Contract Type: Independent Contractor
Location: Anglophone Africa – based in Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria or Zambia
Reports to: Global Lead, TLTN
Level of Effort: Full time: approximately 50% TLTN coordination and governance support (VA) and 50% Program Support Manager, Anglophone Africa
Role or Purpose of the Position
Vitamin Angels (VA) is a 501(c)3 non-profit, global public health nonprofit working to improve nutrition and health outcomes in low-resource settings worldwide. We strengthen, extend, and amplify the impact of our partner organizations to reach the most nutritionally vulnerable groups – pregnant women, infants, and children who are underserved by existing systems. VA uses an implementation science (IS) approach to improve access to proven interventions, optimize implementation outcomes, and promote health equity. VA’s IS approach focuses on:
- Fostering knowledge exchange, collaboration, and ownership among stakeholders,
- Understanding contextual factors, barriers, enablers, and potential solutions to delivering and scaling proven nutrition interventions,
- Designing and testing implementation strategies, and
- Supporting efforts to scale new or strengthened implementation strategies.
The Transforming Lives Through Nutrition (TLTN) program is a multi-country, cross-regional portfolio of nutrition programs delivered through a consortium composed of Helen Keller International, Vitamin Angels and iDE Global. The program combines nutrition-specific actions (maternal micronutrient supplementation, breastfeeding support, infant and young child feeding, screening and treatment for acute malnutrition, and vitamin A delivery) with three nutrition-sensitive workstreams: Food Systems and Agricultural Production, Supply Chain and SME Development, and WASH.
The role of the Program Manager, TLTN is to strengthen the management, governance and delivery of VA’s contribution to the TLTN consortium. Working directly with VA’s Global Lead, TLTN, the Program Manager will provide day-to-day coordination and governance support for VA’s engagement in the consortium’s leadership and governance structures, keeping commitments, risks, decisions and follow-up actions visible and on track.
In addition, the Program Manager will serve as the TLTN Program Support Manager (PSM) for Anglophone Africa (Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria and Zambia), leading programmatic support to in-country implementation and reviewing country outputs for quality. In this capacity the position is multilateral: while contracted by VA, the Program Manager acts in the best interest of the consortium as a whole and not solely of VA, working alongside the Francophone Africa and Asia PSMs hosted by the other consortium partners.
Key Working Relationships
- Internal (VA): Global Lead, TLTN (direct supervisor); Science team, Regional Program Leads, MERL, Finance and Communications teams
- Consortium: TLTN Leadership Team, Program Leadership Team (PLT) and Steering Committee; Global Technical Leads, MERL Leads, Communication and KM Leads; fellow PSMs (Francophone Africa and Asia).
- Country level: TLTN Country Coordinators and/or country project teams in Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria and Zambia.
- External: local government counterparts and other in-country stakeholders, as required to support program implementation.
Key Responsibilities:
The Program Manager, TLTN will be responsible for the following:
A. TLTN Coordination and Governance Support for VA (approximately 50%)
- Support VA’s engagement in TLTN governance structures
- Coordinate scheduling, agendas, briefs, and follow-up tracking for key governance meetings.
- Track VA commitments to ensure timely completion.
- Brief the Global Lead on decisions, actions, and emerging issues.
- Support logistics and preparation for consortium convenings.
Coordinate VA’s internal TLTN team
- Manage agendas, notes, and action items for internal weekly meetings.
- Maintain a single dashboard for workplans, commitments, and status.
- Track risks and bottlenecks, escalating issues with recommendations.
- Organize and version-control all TLTN documents and records.
B. Program Support Manager, Anglophone Africa (approximately 50%)
Program planning and implementation
- Translate strategy into operational processes, tools, and templates for country teams.
- Assist Country Coordinators with drafting, reviewing, and standardizing DIPs.
- Monitor implementation progress and DHIS2 data against targets, flagging off-track activities.
- Follow up on outstanding country office issues until resolution.
Country team support and coordination
- Provide programmatic support to country teams to operationalize technical strategies.
- Convene monthly project reviews, tracking action items and documenting reports.
- Identify country support needs and route them to PLT leads for resolution.
- Facilitate timely two-way communication between PLT and country offices.
Program management and quality assurance
- Review country deliverables (reports, workplans) for quality before technical sign-off.
- Ensure adherence to program standards, protocols, and donor requirements.
Cross-organization and cross-country coordination
- Facilitate cross-partner coordination and surface implementation insights to PLT.
- Promote inter-country collaboration and shared learning.
- MEL and knowledge management support
- Identify focal learning areas and support knowledge exchange with the KM Manager.
- Coordinate and quality-check country inputs for M&E and project reporting.
- Synthesize country insights to inform PLT strategic and technical decisions.
Donor reporting and external engagement
- Collate and draft quality country inputs for donor reporting.
- Draft presentations and circulate summary notes for stakeholder meetings.
- Support PLT engagement with government counterparts and local stakeholders.
Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities
Required:
- Master’s degree in public health, nutrition, international development, project management or a related discipline from an accredited university
- Minimum 5–7 years’ experience managing or coordinating multi-country public health or nutrition programs, preferably in sub-Saharan Africa
- Demonstrated experience providing governance or management support to senior leadership, including steering committee processes, action and commitment tracking, and risk management
- Experience working in or with multi-partner consortia and donor-funded programs, including consolidating inputs for donor reports
- Working knowledge of maternal and child nutrition interventions (e.g., MMS, IYCF, vitamin A supplementation, management of acute malnutrition)
- Solid grounding in monitoring and evaluation, including use of routine program data (e.g., DHIS2) to track progress against targets
- Exceptional organizational skills and attention to detail, with the ability to manage competing priorities across countries and time zones
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including concise meeting notes, briefs, reports and presentations
- Strong facilitation and diplomacy skills, and the ability to work impartially on behalf of a consortium and build trust across organizations
- Proficiency with collaboration and project management tools (e.g., Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, shared drives, and task or dashboard platforms)
- Fluency in English, and ability to travel regionally and internationally as required
Highly desirable:
- Recognized project management certification (e.g., PMP, PRINCE2, PMD Pro)
- Experience with implementation science, co-creation or adaptive management approaches
- Experience working with government counterparts in one or more of Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria or Zambia
- Experience building dashboards or using data visualization tools (e.g., Power BI, Tableau)
- Working knowledge of French