Associate Policy Manager

Position description

IPA Côte d’Ivoire is seeking an Associate Policy Manager to collaborate closely with the Ministry of National Education (MENA) in Côte d’Ivoire to strengthen its capacity to use evidence to improve its programs and policies. IPA is working with MENA to set up an “Ed Lab” to enable government partners at both the national and district levels to use data and rigorous research to design, test, and scale evidence-based programs and policies to improve learning for students.

The Associate Policy Manager will be embedded within MENA to directly coordinate the Ed Lab’s activities in close connection with MENA counterparts. The Associate Policy Manager will focus specifically on evidence-to-policy flows and on designing the Ed Lab to influence national-level policy processes; work with education sector counterparts to build buy-in for a culture of evidence generation and use; and integrate existing education sector policy and practice-driven evidence projects into the Ed Lab design and implementation. The Associate Policy Manager will have a strong policy background, and ideally experience working with partners to use evidence to inform policy and programming. We particularly encourage Ivorian nationals to apply. The Associate Policy Manager will report to the IPA Côte d’Ivoire RFE & Policy Manager with dotted line oversight from the Global Policy team.

Responsibilities

Workplan management and reporting (10%)

● Collaborate with the ministry team to develop a shared workplan, ensuring alignment with project goals and effective implementation.

● Support with other project management tasks, including progress tracking and donor reporting. 

Stakeholder management (30%)

● Cultivate relationships with key local top-level decision-makers in the education sector and ensure the project has their sustained buy-in and input 

● Coordinate project activities alongside technical staff from the ministry in a learning-by-doing approach, fostering active engagement throughout the process 

● Promote engagement among actors in the education ecosystem to raise awareness of the lab and encourage collaborative efforts for collective impact

Generating relevant evidence (20%)

● Update the policy-driven research agenda for the lab, and facilitate the development of research projects to respond to the agenda

● Facilitate engagement with local and international academics to provide input into the lab4s policy-driven research agenda

● Develop opportunities to leverage administrative data for research, connecting local and international researchers to pursue these openings

Sharing evidence to inform program design and delivery (30%)

● Share existing evidence to inform MENA program design and delivery

● Produce policy briefs on key policy questions 

● Work together with the ministry, the project team, global policy and communications teams to lead and/or participate in strategic events for policy purposes, including but not limited to summits, conferences, workshops, technical working groups, and round tables. 

● In collaboration with researchers and in support of the country director, represent IPA locally in policy conversations and at events

Exploring program institutionalization (10%)

● Engage with the ministry leadership to explore opportunities to institutionalize the lab for sustainability.  

Qualifications

Required:

● Bachelor’s Degree and /or Bachelor’s or Master’s Degree in international public policy, education, social science, or related fields and 2-5 years of relevant work experience.  Exceptions may be made for excellent candidates who do not meet this criterion

● Hands-on experience supporting Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning systems. Experience working in the education sector of a developing country, ideally in close interaction with government stakeholders

● Excellent written and oral communication skills, including the ability to clearly present information in a structured, non-technical, and insightful way

● Excellent project management and organizational skills, attention to detail, entrepreneurial mindset, versatility, and strong multi-tasking skills

● Superior analytical, quantitative, and conceptual thinking skills

● Willingness to be a team player and identify connections between work streams

● Cultural and political sensitivity and demonstrated ability to work successfully with diverse constituencies

● Passion for making data-driven decision-making a reality in the development sector

Preferred:

● Demonstrated ability to coach and train others in statistics, data analysis or MEL methodologies

● Background in development programs relating to education

● Experience working with government

● Familiarity with the concepts surrounding the Theory of Change and the core tools of MEL (both quantitative and qualitative research methods)

Reports to

Policy & RFE Manager 

 

Application instructions

Please be sure to indicate you saw this position on geopolist.com