Senior Regional Finance & Operations Manager - based in Central Africa

Job Title: Senior Regional Finance & Operations Manager - based in Central Africa
Salary: £40,000 - £47,000
Reporting to: Great Lakes and Central Africa Regional Representative and Head of Finance - Africa
Preferable: 6 years experience in the Humanitarian field
Hours: 37.5 Hours per week
Principal Location: Bukavu with regular travel to other parts of the Country and Region

Background:

Street Child believes every child deserves to go to school and learn. Our projects focus on education, child protection, and livelihood support to address the social, economic, and structural issues underpinning today’s education crisis. We partner with local organizations and communities to deliver our locally rooted programs. We use evidence to drive learning and the refinement and scale-up of programs to create maximum impact for most children at the lowest cost. We pride ourselves on being willing to go to the world’s most challenging places where others won’t, including remote, hard-to-reach areas and fragile, disaster-affected states across sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Since 2008 we have helped over 250,000 children go to school and learn and supported over 25,000 families to set up businesses to afford the cost of educating their children.

Part 1: Role Purpose:

This role aims to offer financial and operations management support to Great Lakes and Central Africa Region programs, focusing majorly on Street Child Programmes in DRC. The role reports to both Great Lakes and Central Africa Regional Representative and Head of Finance in Africa.

The role holds a senior position within the Street Central Africa Region team and will oversee Street Child – financial and operational setup to support operationalizing all program/project implementation in full compliance with donors’ and SC operational standards. The role will also provide financial support to programs across Great Lakes and Central Africa and partner organizations to support the development and implementation of robust financial management and reporting systems and assess and strengthen the control environment, financial management, grant management, and reporting. It will be building the finance and grants management capacity of Street Child staff and partners. A vital part of this is facilitating communication between Programmes and Finance staff.

Part 2: Key Responsibilities:

Finance Management:

• Supervise the country's standard financial systems establishment and maintenance in line with STREET-CHILD Financial Policy and Procedures, donor and local legislation requirements to provide appropriate levels of security and controls over the organization's resources and operations across the country to ensure success, consistency, and compliance.
• Develop and update quarterly the country's Master Budget to ensure that all funding gaps are covered.
• Provide strong leadership to the Finance and Admin team in all offices, whether with direct line management or technical, ensuring competent and motivated staff are hired and retained.
• Provide financial advice to the budget holders and local partners, ensure adequate support is provided to the program, and ensure the alignment of resource allocations with organizational priorities at the budgeting and implementation stages.
• Ensure that monthly accounting closure is timely, accurate, and compliant with STREET-CHILD financial policies and procedures for all Street-Child field offices and perform the bank reconciliation as appropriate.
• Using the Street-Child accounting system, produce the Budget Vs.—actuals for internal use by the country team and budget holders on a monthly basis.
• Oversee all financial and logistical requests made by the technical team and ensure they are in line with the Street-Child guidelines (Advance request, travel request, leave request, Toil request).
• Lead on applying Street-Child anti-fraud and anti-corruption policy and ensure all DRC staff understand and adhere to it, including Zero tolerance.
• Ensure regular financial and operational checks are performed for each local partner involved in Street-Child project implementation.
• Elaborate, review, and update Finance Standard Operating Procedures for STREET-CHILD DRC and across the Central and Great Lakes region as required and relevant.
• Conduct spot checks on transactions be responsible for maintaining transparency and accountability within finance and administration.
• Build financial management capacity for local partners in the region.

Grant Management and Budget proposal:

• Collaborating with other managers during proposal development, lead on the costing in proposal writing.
• Produce grant financial reports for donors in their formats.
• With the Senior Programme Manager, co-lead monthly grants review meetings involving all active partners.
• Manage the budget review, cost extension, realignment, and alert on any potential risk.
• Ensure appropriate measures are taken to address audit findings and recommendations associated with all grants.
• Conduct grant management training for local partners and provide orientation on finance matters and tools to non-finance staff.

Operations Oversight:

• Lead all aspects of HR, administration, procurement and logistics in the region
• Adequately manage internal and external HR and admin risks, highlight & resolve relevant issues with national institutions with support from the country leadership team (Taxes, labour inspection).
• Maintain daily responsibility for local staff issues, i.e., contracts, payroll, job descriptions, salary scales, leave, and benefit in support of the HR and Admin Assistant.
• Facilitate frequent staff meetings, and update the staff on the new Street-Child guidelines, regulations, etc.
• Lead the outsourcing of some services such as staff medical insurance, legal issues and the adherence to national labour laws, taxation systems and rules, social security, and insurance rules, etc.
• Lead in running procurement, ensuring value for money and overseeing all contracts which are placed with suppliers
• Ensure that all necessary agreements, permits, and licenses for Street-Child operations in DRC are in place, and keep updated on national rules and regulations pertaining to Street-Child activities.
• Lead staff adherence to all processes and ensure strict and contextualized application across the DRC program.
• Ensure proper asset management by initiating tools and control systems, including tagging.

Part 3: Person Specification

Attributes Essential Desirable

Education / Qualifications:

• Educated to degree level or higher.
• Recognised Accountancy Qualification.
• Degree in International Business Administration, finance or related field; or attendance at specific relevant training courses.

Experience and Knowledge:

• 6 years post qualification experience.
• Experience of implementing internal controls and finance procedures.
• Experience of managing multi donor grants and good knowledge of donor compliance rules and requirements – in particular working with ECHO, BHA, EU, SIDA, NMFA, FCDO, USAID, UNICEF, ECW, WFP, etc.
• Knowledge of development issues and concepts.

Skills and Abilities:

• Extensive knowledge of finance & logistics policy within non-governmental organizations.
• Knowledge of computer applications and accounting software’s.
• Excellent relationship building skills, with an ability to skilfully navigate both national and international stakeholders.
• Knowledge of French, Swahili or other relevant local languages.

Other:

• Strong interpersonal, management and team work skills.
• Ability to influence change in teams not directly managed.
• A self-starter, capable of working independently and flexibly to a high level.
• Fluent English –written and spoken.
• Good communication and staff training / capacity building skills.

How to apply:

• To apply for this fantastic opportunity, please follow the link below.
• Female applications are strongly encouraged.