Senior Programmes Officer - Bilingual

The African Women’s Development Fund

4d•$32,493 - $44,691•Hybrid

About The Position

The African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) is seeking a highly motivated and innovative Senior Programme Officer (SPO) - Bilingual to join their team. This role is crucial for a pan-African feminist fund that resources, strengthens, and upholds women’s rights and feminist organizations and movements across Africa. The SPO will play a key role in designing and implementing AWDF’s resourcing strategy, providing strategic leadership for a portfolio of feminist actors and initiatives. The position involves leading grantmaking, partner engagement, learning and knowledge generation, and portfolio management, with a focus on feminist, responsive, trust-based, and decolonized approaches. The role also contributes to thought leadership in feminist resourcing and movement strengthening, ensuring AWDF's work advances gender justice and supports diverse feminist movements across the continent.

Requirements

Ability to apply feminist and social and gender justice principles in development and organizing within the African context.
Expertise working with and in coalitions, cross-regional engagement, multi-stakeholder interests and dynamics.
Expertise using frameworks like intersectionality, social exclusion analysis.
A team player who is proactive and can take initiative.
Excellent track record in delivering against targets.
Ability to develop strong, long-term external relationships with diverse stakeholders.
Excellent leadership and people management skills, the ability to motivate and build an effective team and experience of distance management.
Strong interpersonal skills, high levels of personal integrity and professional credibility and experience of building strong and credible relationships with diverse stakeholders including colleagues, donors and feminist movement actors.
Confidence in communicating the impact of programme results to a wide and expert audience.
Organisation, planning and management skills and the ability to work to tight deadlines.
Strong research, advocacy, capacity building and movement building skills.
Ability to exercise professional judgement and to support and implement difficult decisions.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English and French.
Time management, ability to meet deadlines.
Ability to set clear priorities, objectives and work allocations, tracking progress against plans and taking appropriate action to ensure targets are met.
Ability to facilitate dialogues with different stakeholders.
A high level of proficiency in MS Office and experience working with information management systems/databases, online apps and tools.
Budget planning and monitoring skills.
Work cooperatively with others to overcome conflict and build towards a common goal.
Excellent IT skills and numeric skills.
Excellent written and spoken English.
Editing skills.
Working knowledge of other languages i.e. French is required.
At least 6 years working experience in participatory and more transformative approaches to feminist philanthropy, grantmaking or movement resourcing.
Experience working across formal and informal movement entities (i.e. emergent and non-traditional collectives, CBOs, NGOs and/or strategic implementing partners) and/or feminist or women’s rights movements.
Professional experience around feminist organising, experience of working with African women’s and feminist organisations, an in-depth knowledge of African feminist and women’s rights priorities, approaches, issues and concerns.
Qualified African women are encouraged to apply.

Nice To Haves

Preference will be given to applicants with a bachelor’s degree qualification in gender studies or relevant field or related discipline and at least 6 years professional experience in a similar role.
AWDF will consider applicants who can demonstrate the necessary competencies through experience.

Responsibilities

Contribute to the implementation of AWDF’s resourcing strategies and funding priorities for feminist movements, ensuring alignment with the AWDF Strategic Framework.
Develop and adapt a strategic, inclusive, and feminist portfolio of partners and initiatives across diverse organizational and movement structures, ensuring responsiveness to evolving movement contexts and priorities.
Lead the development and management of a coherent portfolio of partnerships that is trust-based, collaborative, and responsive, and that enables sustained, longer-term accompaniment and support.
Pilot and adapt innovative, feminist, and decolonized resourcing approaches, drawing on AWDF’s funding and accompaniment practices to generate evidence, document learning, and share good practices.
Conduct contextual, political, and feminist analysis to inform resourcing decisions, portfolio composition and strategic priorities.
Identify and analyse emerging trends, gaps, risks, and opportunities within feminist and women’s rights organising across Africa to inform strategic decision-making and resourcing approaches.
Provide strategic leadership and contribute to organizational and sector-wide thought leadership on feminist resourcing, philanthropy, and movement strengthening through critical analysis, learning, innovation, and external engagement.
Contribute to organizational change processes related to resourcing approaches, ensuring effective implementation and alignment across teams.
Provide oversight and strategic direction for grantmaking processes within the portfolio, ensuring quality, consistency, and alignment with AWDF’s feminist funding principles.
Contribute to strategic and operational oversight of the Resourcing work.
Support recruitment, onboarding, performance and succession planning ensuring adherence to AWDF policies.
Foster a collaborative, accountable, and feminist team culture that reflects the feminist principles and values of AWDF.
Strengthen staff capacity, autonomy, and professional growth.
Promote cross-functional collaboration and shared leadership.
Lead the planning, implementation, coordination of a portfolio of feminist actors and initiatives, ensuring alignment with AWDF's strategic priorities and feminist principles.
Provide strategic oversight of grantmaking and accompaniment processes within the portfolio, ensuring timely, effective, and high-quality delivery.
Lead the assessment and review of grant applications, applying feminist, contextual, political, and organisational analysis to inform funding decisions and recommendations.
Provide quality assurance and oversight for grant dockets, funding recommendations, due diligence, and partner engagement processes, ensuring these are feminist, proportional, trust-based, and context-responsive.
Oversee grants management processes across the portfolio, including contracting, reporting, partner accompaniment, and portfolio tracking, with a strong emphasis on learning, accountability, and adaptive management.
Lead the development and implementation of planning, monitoring, evaluation, learning, and reporting processes related to the portfolio and broader resourcing priorities.
Contribute to collaborative learning, reflection, and knowledge exchange across the Resourcing Team, Programmes Department, and partners to strengthen practice and inform continuous improvement.
Convene and facilitate dialogue spaces with partners and movement actors to deepen understanding of contextual realities, emerging issues, and structural challenges affecting feminist organising and movement building.
Represent AWDF in relevant external platforms, networks, and forums related to feminist funding, philanthropy, and movement strengthening, contributing to organisational visibility and influence.
Develop and provide oversight on portfolio budgets and ensure alignment with strategic priorities.
Approve expenditures and ensure deliverables are within allocated budget in line with AWDF financial policies.
Work with the Programme Manager to determine resource requirements for effective delivery.
Ensure financial accountability and efficiency in resourcing processes.
Support with donor coordination activities (communications, review meetings, consultations) and translate trends and learning about resourcing into appropriate donor communications.
Coordinate and/or participate in relevant initiatives, working groups and collaborations to exchange knowledge and advance shared goals to influence the donor community.
Build relationships to understand movement partners contexts to identify priorities to resource and support.
Establish and nurture relationships with colleagues as an integral element of communication and relationship management.
Provide programme and portfolio level monitoring, impact and learning and evaluation support to relevant entities, ensuring diversity and voice and representation.
Lead on monitoring, evaluation and learning about what we are doing and how our contribution is making a difference, responding to and creating new spaces and opportunities for women-led and feminist activist organisations in Africa?
Provide quality input into donor proposals and reports, including supporting funded partners to document experiences and outcomes for reporting.
Coordinate and deliver on internal and external reporting requirements (Board, donor, accountability, project reports etc.).
Carry out any other duties that are within the scope of the job.