Advocacy Manager At Graça Machel Trust

We are hiring an Advocacy Manager!

About Graça Machel Trust

Founded in 2010 the Graça Machel Trust is a Pan-African not for profit organisation that serves the women and children of Africa. We aim to amplify women’s movements, influence governance and promote women’s contributions and leadership in the economic, social and political development of Africa, and advocate for the protection of children’s rights.

Building on the legacy and passion of our Founder, Mrs. Graça Machel, the Trust tackles structural barriers to change the way public and private institutions address women and children’s rights. Drawing our founding principles and overarching mandate from her legacy as a liberation fighter and global advocate for women and children’s rights, our mandate is to harness the power of collective action through networks to drive inclusive social and economic transformation.

Over the last 10 years, the Trust has built significant influencing power through a three-layered approach: We work with women networks acting as advocacy hubs across the continent, with a footprint in 17 African countries in the business, finance, and media sectors. Secondly, we leverage strong linkages to decision makers and spaces at the regional and national levels. Finally, we participate in global advocacy, elevating the African agenda on a global scale, engaging world leaders towards commitments relevant to our goals,mainly through our Office of our Founder.

Through our work, we have developed an understanding of the levers of change in a system across Africa, and how to effectively engage them. We have led powerful coalitions to achieve policy impact at scale, contributing to national budget allocations to nutrition increasing for 5 countries in East and Southern Africa by 3%. We have achieved impact at scale including by identifying and enrolling 23,000 out-of-school children into accelerated learning programmes; and supporting economic and social progress for 220,000 African women through our advocacy, and capacity strengthening initiatives.

About the Role

You will be joining us at an exciting and pivotal time in our evolution. Having achieved substantive impact over 10 years, we are developing and implementing a bold new strategy that will set us on a path of deep impact, targeted expansion, and influence.

Against this backdrop, you will provide technical, strategic, and program management leadership to the organization to establish the Trust as a critical player in the regional policy and regulatory environment on women’s economic development and adolescent girls rights.

This role will drive the design of advocacy strategies, tactics, and campaigns; build strategic coalitions; work collaboratively with internal and external stakeholders to drive the Trust’s advocacy agenda, across its portfolios, within critical policy spaces; spearhead the development of policy recommendations; and build the advocacy capacity and skills of internal and external stakeholders.

This work is implemented through our advocacy program portfolio, currently 3 programs across multiple African countries, working on pivotal issues including financial inclusion of women and gender-inclusive economic recovery. The role will conceptualize new advocacy programs on pivotal issues and lead on managing them.

The Advocacy Manager will report to the Programs Director, and lead a team of 4 program staff. Critically, they will work closely with the Trust’s team, including the Office of the Founder, the Trust’s women networks, donors and allies.

Your Responsibilities include:

Advocacy Leadership and Capacity Building

• Strategically contribute to unpacking the Trust’s draft strategic framework, then determine the institution’s advocacy approaches, methodologies, key audiences, theory of change and advocacy competitive advantage. Shape our advocacy agenda in bold ways and recommend key issues we should hone in on, drawing on relevant theories of feminism, economic advancement, collective impact, human rights, and gender development and based on a thorough understanding of the current landscape.
• Develop and manage the execution of evidence informed advocacy strategies across the Trust’s portfolio areas.
• Shape the organizations’ response to emerging policy trends through an advocacy lens.
• Determine how best to leverage the Trust’s advocacy assets – specifically its women network partners (agri-business, finance, business, and media), and Office of the Founder – towards the institution’s vision and work towards integrated and coordinated advocacy activities.
• Together with the Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning Lead, ensure effective monitoring and evaluation frameworks, indicators and systems are in place to measure the impact of the Trust’s advocacy activities.
• Lead on the development and drafting of policy recommendations and other technical advocacy products.
• Develop advocacy skills building curricula and deliver training to the Trust’s women network partners, and other priority partners.
• Strengthen our in-house advocacy capabilities in line with our advocacy strategies and theory of change by developing advocacy skills, building curricula and delivering training to staff.
• Drive thought leadership for the Trust in advocacy by ensuring effective representation of the institution on relevant platforms, networks, fora, and coalitions.

Program Management and Partnership Building

• Broaden the Trust’s strategic advocacy partnerships with public and private sector leaders and institutions, influencers, media. This includes deepening existing relationships and establishing new relationships with relevant players.
• Lead the development, implementation and monitoring of annual work plans and budgeting for all our advocacy programs and initiatives.
• Work with the Communications Lead to ensure alignment of advocacy and communications strategies, tactics and plans.
• Effectively drive program management activities of our advocacy programs.
• Provide advocacy related technical advisory and support to all other programs, ensuring programming aligns to our overall advocacy frameworks and goals.
• Carry out research, policy analysis and stakeholder engagement to meet program goals.
• Ensure the exchange of knowledge and best practice among program stakeholders.
• Together with the Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning Lead, promote a culture of evidence building, research and innovation around advocacy.
• Ensure timely, quality, and analytical program reporting to donors and other relevant stakeholders. Host donor and stakeholder visits and meetings to keep them updated about the progress of our advocacy programs and efforts.

Development and Fundraising

• Expand our advocacy program portfolio through conceptualizing new programs or coalitions in line with our advocacy goals and strategy.
• Provide technical leadership for the design and development of advocacy centered funding proposals, and relevant technical inputs for all other proposals.
• Identify funding gaps for advocacy priorities and programs, and collaborate with the Director of Programs, and Chief Executive Officer to build a robust, high likelihood pipeline by identifying funding prospects and cultivating relationships with relevant potential funders.

Departmental Management

• Ensure the team structure and composition aligns with our big ambitious goals, in line with fundraising.
• Manage staff performance and development, including regular supervision, performance appraisal, training, mentoring, and coaching.
• Manage consultants, interns, and volunteers.

Who we are looking for:

• You believe in our mission and have a vision for what we can achieve in the next 5-10 years.
• You are excited to build the advocacy frameworks, strategies and programs to get us there!
• You are able to conceive, and develop new and existing strategies, and innovate around roadblocks and hurdles.
• You bring at least 8-10 years of proven experience in policy and advocacy strategy development that address poverty eradication and/or socioeconomic advancement. This includes:

○ A deep understanding of the advocacy cycle, and theories and principles underpinning effective advocacy in our field – including economics, feminism, collective impact, human rights, and gender development.

• A track record in designing and executing effective advocacy programs, campaigns, strategies, and tactics. You deeply understand what metrics constitute success in practical advocacy action.
• Strong technical capabilities in research, policy analysis and advocacy.
• Excellent written and speaking abilities in English with ability to produce clear, precise and focused strategy documents, reports, policy briefings and policy summations, speeches for technical and policy settings.
• Proven ability to deliver high impact advocacy capacity strengthening for various audiences. You have a track record designing and implementing skill building curricula for effective advocacy.
• Experience working with civil society networks, private sector, and government authorities/bodies.
• A good understanding of the multilateral environment, regional policy, and regulatory landscape.
• Strong understanding of both the African political and leadership milieu and a proven familiarity on how to navigate African institutions such as the AU, SADC, COMESA, ECOWAS, NEPAD, ministerial level meetings and relevant technical and professional associations.
• Exceptional program management skills with experience designing, implementing, monitoring, and reporting on donor-funded country and multi-country advocacy programs and initiatives.
• You are energized by both, the big picture strategy work and driving the entire program management cycle.
• You’re a transformational leader who knows how to influence and bring people along with your ideas and strategies.
• Experience in effective staff management, and ability to inspire motivation and shape results among team members and drive collaboration on joint goals across the organization.
• You have a track record of building effective working relationships with a wide range of stakeholders, from senior government representatives to grassroot women movements.
• Previous results fundraising for new advocacy programs, with strong donor cultivation skills and excellent proposal development skills.
• French language skills are an added advantage, but not necessary.

You are cultural fit to work with us if

• You are driven by a strong desire to create high quality results and impact for Africans.
• You are passionate and committed to leading African-driven development, and relish the diversity of our continent.
• Flexibility and adaptability come to you with ease. You thrive in fast changing work environments, where processes and structures are in definition and movement.
• You have consistently demonstrated your ability to create opportunity in resourceful and creative ways.
• You have a customer centric approach and always focus on maximizing the experience and value for the stakeholders.
• You are bold. You confidently and persuasively communicate your vision and ideas and have a strong ability to hold your own and stand for your ideas.

Why work with us?

• Be part of driving Pan-African movements shaping the future and role of women and children on the continent. We are planning to make history in facing key challenges of the coming decades.
• Our proximity to inspiring changemakers, including our passionate Founder, Board of Trustees, members of our women’s networks and regional policy platforms gives us a unique opportunity to shape conversation and action.
• This is a great opportunity if you are excited to help shape the strategy of an organization that is influential and poised for growth.

Other information

While the Trust is headquartered in Johannesburg, remote candidates ideally from within Sub-Saharan Africa are welcome to apply. Travel is expected primarily in Sub-Saharan Africa (25-30% of the role) and to relevant global conferences as a representative of the Trust. Ideal start date is February 2023, negotiable.