Regional Director, Africa

Based: Preferably DRC (Kinshasa), Kenya (Nairobi) or Rwanda (Kigali), or possibly Mali (Bamako) or Nigeria (Abuja).                           

Salary: Competitive salary and excellent benefits

Contract: Permanent

Closing date: 18 September 2022

This is an exciting opportunity for an experienced and dynamic peacebuilding, humanitarian or development leader with a strong programming background living and working in Africa, and a commitment to delivering tangible and sustained positive change in often challenging situations. You will be a key leader at International Alert, one of the world’s largest and most respected peacebuilding organisations with a 35-year track record.

Reporting to the Director of Programmes, this position is for an experienced manager with a passion for innovation and the strategic vision to guide the consolidation and deepening of our regional peacebuilding programmes across diverse contexts. You will provide leadership and guidance to 80+ staff across DRC, Kenya, Niger, Nigeria, Mali, Rwanda and the UK, directly managing the team’s Country Directors and key regional team staff, while collaborating closely with our Asia-MENA and Eurasia regional programmes and Peacebuilding Advisory Unit.

You will provide strategic leadership for the Africa programme, ensuring that each of our country teams contributes towards a discernible impact on peace and that our staff are talented and motivated to deliver coherent and effective peacebuilding priorities in complex environments. You will manage a strategically sound programming portfolio and work on building its capacity for growth, as well as managing sustainable funding sources. You will take an active role in developing advocacy and influencing priorities for the Africa programme and take pride in representing International Alert through active networking and profiling activity. As an integral part of Alert’s Global Leadership Team, and rotating member of the Executive Team, you will shape and guide broader organisational priorities, ensuring collaboration and continued learning across teams.

We are seeking a candidate with considerable experience of implementing peacebuilding or related work in conflict-affected contexts in Africa. Fluent in English and with strong French language skills, you’ll bring your contextual conflict and cultural understanding gained through extensive experience living and working in African contexts. You will have strong, proven experience in programmes, people and financial management, with a talent for leading, supporting and motivating a large and diverse team. You understand conflict and peacebuilding practice and have an entrepreneurial talent for seizing opportunities for programme growth and building networks, as well as excellent fundraising skills and resource management abilities. A strategic thinker and thought leader, you have a high degree of emotional intelligence and strong analytical skills.

International Alert prides itself on being an Equal Opportunity employer and particularly welcomes applications from underrepresented people including Black, Indigenous and people of colour, LGBTQIA+, people with disabilities, and other historically marginalised people. We particularly encourage applications from the Global South.

While International Alert will endeavour to contact all candidates within a reasonable time, this may not always be possible due to limited resources.  Therefore, if you have not heard from us within two weeks of the closing date, you can assume your application has, on this occasion, been unsuccessful.