Head, Impact & Evaluation

The AECF (Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund) is a development institution that supports early and growth stage businesses to innovate, create jobs, leverage investments and markets in an effort to create resilience and sustainable incomes for rural and marginalized communities in Africa. 

AECF aims to significantly scale its impact by reaching 35 million people, equivalent to 7 million households

— by 2030 through expanded financing, advisory, and data-driven support to African enterprises.

As the Head of Impact and Evaluation, you will develop the vision for learning and impact at an impact-first organization, lead the refinement of our existing frameworks, identify opportunities for evaluation in collaboration across all levels of our organization, and support research, writing, and briefings. This role will also be responsible for documenting lessons, communicating learnings, and developing recommendations for improving results measurement practices in current and future portfolios.

In addition, you will be required to inculcate a culture of managing for impact across the institution. You will design and oversee the implementation of a results system with a special focus on the development impact of AECF’s investments. 

The ideal candidate for this role should be entrepreneurial, innovative, passionate about impact orientation and measurement, with strong analytical and leadership skills, and a good grasp of social impact investment initiatives. 

Key Accountabilities and Responsibilities;

 

Strategic Leadership and Direction: 

•       Lead on delivering an ambitious results and impact measurement, knowledge and learning framework, and strategy, specifically, but not limited to developing results frameworks and plans for data capture, analysis, and dissemination of results in order to facilitate learning and evoke the desired response from stakeholders.

•       Lead the development and implementation of appropriate ex ante impact evaluation frameworks that support investment appraisal, including on potential returns on investments, based on primary and secondary evidence. 

•       Lead the development and implementation of appropriate ex-post impact evaluation frameworks for harvesting the diversity and magnitude of the AECF’s investments.

Portfolio management: 

•       Support AECF’s Management Team in the development and active use of a portfolio-wide results framework and monitoring dashboard to help ensure good management and delivery of AECF’s programmes and policy work. This

 

should include ensuring the generation of evidence to demonstrate the outcomes and impacts of AECF programmes and ensuring this knowledge is well communicated and applied to support programme scale-up/ down, replication of achievements, and driving innovation.

•       Ensure evaluations across the AECF are well designed, managed, and communicated. This will involve close working with the Portfolio Team and engaging them to help them envision and embed creative methods for impact measurement into the solutions they are delivering to our partners at the concept note, design, competition, and implementation phases.

Capability Building: 

•       Strengthen the capacity and skills of the team in results and evaluation, and continue to build a culture of managing for impact across the institution. This will include providing results and evaluation training to staff, identifying external training opportunities, supporting a selection of staff to apply for evaluation accreditation, and providing ongoing capacity building through technical assistance at the programme level.

Corporate Reporting and Communication:

•       Lead on AECF corporate results monitoring and reporting, supporting evidence uptake, communicating monitoring and evaluation findings, translating and using the results to influence programme and policy decisions. 

Strategic Partnerships and Collaborations:

•       Collaborate with various key partners to raise the visibility of our work, with special attention to promoting our breakthroughs in result measurement and impact evaluation;

•       Understanding the processes, institutions, and organizations that shape the changing international development context in which AECF operates, including the Sustainable Development Goals, legislation, and government structures, and the roles of multilateral organizations and processes in development

Required Qualifications, Skills, and Experience 

 

•       A Master’s degree in International Development, Economics, Mathematics, Communications, or related field;

•       A minimum of 10 years of full-time work experience in research, impact measurement, and evaluation, preferably in an  international development context, working with SMEs and applying DCED standards;

•       Strong technical skills across results and evaluation, and ability to use and advise on different data collection and evaluation approaches and methods; ability to demonstrate thought leadership on technical monitoring and evaluation issues;  

•       Background in statistics to ensure technical inputs into relevant programmes and help develop the institution-wide evidence base;

•       Ability to independently prioritize and manage a diverse workload and manage multiple concurrent workstreams; 

•       Excellent communication and writing skills, with a keen ability to synthesize and present complex data in a simple, compelling, meaningful way (ability to produce beautiful and top-notch data visualization is a plus);

•       Confidence in working and engaging externally with the results and evaluation community, donors, the private sector, and Development Finance Institutions;

•       Ability to facilitate the process of turning impact data into meaningful stories;

•       Experience of working in developing countries is desirable.