The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid-Tropics (ICRISAT) is seeking applications for a Senior Operations Manager/Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Officer to support the conception and operational deployment of EO services in West Africa, in partnership with public and private partners. These activities are undertaken as part of the SERVIR initiative in West Africa (SERVIR WA phase 2: 2022-2027). The Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Officer’s work location will be in Niamey, Niger or Accra, Ghana and s/he will be reporting to the SERVIR Chief Of Party at ICRISAT.

ICRISAT is a non-profit, non-political organization that conducts agricultural research for development in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa with a wide array of partners throughout the world. Covering 6.5 million square kilometers of land in 55 countries, the semi-arid tropics have over 2 billion people, of which 644 million are the poorest of the poor.
ICRISAT is headquartered in Patancheru, near Hyderabad, India, with two regional hubs and seven country offices in sub-Saharan Africa. In WCA, ICRISAT has its regional hub in Mali and country programs in Niger, Nigeria and Senegal.
ICRISAT was, established in 1972. For more details, see www.icrisat.org.

A joint initiative of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and leading geospatial organizations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, SERVIRpartners with countries and organizations in these regions to address critical challenges in climate change, food security, water and related disasters, land use, and air quality. Using satellite data and geospatial technology, SERVIRco-develops innovative solutions through a network of regional hubs to improve resilience and sustainable resource management at local, national and regional scales.

SERVIR increases awareness and access to information and supports analysis to help people in these regions through early action and the use of Earth observation information, Earth science, and technology.  With activities in more than 50 countries, SERVIR has already improved the capacity to develop local solutions by developing over 40 custom services, collaborating with over 600 institutions, and training more than 10,000 individuals. For more information visit www.servirglobal.net.

The Job

•   Provide management support to the implementation of the SERVIR WA 2 program, including addressing compliance and reporting requirements

•   Lead in planning, development of theories of change and performance metrics for a consortium of six regional organizations

•   Coordinate the implementation and update of the Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Plan in collaboration with the Chief of Party, User Engagement Lead, Science and Data Lead, and other program staff.

•   Conduct data quality assessments in accordance with USAID’s Automated Directive System (ADS) for all SERVIR WA activities

•   Monitor the award progress over the life of the SERVIR activity against annual targets for each indicator using the approved SERVIR West Africa Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) plan, and assembling detailed narratives for any deviation of more than Â±10%

•   Conduct annual reflection sessions and support the implementation of adaptive learning and management

•   Contribute to the annual review and validation of the MEL plan, including revisions when appropriate

•   Ensure interoperability between the SERVIR MEL plan and system and ICRISAT’s existing M&E infrastructure (MEASURE / MPro)

•   Assist SERVIR personnel and consortium members with MEL and data management, and monitor compliance with the SERVIR data management plan including timely data uploads to the Development Data Library and Development Experience Clearinghouse), embargo periods, etc.

•   Assist the project team in communicating SERVIR West Africa research results within ICRISAT, CGIAR, NASA and to external audiences, including the preparation of peer-reviewed and public awareness material