legal teams on contract drafting and payment forecasting. Lead the preparation and dissemination of regular and ad hoc reporting on sector/portfolio/programme performance, to ensure colleagues and partners (as required) have access to accurate and relevant management information. Work closely with members of the Finance team to coordinate the forecasting of grant payments, to enable effective cash flow management and reporting within the organisation. Support the preparation of summary reports, board reports and portfolio investment reports, to ensure these are produced to a high standard and in a timely fashion. Support design and development of new proposals, including scoping research, analytics for ET and board briefings or investment memos, reviewing grantee budgets and coordinating internal and external stakeholders to deliver on time. Take on progressively greater responsibility in leading the end-to-end development of new investment proposals.
Policy
In collaboration with other partners like BMGF, STBF… etc. provide or commission advisory and policy support, following outcomes of economic and behavioral nudge tests to relevant Ministries (e.g. Health, Education, Population and Planning, Social Development) working closely with UNFPA and the Wolrd Bank and others to develop policies and implement programmes to support the acceleration of a demographic transition in country. Contribute to a better enabling environment for the demographic transition by ensuring greater coherence and collaboration in policies, resource allocation and interventions across sectors, working with governments, multilaterals, donors, NGOs, local civil society organisations, Youth and women led movements.
Essential
Relevant experience in Demography, Public Health, Adolescences Youth and SRH, Human geography, Sociology or related discipline. Experience of working in Sub Saharan African Countries and particularly in West and central Africa on development and sensitive issues Good understanding of the key African institutions and platforms relevant for demography, Health, Education and SRH (such as the OP, SWEDD, WAHO, ECOWAS and WISH programme).
Qualifications, skills and experience
Extensive and progressive leadership in diverse settings. Academic and/or practical application of approaches to achieve a demographic transition. Outstanding communication skills using a variety of presentation techniques. Strong management skills with demonstrable experience of supporting workplace diversity. Knowledge and/or experience of working in emerging markets (Sahelian West Africa essential). Working knowledge of behavioral economics and political economy of demography. Working knowledge of the Sexual and Reproductive Health sector, and an understanding of key players and debates. Commercial experience and/or a background that includes social entrepreneurship is desirable. Quantitative skills, including financial modelling and business plan analysis. Excellent English writing skills and proficiency in French is advantageous.
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