Summary

Reporting to the Senior Director Africa, the Country Director is responsible for delivering results for women and their families, driving programmatic excellence, and implementing best practice at scale.  He /she provides high quality services where they are needed the most, and his / her work directly contributes to preventing unnecessary deaths and making a sustainable impact on the lives of thousands of people every year. The Country Director is a key leadership position responsible for the overall strategy, management (programmatic, financial, and administrative), and development of our national family planning and sexual and reproductive health (SRH) programmes. He / she leads skilled, professional country teams to deliver life-saving services through clinical centres, mobile outreach teams, social franchising, and social business. In addition, he /she is responsible for preparing and executing annual budgets, marketing plans and work plans; developing new business opportunities; overseeing financial, administrative, and logistical resources; ensuring adherence to Organisation's minimum standards; and assuring quality operations in line with annual and long-term strategic goals and objectives. The Country Director manages for results, valuing and rewarding high performance, accountability, speed and efficiency and innovation, while keeping the client at the heart of everything we do. The Country Director is Organisation’s senior representative in the country of assignment. He / she works closely with governments, donors, and other key stakeholders to overcome barriers that prevent women and men from accessing safe, affordable, reliable family planning and other sexual and reproductive health services.

Responsibilities

Leadership:

• Effectively lead and line manages the country Executive Management Team (EMT), developing both individual and team capacity, providing clear strategic direction to managers and team members
• Work collaboratively with the Africa Regional Support Team (RST), and the Organisation's GSO, enabling capacity building and sharing best practice within the region.
• Lead Organisation’s vision and manage the implementation plans, simplifying the complexity for themselves and others.
• Instil a positive Organisation management culture and social business approach across the team, constantly seeking feedback and continual improvement.
• Improve operations by strengthening capacity, building high performance teams, identifying and promoting talent, managing performance.
• Ensure human resource policy and processes and procedures are in line with best practice and local legislation.

 Business Planning:

• Ensure that the programme is equipped to work towards the goals set out in the country programme ‘as per the Organisation's strategy.
• Lead country programme subsequent strategic and annual business planning processes
• Plan and implement strategies for delivering sustainable growth.
• Position Organisation's as a sector leader contributing to national strategy and goals.
• Deliver a comprehensive country marketing strategy and plan to build the brand of choice by using robust audience data, competitor analysis and other market data.
• Deliver a robust business model ensuring the on-going growth of healthy income streams including innovative financing, earned income and more traditional grant resources.

 

Strategy & Development:

• Build and maintain strong partnerships with government, health professionals, businesses, peer agencies and the
  community.
• Build relationships with traditional and non-traditional donor representatives, including domestic financing stakeholders. Ensure the development of strong new business proposals in collaboration with the London based Programme Design and Development (PDD) team
• Deliver an organisational structure that supports increasing efficiency of operations regardless of their funding modalities.

 Commercial

• Manage Company's commercial operations towards sustainability.
• New business development; Products and services
• Credit control and debtor management

 Quality Operations:

• Lead the adoption of innovative solutions, such as Organisation's Channel, Youth & Adolescent, Project Cycle Management (PCM) ‘Success Models’, to improve productivity and increase effectiveness of delivery channels.
• Promote evidence-based decision making and support operational research to better understand our clients and barriers to access.
• Ensure robust systems and processes are in place, such as strong compliance with Organisation’s service data validation minimum standards, to support operations, drive productivity and deliver results.
• Ensure clinical quality of care is maintained at all times; supports quality assurance processes and leads Medical Advisory Team meetings for continuous clinical quality improvement.
• Ensure complete donor contractual compliance at every stage of the project cycle and ensure all project management staff are trained on and follow the Company PCM rules and recommendations.

Finance and Governance

• Improve the bottom line through the following: -
• Revenue growth and optimising earned income from selected Company outlets.
• Increased efficiency of operations and sound financial management
• Sustained surplus of the activities that are implemented under the social business model.
• Base strategic and annual business plans on accurate financial and statistical performance data
• Ensure strong financial management and robust internal controls are in place and that the programme adheres to local statutory obligations, Organization's minimum standards and international development donor requirements.
• Meet governance requirements of the country programme entity/entities.
• Represent the organization on the Board of the local organization.
• Ensure that externally funded operations and use of funds are in full compliance with donor regulations.
• Ensure compliance with the organization's anti-fraud and bribery (AFB) Safeguarding policies and procedures.

 Security:

• Ensure compliance with relevant local regulations so that the CP operations are maintained at all times
• Ensure the programme fully meets duty of care requirements and operates within Organization’s Global Security Framework

• Ensure that team members and visitors receive full in-country briefings covering the context, risks and security rules.

 Accountability and Partnership:

• Foster and maintain close relationship with the Ministry of Health and the relevant agencies of the Government of Uganda.
• Promote One Organization, encouraging cooperation and supporting learning across the partnership.
• Ensure the organization's Partnership Manual guidelines are observed, meeting Company best practice and minimum standards.
• Actively participate in regional and international meetings of the Organisation's Global Partnership

Education and Qualifications

• The applicant must hold a relevant post-graduate qualification e.g. MPH, MBA, MSc, MA (Essential)
• Project Management and leadership training (Prince 2 desirable)

Requirements

• At least 7 yrs experience at executive leadership/management level
• Proven experience of change management, including identifying required change, leading the change, and ensuring it is embedded and sustained.
• Experience in strategic and annual business planning.
• Experience setting up and running commercial operations; Making investment decisions, understanding P&L, Marketing, business risk management.
• Experience of resource mobilisation, business development and donor engagement
• Experience providing financial oversight, including internal controls and accountability, audit, credit control.
• Proven experience of building lasting relationships with key external stakeholders, e.g., government or donors and other stakeholders
• Board Management experience

• Public speaking, fluent in both written and spoken English.
• International work experience is an added advantage.