Program Manager

Background:

The change in lifestyle, demography, health services and disease epidemiology engendered an unprecedented increase in cancer burden in African countries including Ethiopia. However, evidence to guide control interventions and improve health services for cancer patients is limited. The Delta consortium Research and Excellence in Africa Capacity to Control and Treat CANcer (REACCT-CAN) aims to bridge this evidence gap. We envision establishing Africa-led, interdisciplinary research groups in oncology and cancer sciences. This will help expand global collaborations and contributes to increased research output on cancer. As part of this initiative, we have launched Ethiopialed consortium on cancer research. The consortium comprises six institutions (universities and research centers) from Egypt, Tanzania, South Africa, Germany and the International Agency for Research on Cancer under the World Health Organization. The consortium envisions further collaboration with more institutions in African, Europe and the United States of America to form an enduring network of institutions that work on cancer research across the African continent.

Long-term goal for REACCT-CAN project is to generate high quality research evidence to inform policy and programmatic implementation for effective primary and secondary cancer prevention programs in Africa and achieve universal access to affordable, high quality and timely diagnosis, treatment, and care for cancer patients. Morbidity and mortality due to cancer will thereby be reduced and lives will be saved.

Job summary:

The project manager ensures that the project is carried out as per the research protocol and operational manuals developed by the different research teams in the consortium. The responsibility includes project administration and providing inputs to the technical execution of the research activities. Human resource management, overseeing the project finance and logistics management units falls under the project administration responsibilities of the manager. Contributions to the technical operations of the study include planning, pre-approval, implementation and completion with publication of research results and following up the subsequent management of research data. These activities will be carried out by working with the Principal Investigator of the project, who is based at Addis Ababa University, and by engaging project leads of the teams in the respective consortium member academic and research institutions.

Job description:

• Direct the day-to-day project related activities by working closely with the Principal Investigator.
• Review and adapt Addis Ababa Universitys and consortium member institutions relevant financial, human resource, and procurement guidelines and policies to facilitate the smooth implementation of the project.
• Train or organize training for project staff to orient them on guidelines and operational manuals that are relevant to their respective responsibilities.
• Assists the Principal Investigator in the preparation of reports to donors and partners including regular reports to institutions in the consortium.
• Organize regular meetings with member institutions and scientific events at different milestones of the project and document the deliberations.
• Supports the Principal Investigator in liaising with relevant seminar speakers and trainers including making the necessary arrangements for the successful implementation of the desired scientific events.
• Work with the communication expert to see the development of a website as a platform to communicate the progress of the research to stakeholders and institutions in the consortium.
• By working with the communication expert, disseminate preliminary and final research findings through e.g., mailing lists, social media platforms and websites.
• Oversees the conduct of internal and external audits.
• Supervises the production of monthly finance management reports by the finance officer for the executive team.
• Supports the project affiliated faculty members and research staff in the development of new grant proposals.
• Oversee the recruitment, orientation, training, deployment, and management of full-time and parttime research staff including timely payment of their salaries and other payments.
• Provide need based administrative support to the School of Public Health finance and administrative team.
• Take part in the scientific research work as assigned by the Principal Investigator.

Project title:

• Research and Excellence in Africa Capacity to Control and Treat CANcer (REACCT-CAN)

Number of available Position: 1

Qualification and experience

• Advanced degree in Public Health (MPH with a minimum of 5 years experience or a PhD with a solid background in managing, preferably, non-communicable disease research projects).

Competencies and personal qualities

• Committed to achieving the project goals.
• Able to work independently as a part of a team to implement the project.
• Ability and willingness to work as a member of a team, with people of different cultural, and religious backgrounds, and maintaining impartiality and objectivity.
• Experience working in research consortiums or multi-country collaborative research projects.
• Experience in projects planning, Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation.
• Extensive experience in developing scientific research proposals and drafting scientific and operational reports.
• Knowledge of the key disease related and health system challenges in the effort to control non-communicable diseases.
• Working knowledge of generic health system operations and that of the Ethiopian health system.
• Proven analytical skills and ability to think strategically.
• Fluency in English written and verbal.
• Excellent communication skill both in the local languages and English and experience in communicating key data in reports and presentations.
• Ample exposure providing training to staff on operational matters related with research projects.
• Optimal exposure chairing programmatic and scientific meetings and documenting the proceedings.
• Competency in statistical packages for quantitative data analysis (STATA, SPSS, EpiData) experience in using software for qualitative data analysis such as Atlas.ti. is a plus.
• Adept at using all Microsoft Office applications.
• Past or present experience working with Addis Ababa university is considered as an asset.