Democratic Republic of the Congo: Finance Lead

BACKGROUND:

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) is one of the world's leading humanitarian relief and development organizations. Founded in 1933 at the request of Albert Einstein, the IRC responds to the world's worst humanitarian crises and helps people survive, recover and regain control over their lives. Working in more than 40 countries, the IRC is helping to restore hope and opportunity to millions of people.

IRC governance programmes focus on fostering the voice and empowerment of people and communities along with the organizational development of civil society organizations and public service providers. Implemented in post-crisis and recovery contexts, these programmes focus on:

• Empowering people affected by conflict to that they are better placed to solve their own problems;
• Ensuring that the needs of all groups, regardless of gender, age or ethnicity, are taken into account by local decision-makers, and that people understand and trust the processes by which decisions are made;
• Working to ensure that service providers and people in positions of power at community and government levels are responsive to people's needs and recognizethat all people have equal rights that must be respected and realized.

IRC is one of the largest providers of relief and development assistance in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Across a number of DRC's provinces, IRC implements programs directly or through partners in the sectors of health, governance & community development, women's protection & empowerment, education, and emergency response through a network of nine field offices and a range of institutional and community partnerships.

PROGRAMME SCOPE AND OBJECTIVES

The IRC is recruiting a Finance Lead in preparation for the upcoming DFID Collective Action & Systems Strengthening (CASS) programme. CASS is a seven-year governance programme aiming to support the decentralization process and specifically the Congolese State to become increasingly capable, accountable and responsive to the expressed demands of Congolese citizens. The programme will be articulated in three integrated components: 1) Collective Action (CA) or 'the demand side'; 2) Systems Strengthening (SS) or 'the supply side'; and 3) Evaluation. The expected Outputs are:

• Poor men and women are increasingly empowered to hold a legitimate Congolese state to account (Component 1);
• The policy development, planning and execution capability of the Congolese public administration is strengthened (Component 2);
• DFID DRC's development portfolio is fully integrated, nationally, provincially and locally.

The IRC will be leading a consortium for the CA component of this opportunity. The programme will be implemented across multiple provinces and will involve governance as well as voice and empowerment related activities around health, education, water, livelihoods, security, justice and media, among others.

THE FINANCE LEAD POSITION

The Finance Lead will be reporting to the Team Leader and will be responsible for ensuring effective programme support in the areas of budgeting, financial management and reporting. He will also work in close collaboration with Deputy Team Leader and the Finance Lead to ensure the required budgeting, financial management and reporting support is in place for delivering programme milestones on schedule. The Finance Lead should have a strong budgetary and financial management experience in the context of large-scale development and humanitarian programmes. This should be also complemented by significant experience with DFID commercial contracts, or similar funding mechanisms with major bilateral donors. Candidates will be expected to have strong knowledge of financial and operational realities in DRC or in fragile and conflict affected contexts in Sub-Saharan Africa. As the project will be implemented across multiple provinces, the position will require regular travel to field sites.

Main Responsibilities:

• Provide leadership on all budgeting and financial management aspects of the programme and ensure effective systems and reporting mechanism are in place;
• Oversee budget planning and execution and ensure accurate and timely reporting to DFID;
• Directly supervise, coordinate and manage the finance team;
• Actively support and participate in the deliberations of the Senior Program Management Team;
• Coordinate budgeting and financial management and reporting with consortium partners;
• Set up and oversee the sub-grants management system;
• Work with IRC finance leadership team to ensure compliance with DFID requirements and IRC financial systems and processes.

Job Qualifications, Skills and Experience:

• A proven track record (at least 5 years) managing large multimillion dollars budgets in a fragile and conflict affected context in Sub-Saharan Africa, with specific experience in DRC a strong advantage;
• Solid skills and experience in budgeting and financial management;
• Experience reporting to Donors in a timely manner;
• Strong mentoring and interpersonal skills, proven abilities at cross-cultural communication and ease in managing a multi-cultural team;
• Solid experience managing DFID funded commercial contracts, or similar funding mechanisms with other bilateral donors;
• Ability to manage a large and varied workload, work under pressure and meet deadlines;
• Fluency in English and French (spoken and written);
• Excellent IT skills (Word, Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint);
• Postgraduate degree in Accounting, Finance, Business or Public Administration or a relevant discipline;
• DRC nationals or long-term residents are particularly encouraged to apply.

Please follow this link to apply: http://www.aplitrak.com/?adid=a2F0cmluYW1pbGxlci45MDYxNS4zODMwQGlyYy5hcGxpdHJhay5jb20