Program Associate: OFFICE OF THE CHIEF OF PARTY (COP)
BACKGROUND:
The USAID Southern Africa Trade and Investment Hub (USAID TradeHub) project, a five-year trade and investment program for Southern Africa in its fifth year of implementation, is expected to increase global competitiveness and intra-regional trade and improve food security in Southern Africa. The USAID TradeHub engages with partners across the region to increase sustainable economic growth, global export competitiveness, and trade in targeted Southern African countries. It supports these objectives by increasing exports from Southern African countries to South Africa and the United States (under the African Growth and Opportunity Act [AGOA]), boosting capital and technology flows from South Africa to other Southern African countries, and providing targeted trade facilitation support to Zambia. The USAID TradeHub works with market actors to identify and resolve enterprise constraints and to implement sustainable solutions through market-based trade and investment facilitation services. The USAID TradeHub partners with USAID bilateral missions through the USAID/Southern Africa Regional Economic Growth Office in the successful delivery of its objectives.
Going forward, in partnership with USAID, the USAID TradeHub will narrow its activities to achieve the following three objectives:
Increased exports to South Africa from targeted Southern African countries
Increased investment (capital and technology) out of South Africa to targeted Southern African countries
Sustainable utilization of AGOA opportunities by targeted Southern African countries
In addition, the USAID TradeHub will improve Zambia’s trade enabling environment as part of a buy-in from USAID/Zambia.
OBJECTIVES AND DUTIES:
The Program Associate will provide administrative and coordination support to the COP’s office, handling the scheduling, calendar and clerical needs of the COP, to ensure that the COP is effective in meeting administrative requirements of the program.
Overall Tasks and Responsibilities:
Manage the COP’s calendar and prioritize meetings. Based on organizational insights, the Program Associate is expected to keep the COP abreast of meetings requiring COP involvement and optimizing his calendar.
Monitor information flow required by the COP: Sometimes acting as a gatekeeper, ensuring the COP’s involvement in specific discussions or decision-making platforms where his input and authority are most needed.
Ensure administrative effectiveness: ensure the COP has access to or completed necessary administrative documentation as required by or requested from the Senior Management Team, implementing partners and USAID.
Specific Tasks and Responsibilities:
Strategically managing the COP’s time:
Review immediate and long-term travel, events and meeting calendar, evaluate opportunities, and determine fit with priorities.
Coordinate and discuss with COP his calendar, eliminate scheduling clashes and optimize time spent
Check and coordinate schedules of teams to ascertain suitability of meetings, based on requests from the team or the COP
Review upcoming meetings for the week to ensure the COP has all the information needed, preparing or soliciting agendas or documents; sending these to or collecting from meeting attendees as necessary in advance.
Act as COP’s interface with different interlocutors to obtain information:
Act as gatekeeper or liaison: as first line of information access for staff, determine where and when COP response are required
At request of COP, obtain information, updates or inputs on impromptu tasks from staff
At request of COP, participate in weekly departmental meetings (e.g. MEL, Ops) to obtain or relay information from the COP to departments and vice versa
Obtain contact details and other information of external interlocutors with whom the COP is required to engage
Coordinate and consolidate inputs into documents and trackers:
Consolidate team inputs and format strategic documents at COP’s request (e.g. Quarterly Progress Review, Senior Management Team meeting documents)
Update trackers as required by the COP (e.g. COR-RFA tracker)
Coordinate meetings:
Coordinate the weekly staff meeting
Manage the senior management team meetings at instruction of COP by ensuring materials are sent in advance, time is well spent, and meeting objectives are achieved.
Take notes during meetings that the COP attends or to which the COP designates and ensure that the action items from the meetings are well documented and executed.
Plan and lead program retreats and other special events:
Coordinating with the COP direct reports to coordinate internal and external events
Arrange COP travel and complete all post-travel reconciliation documents (e.g., trip and expense reports)
QUALIFICATIONS:
Four-year Bachelors / Honors degree in social science or business-related fields,
At least 5 years professional experience in a fast-paced project management / project-based environment in a role that required multi-tasking
Excellent skills in Microsoft Office: Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint
Excellent writing skills and ability to concisely and speedily summarize meeting notes and action items
Experience in managing calendars and schedules in a fast-paced environment
Experience in working with senior management and understanding various levels of authority
Ability to handle multiple tasks simultaneously and remain calm under pressure
Ability to navigate a multicultural, multi-geographical environment and adapt to multiple work styles
Demonstrable skills for prioritization and organization of tasks within a complex project setting
Excellent interpersonal skills and collegiality
Team player and ability to have courageous conversations
Ability to maintain confidentiality and build trust with program leadership team
A CAN DO and WILL DO attitude, decisiveness, and ability to challenge the status quo
Willingness to grow and an insatiable curiosity to continuously improve
SUPERVISORY RESPONSIBILITIES:
The Program Associate will not have any supervisory responsibilities.
PLACE OF PERFORMANCE AND REPORTING:
The Program Associate will be based in Pretoria, South Africa and will report to the Chief of Party.
Closing Date: May 7, 2021. Send applications (CV and Cover Letter) to [email protected] (Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.