Country Director (Nigeria)

Who we are

Girl Effect is an international non-profit that creates media that girls want, trust, and need. From chatbots and chat shows to TV dramas and tech, our content helps adolescent girls in Africa and Asia make choices and changes in their lives. We create safe spaces for girls to share facts and answer questions about health, nutrition, education, and relationships, empowering them with the skills to negotiate and redefine what is possible "for a girl."

Our reach is 50 million and counting, and we leverage technology to reach girls at scale, so every girl can choose to be in control of her body, health, learning, and livelihood. When a girl unlocks her power to make different choices that change her life, it inspires others to do so, too. She starts a ripple effect that impacts her family, community, and country. That’s the Girl Effect.

Role Context

As the Country Director, you will be the principal representative of Girl Effect in your region with ultimate responsibility and accountability for all matters pertaining to delivery of programming, including sound financial management, team leadership and management and the promotion and protection of Girl Effect as a key player in your region’s development space.

Responsibilities 

• Strategy Development: combine local and global inputs to craft a compelling long-term strategy for Girl Effect as the most compelling brand for young people in the country and the gateway to create positive change for future generations. 
• Partnership Management: strengthen existing and forge new partnerships with government and key stakeholders in both the development and commercial sectors, ensuring we have the necessary buy-in and support to deliver on our strategy while keeping abreast of changes in national and global policy. 
• Programme Design: draw on global tools and expertise to lead the design of innovative programmes, especially in the areas of Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) and Economic Empowerment (EE), responding to new opportunities as they emerge (through RFPs, for example) as well as proactively designing new programmes in response to changing needs (eg. designing new programmes to respond to the Covid pandemic). 
• Programme Management: work with the local and global programme team to ensure the delivery of programme commitments, on time and in budget, with maximum impact, efficiency and cost-effectiveness. 
• Donor Engagement: identify future fundraising opportunities and develop new proactive and reactive proposals with a view to maximising income. 
• Team Management: Lead your region’s office and manage the local programme team (which includes a core programme team as well as individuals who look after gender expertise, safeguarding and youth participation).

What you will do 

Specific duties of a Country Director include, but are in no way limited to:

• Leading through a high level of strategic leadership and effective advocacy.  Setting direction, leading, maintaining team morale, safety and welfare. 
• Partnering with HR to ensure Girl Effect attracts and retains high calibre staff. Pro-actively developing and coaching staff to optimise their potential in pursuit of Girl Effect’s objectives.
• Ensuring consistent implementation of strong performance management.
• Fostering a collegial, supportive and respectful culture within the GE team.
• Ensuring the smooth running of office operations in collaboration with Operations, HR and Finance teams and persons. Including implementation of policies and procedures at country level, which are in line with local labour laws and financial regulations as necessary. 
• Ensuring a robust control environment to manage spend and budgets with the support of the local and global finance and operations teams. Ensuring effective financial budgeting and management systems, process and controls are in place and are fully compliant with operating standards and local legal requirements.
• Ensuring compliance with all government requirements in relation to registration, taxation, labour law, audit etc.
• Preparation for and representation of Girl Effect at external engagements inside and outside your region as required.
• Any other duty related to the running of a CSO delivering SBC programming to bring positive changes to the lives of adolescent girls and young women in your region.

Who you are

• You are a senior leader with significant experience of leading and managing programming and teams within your region’s development space.
• You have significant experience running an office and team of professionals; ideally, you have experience of managing and motivating staff from multi-disciplinary backgrounds.
• You’re skilled at implementing programmes as well as project management, reporting to donors, and packaging information for internal and external audiences.
• You have an extensive network of contacts within your region’s private sector, development sector, donors and senior government officials.
• You have experience in applying for and working with consortiums and large-scale funding bids.
• You have experience of programming on Economic Empowerment, Health and SRH and/or social and behavioural communications.
• You’re a proactive team player who actively goes out to identify opportunities.
• You’re financially literate and are confident in matters of budget development with experience of managing significant annual budgets (more than  a million USD).
• You’re driven and able to deliver against key timelines and deadlines, through prioritisation and organisation.
• You enjoy taking the initiative and making decisions as part of a complex and varied workload.
• You can demonstrate a commitment to realizing the potential of girls and to the vision and values of Girl Effect.
• You’re able to work with others at a distance and use systems for sharing information to support this.
• You’re confident at developing presentations and public speaking to be able to externally represent the work we do with passion and energy.
• You’re fluent in the official language of your region as well as English, with an extremely high level in writing in both languages. Additional local languages are a plus.
• You’re educated to degree level (minimum), ideally within a relevant field of expertise.
• You’re willing to travel extensively within your region as required, and outside your region occasionally.

What else you should know

We are hugely ambitious for our future, and we are looking for people who are driven to change the world for girls.

Our teams are a diverse mix across sectors (non-profit and commercial) and specialisms (from Brand and Creative through to Gender and Insight). You’ll learn and grow in an environment that will challenge you to think and work with a fresh perspective. In turn, you can expect to work somewhere where you will be stretched and developed in your role, a place where you can build your career and work with talented, engaged people committed to our cause.

Girl Effect is committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, colour, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender, gender identity or expression. We are proud to be an equal-opportunity workplace.

We are committed to building an organization that is increasingly representative of the communities that we serve. To this end, due regard will be paid to recruiting candidates with diverse professional, academic and cultural backgrounds.

This role is subject to a standard background disclosure.

This role is being recruited for on a 24 months fulltime contract basis.

Closing date for applications will be Wednesday 5th February 2025