Project Background

Through the Malawi Governance for Solutions (GfS) Activity, USAID seeks to build on the incremental gains in decentralization and associated service delivery improvements, with the understanding that to make the significant leaps now required for Malawi to meet its own development goals—in the face of a fast-growing, young population—a bold, adaptive, and sustainable approach is required. To successfully remove critical bottlenecks and diffuse effective governance practices, DAI will deploy a locally driven approach—Facilitate, Catalyze, and Scale—drawing on Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA) as a core methodology.

Through the Facilitate, Catalyze, and Scale approach, DAI will help local stakeholders to tackle the root causes of service delivery failures through best-fit solutions and offer demonstrative models based on positive deviance. Through both process-oriented facilitation and the provisions of technical support and grants, GfS will foster stable, resilient, and more self-reliant partnerships that best position local communities to address their own challenges and contribute to the trajectory of Malawi Vision 2063.

Objectives of the assignment

Reporting to the Liaison Officer Coordinator, the DLO will work closely with the Liaison Officer coordinator (LOC), and the Senior PDIA Advisor to lead the work of GfS in their respective district council. This entails designing, implementing and continuous evaluation of innovative GfS Enabling Interventions (EIs), and Problem-Driven Interventions (PBIs) that best suit the district context. This will be in the key GfS result areas of Human Resource Management (HRM), Public Finance Management (PFM) and Policy Implementation. S/he will collaborate with other USAID IPs in assigned urban centres to support joint work planning, evaluation of results, and leveraging of resources to accelerate development impact across USAID implementers in Malawi.

Tasks & Responsibilities

• Build strategic relationships with district councils in order to an enabling environment for EIs and PBIs implementation at district level. These are likely to include powerful business leaders civil society, government officials and politicians that drive change in local authorities
• Facilitate ongoing coalition and Thematic Team (TT) meetings that can deliver transparency and accountability in public service delivery, ensuring inclusive spaces for constructive dialogue and application of a Thinking and Working Politically mindset.
• Organize and lead Pause and Reflect (PR) sessions with TTs according to themes of their interest, while also supporting cross learning with other TTs
• Identify partnerships for integration including between GfS and other IPs in the district.
• Contribute to the establishment of an online integration platform to capture lessons of urban-rural district integration to serve as a virtual learning lab for sharing evidence, best practice, work plans, M&E data, and other key information across projects
• Demonstrate the mainstreaming of Gender and Social Inclusion (GESI) in all processes and outcomes of EIs and PBIs.
• Collaborate with GfS Result Area Leads to ensure GfS interventions are properly supported with requisite expertise within GfS and beyond.
• Contribute to ensuring that products and services that individual consultants and organizations produce in supporting GfS add maximum value towards more and better GfS results.
• Engage in reporting (especially in relation to the MEL framework) and communications activities, ensuring timely and accurate delivery of communications products for submission to country office
• Work closely with the grants team in ensuring compliance with USAID systems and monitoring of sub grantees activities
• Other duties as assigned by supervisor

Qualifications

This role is contingent on donor funding.

• University degree in a relevant field (master’s degree preferred).
• Prior USAID project experience an advantage
• At least 5 years of relevant experience working with district council institutions in Malawi on governance issues.
• Experience in monitoring and evaluation of policy reform or capacity development, with demonstrated capabilities in methodologies appropriate to complex change processes preferred.
• Political Economy Analysis experience, especially skills related to Thinking and Working Politically.
• Experience in social accountability related tools for improving public service provision is an advantage
• Experience in working with powerful business leaders, politicians and civil society activists will be an added advantage
• Proficiency with MS Office software.
• Demonstrable analytical skills
• Excellent English writing, speaking, and reading skills, with an addition of good spoken Chichewa and other local languages