Grants Manager – Trade4smes Initiative ’ To Unlock The Potential Of Afcfta

• Advanced University degree or equivalent in Economics, Business Administration, Development Studies, or other relevant fields;

• A first-level university degree in combination with 7 years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.

• 5 years of relevant experience in managing complex and multi-component interventions with various partners and stakeholders;

• Knowledge and experience in working on addressing issues related to trade, finance, banking, private sector, agriculture, tourism, and mining;

• Experience in grants management is required;

• Experience with databases and data management a plus.

• Experience in the United Nations, a governmental, other multilateral, or civil society organization in a developed or developing country is highly desirable.

• Manage and oversee all operational and project management processes related to the grants life-cycle, including, initiating the call for proposals, coordinating the identification, review, and selection of proposals, disbursement of grants, monitoring the implementation of the grants, reporting and impact assessment of the grant utilization.  of lessons learned?  This includes keeping information on internal and external stakeholders up-to-date for each active grant;

• Lead the coordination on all aspects related to the assigned grants portfolio to ensure efficient oversight. This includes liaising with external stakeholders to ensure the required documentation is received according to the timeline agreed upon and stored appropriately. This also involves reviewing progress and other reports on the grants and providing feedback to the grantee with respect to the implementation of the grant;

• Provide technical assistance and backstopping to grantees including assisting grantees in clarifying the proposed outputs, indicators of success, methods of baseline and data collection, activities, and budgets;

• Provide tailored technical support throughout the grant life-cycle, review progress reports and provide feedback to grantees as needed to ensure results-based reports, analyses, and capturing of data;

• Perform a basic review of financial reports and flag inconsistencies between financial spending and project implementation during the implementation of the grants and subsequent disbursements;

• Monitor, document, and assess progress towards overall results based on the agreed work plan and monitoring schedules.

• Undertake monitoring missions and finalize mission reports in accordance with the mission report template, summarizing key findings and recommendations;

• Ensure consistent monitoring and reporting on grant activity outputs to the project M&E Framework and other data monitoring tools;

• Ensure that the grant component of the project is well documented in UNDP online project management and reporting portals;

• Support in the Uganda Country Office grant management and reporting activities to ensure that data is readily available in a timely, usable and consistent manner.

• Participate in the periodic grantee selection processes including a thorough review and substantive analysis of concept notes and full-fledged proposals, accompanying budgets, and monitoring and evaluation frameworks submitted to the WPC Trust Fund;

• Prepare application feedback correspondence for all shortlisted applicants and grantees;

• Systematically generate and update these grantee summaries based on application outcomes, progress reports, and monitoring missions;

• Provide guidance to the grantees to ensure adherence to UNDP policies, administrative and financial procedures;

• Coordinate the grantee pitching exercises prior to grantee selection;

• Review and clarify the grantee proposals through dialogue with grantees on submitted documents;

• Undertake enterprise assessment prior to grantee selection and award in accordance with UNDP Standard Operating Procedures for Grants.

• Maintain a centralized portfolio matrix of grants and provide quarterly portfolio updates to the Project/Fund Advisory Committee;

• Prepare written contributions for various purposes, including inputs for the annual donor reports, newsletters, fundraising efforts, and other reporting needs;

• Contribute to tracking and synthesizing, on an ongoing basis, developments, tools, emerging issues, or good practices in the field of ending violence against women and girls, including capturing findings and lessons learned from evaluations, as applicable;

• Update and maintain a grant-making and knowledge management tracking database with relevant grantee and other pertinent information;

• Support the Fund’s communications efforts through direct engagement with grant recipients to curate information about their achievements and impact of the grant, knowledge products, media, etc. and ensure communications accurately reflect grant outcomes;

• Keep systematic track of noteworthy grantee achievements and communicate to colleagues for possible visibility, adaptation and scale-up as part of the learning and knowledge management practice of UNDP;

• Support and organize knowledge-sharing events and identify good and promising models that can be shared widely across grantees and other key stakeholders;

• Identify challenges and lessons learned across the grants portfolio and contribute to a process of institutional learning through documenting lessons learned and contribution to modification of strategies and programs.

• Play a key role in the development and quality assurance of capacity development tools, including training materials and packages, program guidance notes, and other related support specifically as it relates to monitoring and reporting for grants;

• Support, organize and participate in knowledge sharing and capacity development events and training for grantees;

• Support grantee participation and access to training opportunities from UNDP and other partners pertinent to grant management or any other pertinent technical areas.