About the Role
Reporting to the Programme Director, the Learning, Evidence and Impact Lead will provide strategic leadership and technical oversight for learning, evidence generation and use, and impact measurement. The role ensures that data and insights are systematically generated, shared, and used to inform implementation, support adaptive management, and strengthen impact across diverse contexts and stakeholders. This role also champions inclusive learning and ensures that the programme meets the expectations of donors, partners, governments, and communities.
Key Responsibilities
Strategic Learning & Impact Leadership
- Lead the development and implementation of a programme-wide Learning, Impact and Adaptation Framework, aligned with programme objectives and donor requirements.
- Ensure learning is systematically embedded across the programme lifecycle - from design and implementation to scale.
- Lead periodic validation and refinement of the programme Theory of Change.
- Define and track outcome-level impact pathways across countries.
- Ensure learning informs scale-up strategies and policy engagement.
MEL Oversight & Quality Assurance
- Define and enforce minimum datasets required for decision-making across programme levels.
- Ensure evaluation findings are translated into strategic action plans.
- Provide technical oversight to country-level MEL systems to ensure consistency, quality, and comparability across countries.
- Provide technical oversight for baseline, mid-term, and end-term evaluations, including coordination with government counterparts, independent evaluators, External Reference Groups, and country teams.
- Guide the design and implementation of participatory institutional, service mapping, and facility readiness assessments to identify gaps and inform targeted capacity strengthening and service improvements.
- Set standards for data quality, ethics, inclusion, and safeguarding in data collection and use.
- Support the design and implementation of impact assessments, evaluations, and learning studies.
Data Use, Sense-Making & Knowledge Translation
- Institutionalise quarterly decision-making forums based on programme data, structured learning and reflection processes, e.g. learning reviews, after-action reviews, pause-and-reflect sessions.
- Translate complex data into clear, actionable insights for diverse audiences, including programme teams, partners, and donors.
- Ensure insights are effectively communicated through appropriate knowledge products such as dashboards, publications, briefs, presentations and learning notes.
- Guides the strategic use of evidence to inform decision-making, course correction, and innovation across countries.
- Track utilisation of learning products and decisions influenced.
Stakeholder Engagement & Influence
- Engage donors, government counterparts, and partners to align learning priorities, manage expectations and strengthen the use of evidence for decision-making.
- Facilitate cross-country and cross-partner learning communities to promote knowledge exchange and shared problem-solving.
- Promote co-creation of learning with implementing partners and communities, ensuring that learning processes are inclusive and contextually grounded.
Capacity Strengthening
- Develop and implement a structured MEL and learning capacity strengthening strategy.
- Track improvements in partner and country-level data use and learning maturity.
- Strengthen MEL and learning capacity across partners and country teams through coaching, practical tools, and ongoing technical guidance.
- Foster a culture of learning, reflection, and accountability across the programme.
Travel Requirements
- Approximately 20% travel is expected across project locations.
