Deputy Chief of Party (DCOP) at Navanti

• The DCOP will work with USAID/Nigeria staff, USAID implementing partners, and other key stakeholders including development partners in Nigeria, and USAID/Washington stakeholders. The main objective of the MEL Support Activity is to supplement and strengthen the Mission’s monitoring, evaluation, and learning capacity to enhance programmatic outcomes and comply with USAID policies and directives. The DCOP will help manage a team to assist the Mission with strategy-, project-, and activity-level performance monitoring, evaluation, and learning including independent field-based monitoring, data quality assessments, data gathering and verification, impact and performance evaluations, assessments, collection of select country context indicators, organizational learning, and improving knowledge management. In addition, the activity will support short-term technical assistance for USAID programmatic objectives as needed where short-term technical assistance staff for learning are embedded in the Nigeria government systems that need the support. Navanti’s MEL Support team will help enable and ensure effective collection and use of relevant performance, context, and development-related data to inform the Mission on progress towards achieving USAID/Nigeria’s development objectives (DO) and enable proper oversight and adaptive management of USAID activities. This activity is expected to help support Nigeria on its Journey to Self-Reliance (J2SR), helping to build a highly qualified domestic cadre of MEL Specialists, including USAID staff, its own staff, staff of other USAID implementing partners, contractors, government counterparts, and other partners.

Core Responsibilities:

The DCOP will act as the chief of operations for the project internal operations and provide oversight of administration, logistics, procurement, human resources, and finance. The DCOP will possess managerial control and decision-making authority over technical and operational activities. Additionally, the DCOP will…

• Assist the Mission in establishing performance measures, collection and analysis of performance information, and will plan and manage evaluations, participate on evaluation teams as a qualitative researcher, design programs, and conduct activities to build Mission and Implementing Partner capacity in M&E methodology.
• Explore and lead the Mission’s efforts in new ways of evaluation and evaluative processes with the aim of making the Mission a leader in evaluation processes and evaluation information use. Lead the design and application of econometric methodologies in all aspects of the monitoring and evaluation program.
• Lead the application of econometric or other quantitative approaches to the Mission’s analyses for assessments, evaluations, baselines, data quality assessments and other M&E data gathering efforts.
• Assist Mission Management in using the performance information for decision-making and resource allocation.
• Serve as the principal point of contact in Nigeria for procedural and substantive matters in the absence of the Chief of Party (COP).
• Backstop and reinforce the other long- and short-term specialists; ensure that the Activity focus remains on achieving results; and manage an effective monitoring and reporting system.

Minimum Qualifications:

• A minimum of a Master’s Degree in development, evaluation, economics, knowledge management, or related field.
• Previous experience leading multiple international donors funded evaluations and assessments.
• Previous experience in financial management of projects and systems.
• A minimum of eight years of progressively responsible professional experience in monitoring and evaluation with monitoring and evaluation activities within complex international development contexts in the areas of Health, Democracy, Governance and Conflict, Economic Growth, Education and/or agricultural development.
• Excellent teamwork, interpersonal, verbal, and written communication, presentation and
• facilitation skills.
• Ability to lead and conduct field work in non-permissive environments, areas with hardship conditions, in remote areas, for extended periods of time.
• Fluency in English, written and spoken.