Translators without Borders (TWB) envisions a world where knowledge knows no language barriers. The US-based non-profit provides people access to vital knowledge in their language by connecting non-profit organizations with a community of language professionals, building local language translation capacity, and raising awareness of language barriers. Originally founded in 1993 in France (as Traducteurs sans Frontières), TWB translates millions of words of life-saving and life-changing information every year.

We are recruiting to fill the position of:

Job Title: Country Director – Nigeria

Location: Maiduguri / Abuja, home-based until deployment
Contract length: one year, with a possibility of extension
Hours: full-time
Travel: in-country travel
Reporting to: Head of International Programs

The Role

• The Country Director leads TWB’s Nigeria program. The CD works closely with the Country Management Team, empowering them to work together.
• The Country Director is the primary champion of TWB’s organizational culture.
• The CD should nurture a respectful and collaborative work environment in line with TWB’s values, ensuring that the country team strives for excellence, effectiveness, and efficiency.
• The Country Director provides strategic leadership and oversight of innovative program strategies, has overall responsibility for organizational representation and partnership building, efficient and transparent fundraising, financial management and compliance, security management, advocacy, and external communication.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities
Team leadership:

• Recruit, lead, empower, and manage the high-performing team needed for the successful development and implementation of the country strategy
• Promote, model, and take proactive steps to ensure a diverse, positive, innovative, and supportive work environment
• Maintain close contact with other TWB Country Directors and with the TWB global team to ensure the country team learns from and shares with others in the organization
• Actively promote understanding of TWB’s Code of Conduct and safeguarding and PSEA policies, and associated reporting procedures across the team, and uphold TWB’s values (below) in their and the team’s engagement with communities, partners and colleagues

Resource mobilization and management:

• Proactively seek and pursue opportunities to expand the depth and breadth of the program in response to need. This includes potential geographical expansion, including to neighboring countries
• Cultivate and strengthen relationships with existing and potential donors and act as their primary interlocutor
• Oversee the development and submission of funding proposals in order to ensure that country plans are sustainably resourced

Representation and coordination:

• Represent TWB and build the organization’s profile in-country, ensuring professional and productive engagement with local, regional, and national authorities, donors, private sector partners, and national and international civil society partners.
• Engage with humanitarian and development coordination and strategy development to ensure that issues relating to language and two-way communication are taken on board by key decision makers and included in strategic documents
• Collaborate and build on the existing partnerships to ensure smooth and collegiate relationships and coordinate on positions and outreach.

Media and Advocacy:

• Lead on political, development and humanitarian context and trend analysis for the country.
• Lead TWB’s advocacy and media efforts in the country in close cooperation with the global Senior Advocacy Officer and Communication Senior Officer to ensure that language issues are highlighted.
• Act as spokesperson in-country, as delegated by the Executive Director and proactively and constructively engage with reputable journalists to promote coverage and understanding of language issues in the media.

Design and implementation of country strategies and plans:

• Ensure that country strategies and plans are developed and aligned with global TWB priorities and initiatives and in line with current humanitarian and development plans.
• Lead on ensuring that TWB programs build an evidence base on the importance and impact of taking language into account in humanitarian and development programming.
• Ensure that programs and projects meet their goals and targets on time and within budget

Program delivery and grant management:

• Lead the delivery and monitoring of program activities, in line with international humanitarian, donor and TWB standards
• Specifically, coordinate with other TWB teams to promote the use of appropriate language technology to inform communication strategies and risk communication content as an iterative learning and communication process
• Manage program budgets, monitoring, learning and reporting in line with TWB and donor requirements, and maintain business continuity
• Liaise between partner organizations and TWB’s language services team to ensure the timely delivery of high-quality translation, editing, and terminology services

Legal, logistics, security, financial and human resource management:

• Serve as the primary budget authority in-country, responsible for ensuring all costs charged to projects are allowable, reasonable and correctly allocated
• Ensure that TWB has adequate security measures in place approved by the Global Security Focal Point and that security guidance is understood and adhered to by all team members, including visitors
• In collaboration with TWB’s global finance and HR team, ensure financial, logistics and HR systems and procedures compliant with legal requirements are in place and adhered to
• The role will evolve along with the overall program as projects and activities develop to reflect the changing language and communication needs.

Qualifications

• The Country Director should be an innovative leader with a strong sense of initiative, an understanding of the humanitarian and development sectors and senior management experience.
• They should be enthusiastic about the importance of improving the quality and accountability of humanitarian action through language and the participation of local civil society in  these ecosystems.
• The right candidate is an energetic team player and leader committed to the challenge of managing an innovative program in a difficult environment.
• They agree with TWB´s core values and can work effectively in a diverse team in-country and virtually with team members based throughout the world.

Requirements 

• Relevant University Degree required
• 8+ years of program design and management experience, including institutional donor grants and budget management
• 5+ years of international aid experience, with a mix of humanitarian and development experience required
• 3+ years of experience as a senior manager with a strong reputation for developing collaborative working relationships with local counterparts and relevant state actors and agencies, international organizations, and donors
• Demonstrated successful experience of mobilizing resources for innovative, collaborative programs
• Demonstrated understanding of Accountability to Affected People, and communication and community engagement work
• Digital communication in community engagement and accountability experience a plus
• Demonstrated experience in mobilizing, organizing resources and establishing priorities
• Proven experience of managing staff security in complex and insecure environments
• Proven ability to manage staff and build cohesive, productive teams
• Excellent writing and presentation skills in English
• Knowledge of Hausa, Kanuri, Yoruba or Igbo a plus.

Essential Aptitudes

• Strong diplomatic, negotiation, and leadership skills
• Active listening skills, and focus on solutions
• Strong ability to multitask, prioritize, and work independently with minimal supervision
• Good communicator, willing and open to engage in global discussions
• Attention to detail, thoroughness, accuracy, ability to meet deadlines under time pressure, and to work quickly and steadily in a focused manner
• Ability to deal with frequent changes, delays, interruptions, and unexpected events; flexibility and can-do attitude
• Demonstrated initiative, persistence, ability to problem solve, and enthusiasm for learning
• Good interpersonal skills; able to work well in a team-oriented, collaborative, cross-functional environment
• Ability to capacity build within the country team, encourage analytical thinking and skill development
• Ability to innovate to find creative solutions; willing and interested to explore new technologies
• Resourcefulness, capacity to get more out of small budgets

Plus During Deployment:

• Location-specific hardship allowance (if it applies)
• Accommodation
• A 3-month Rest & Recuperation cycle (if it applies), including additional leave and travel.

Salary Range
6,400 -7,000 USD / month.

We offer in addition to salary:

• An innovative work environment with a diverse and passionate team
• 20 days of annual leave and 10 days of floating holidays

Application Closing Date
2nd February, 2022.