At the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI), we work at the highest levels of government to help leaders go further and faster to make their citizens’ lives better. Moving the dial on the great global challenges of our time requires engaged, focused, and motivated leaders. When political leadership is relentlessly deployed, at the highest levels, incredible things can be achieved. Using our distinctive expertise and global outlook, our expert advisors and embedded teams advise governments all over the world in strategy, policy, and delivery, underpinned by technology.

A core element of our Advisory Practice is our long-standing work in Africa. Our work in 17 countries is focussed on supporting leaders to incubate and deliver their visions for their countries; and supporting their governments to build institutional capacity and resilience. Our work in Africa is funded through a mix of philanthropic sources, grants and contracts; and our high-performing teams seek to combine ambitious talent from the private, public and NGO sectors recruited both locally and internationally.

In the past two years, TBI’s global portfolio in the health sector has expanded to include health tech, programme implementation and policy development.

In Africa, our donor-funded health portfolio is anchored by three programmes falling under the banner of Health Institutions Capacity Strengthening and disease prevention:

• Africa CDC
• West Africa Health Organisation
• The Africa Vaccines Programme

TBI established these programmes to support governments and key institutions to strengthen systems for response to current public health threats and routine interventions as well as prevention and preparedness for future public health emergencies. This includes programmes focusing on strengthening regional and continental public health institutions and supporting vaccine delivery across Africa, and research and health policy advise.

The Health Institutional Capacity Strengthening (HICS) Programme, focusses on strengthening the West African Health Organization (WAHO) and the Africa Centre for Disease Control and Prevention building on similar work undertaken by country teams at a national level.

The Africa Vaccines Programme (AVP) supports vaccine delivery in key countries across Africa, working through teams embedded in these countries (including Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Burkina Faso Ghana, Senegal) and with Africa CDC.

To lead these critical programmes, TBI is seeking a Senior Manager. The successful candidate will provide leadership to three multi-country public health grant programmes driving strategic direction and cohesion across the programmes and ensuring their impact in line with the funder’s expectations and TBI’s broader health strategy. You will guide your teams to seize opportunities to generate additional impact at scale by proactively identifying synergies with other TBI Health and sectoral initiatives on the continent.

The post-holder will work closely with the Health Community of Practice and Health expertise in Global Client solutions to draw in additional and specialised expertise to complement the full-time team. Critically, you will engage with the Global Business Development and Income (BD&I) team to ensure donor-client relationships and compliance achieved to the utmost calibre. They will also collaborate with these teams in developing the portfolio further in response to needs of clients both on the government and donor side.

TBI country teams under the leadership of Country Directors are responsible for ensuring effective delivery of TBIs efforts in a given country and the Head of State and guided by Regional Directors who support delivery, impact, and cohesion in a given region. To effectively deliver your remit you will need to ensure you and your team interface and work collaboratively with RDs and CDs given the cross-cutting nature of the work.

Key Responsibilities

This role is responsible for the success of TBI’s portfolio of TBI’s donor-funded health programmes in Africa. The specific tasks of this role holder are:

Strategic Planning and Delivery

• Provide overall management, strategic direction, and leadership to the programmes to achieve expected goals and results within budgets and timeframes
• In partnership with the expert resource in Global Client Solutions and Global Business Development & Income (BD&I):
• Development of strategies for all three programmes that are aligned to contractual obligations for the countries and partners we support
• Play the role of primary thought partner for our programme teams to continually improve the quality of our offer and propose innovative methods of delivery to achieve programme impact and outcomes
• Facilitate effective escalations of issues and requirements to Africa Executive leadership and where appropriate country and regional directors
• With CDs and RDs, facilitate political intervention and problem solving with senior counterparts where needed, ensuring coordination and alignment with country teams, and obtaining rapid approvals and quick responses for changes in project outlook or strategy

Staff management and quality assurance

• Take a results oriented approach to ensure a high standard of award management by programme managers for multi-country health programmes. Direct and line manage such programme managers, while empowering them to remain closely anchored to other parts of TBI Africa to ensure the government-led nature of their programmes
• Support programme managers in technical design of programmes
• Nurture and grow high performance leadership teams for programmes within your portfolio
• Conduct and ensure effective induction sessions to new joiners into the teams
• Ensure effective learning and development plans and effective objective setting and performance of the teams
• Ensure programme managers retain required documentation of activities to contribute to knowledge management, learning, and grant requirements
• Ensure a strong working relationship with country heads managing in-country health advisors, associates and analysts. Such staff will be the line responsibility of the country heads, but will have a dotted line to you and the programme managers responsible for whole of programme grant compliance and impact

Funding and business development

• Work with TBI’s Global Business Development & Income team to contribute to relevant strategy and compliance efforts for this area of TBI’s Africa Health work
• With BD&I, ensure a hands-on approach to grant and contract management activities including but not limited to meeting burn rate targets, meeting results framework and reporting requirements
• Support grant agreement modifications and programme evolution including pivots where needed as continental health trends may require (e.g post pandemic)
• Contribute to new business opportunity development including participation in conceptualisation meetings, proposal development and related engagements
• Maintain excellent working relationships with critical revenue partners
• Build relationships with senior stakeholders in the wider ecosystem (institutional and country level) to build TBI’s credibility and spot and develop opportunities, including for wider partnership working

Health offer development and community of practice

• Contribute to the evolution of and strengthening of our Health Institution Strengthening (HICS) offering as an active part of the TBI Health community of practice and in support of the Director, Health in Global Client Solutions
• Collaborating with the Global Business Development & Income team, ensure the Health offerings remain relevant and responsive to your programmes’ needs and expectations of our donors
• Proactively identify synergies, partnerships, and opportunities to scale impact through coordination and collaboration with other TBI health efforts, initiatives, and partnerships and other practice areas including manufacturing, climate, and digital, technology transformation
• Work with the Health Community of Practice and Director, Health in Global Client solutions to contribute to a roster of effective external networks which support the needs of your projects

Person Specification

This role requires someone with excellent strategy, management and communication skills, with applied experience in public health administration and grant management.

The successful candidate will need to demonstrate the following skills, knowledge and experience:

• Extensive public health administration experience either in management consulting, government advisory, national or multi-national public health institutions or similar organisations
• Experience implementing a complex strategy particularly in the health sector would be advantageous
• Experience successfully developing and leading a programme of work and managing a high-performance team
• Strong technical expertise in the public health system development in a low-income and lower middle income country context
• Political savviness and comfort working in politically sensitive contexts including at the highest levels of governments and multilateral institutions
• Strong financial management skills and advanced understanding of monitoring and evaluation frameworks
• Ability to engage a wider range of resources around a given problem to develop appropriate solutions and to spot opportunities for collaboration
• A track record of successfully engaging with a diverse range of stakeholders, including at a high level (e.g. Head of State) and development partners
• Proven ability to structure and solve complex policy problems
• A clear and confident communicator, both written and spoken
• Self-starter, motivated and proactive with solutions
• The candidate should have the right to live and work in either Nairobi or Addis-Ababa