ADVOCACY AND CAPACITY STRENGTHENING OFFICER

The African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC) is an international non-profit, non-governmental organization that carries out high quality, policy-relevant research on population, health and education issues facing sub-Saharan Africa. Our goal is to generate evidence for meaningful action to improve the lives of all Africans.

APHRC seeks to recruit an Advocacy and Capacity Strengthening Officer to join its Policy Engagement and Communications (PEC) Division, to collaborate on a multi-year, multi-country initiative to strengthen civil society capacity to engage in advocacy for sustainable financing.

Duties and Responsibilities

Overall responsibilities for this position include documentation, knowledge management and sharing, capacity strengthening strategy development and implementation, events planning and organization as well as developing materials to support advocacy work.

Specific tasks:

● Offer technical support and coordinate and co-facilitate capacity strengthening of civil society in line with project objectives

● Monitor implementation of communications, advocacy and policy engagement by civil society organizations and networks engaged in this project

● Support capacity needs assessments and development of training programs including mentorship and coaching approaches

● Develop periodic operational work plans and budgets for advocacy and capacity building interventions

● Coordinate meetings and workshops for civil society and other relevant stakeholders at regional level

● Monitor trends and track progress in institutional capacity, technical capacity and level of engagement of civil society in policy dialogue

● Regularly implement and monitor effective communications strategies with civil society and other relevant stakeholders and coordinate feedback mechanisms

● Contribute in reviewing training modules and modeling best practice from an array of capacity building techniques

● Ensure that capacity strengthening initiatives are reported and documented, including lessons learnt

● Update and provide content for the website and manage peer-to-peer learning between civil society organizations

Skills and Qualifications

· A Master’s degree in social sciences, communications, development studies or any other related field.

· A minimum of four years professional experience in advocacy, campaigns, policy engagement or capacity development-related activities, preferably with an international organization

· Extensive background and practical experience in civil society engagement, organization development, communication and advocacy in multiple national contexts

· Ability to coordinate major capacity-strengthening needs assessment and development and implementation of capacity-strengthening initiatives

· Previous experience in promoting sustainable financing is desirable

· Excellent interpersonal skills and ability to establish and maintain effective working relations with people in a multicultural and multi-ethnic environment

· Excellent verbal and written communication skills

· Fluency in English and proficiency in French