Country Lead And Director Of Policy

Job Summary

The Country Lead and Director of Policy directs the strategic vision, research quality, funding pipelines, and operational health of IPA Rwanda. Core responsibilities include managing technical Embedded Evidence Labs within national ministries, steering the scaling pathways for evidence-backed educational initiatives, maintaining relationships with top-tier academic researchers and state ministers, securing new multi-year grant funding, and overseeing country compliance and financial risk frameworks.

Key Responsibilities

1. Policy Leadership & Embedded Evidence Labs Architecture (30%)

• Steer Policy Translation Strategy: Formulate and execute IPA Rwanda’s comprehensive data-to-policy translation strategy, ensuring empirical research findings systematically shape national legislative agendas and budgetary allocations.
• Direct Embedded Evidence Labs: Provide executive oversight, high-level advocacy, and strategic vision for IPA’s ministerial labs, including the active Ministry of Education Lab and the Graduation Embedded Lab within the Ministry of Local Government (MINALOC).
• Champion Scaling Frameworks: Supervise the expansion and operational integration of proven, evidence-based public interventions, such as STARS (the country’s prominent framework rewarding public school teachers with performance-based financial incentives).
• Engage High-Level Stakeholders: Represent IPA at elite international policy forums, ministerial roundtables, and donor summits, establishing deep technical relationships with senior government leaders and multilateral organizations.

2. Strategic Leadership & Country Office Direction (25%)

• Establish Country Roadmaps: Set and deliver the multi-year country office operational strategy, ensuring complete alignment with IPA Global frameworks and regional development priorities.
• Drive Accountability: Lead the formulation of annual country work plans and financial targets, managing and holding the senior country leadership team accountable to clear performance milestones.
• Manage Institutional Relations: Serve as the chief localized contact point and strategic voice connecting the country office to the Regional Director and international global support teams.
• Mitigate Reputational Risk: Maintain IPA’s elite scientific reputation among local academic groups, civil society networks, and media organizations, proactively managing systemic project challenges or institutional alignment issues.

3. Research Oversight, Integrity & Quality Governance (15%)

• Maintain Quality Controls: Provide high-level governance across the active evaluation portfolio, partnering with Research Managers, Research Associates, and academic Principal Investigators to ensure all data collection matches IPA's strict research guidelines.
• Troubleshoot Field Challenges: Step in to resolve complex field implementation friction loops, community engagement concerns, and administrative deadlocks involving field data collection.
• Foster Academic Integration: Guide research teams to translate dense mathematical, econometric, and statistical outputs into concise, actionable policy summaries for non-technical government administrators.
• Build Institutional Capacity: Drive technical knowledge exchange, data collection best practices, and research ethics protocols across the local country team.

4. Business Development & Sustainable Fundraising (15%)

• Secure Funding Pipelines: Identify, track, and win high-value institutional grant opportunities in tandem with the Global Policy team to safeguard the financial health of the country office.
• Design Advanced Proposals: Draft comprehensive concept notes, technical methodology papers, and detailed financial grant proposals for upcoming research and policy evaluations.
• Cultivate Donor Networks: Build long-term partnerships with bilateral and multilateral donors, philanthropic foundations, and global development banks operating within the East African region.

5. Operations, Financial Governance & Risk Oversight (15%)

• Govern Financial Health: Maintain high-level oversight of country balance sheets, burn rates, and project budgets, collaborating with regional finance teams to ensure maximum compliance.
• Enforce Compliance Standards: Confirm all country workflows match internal IPA rules, explicit donor grant terms, and national legal frameworks.
• Manage Security Protocols: Monitor local socio-economic, health, and security trends, quickly escalating and mitigating physical or digital risks to protect field staff and survey participants.

Experience & Competencies

Candidates must possess an elite academic foundation combined with a proven track record of managing complex socio-economic research portfolios:

Mandatory Academic & Professional Thresholds

• Academic Credentials: Master’s degree required in Development Economics, Public Policy, International Affairs, Economics, International Public Policy, or a closely matching quantitative development field.
• Professional Tenure: Minimum of 7 or more years of progressive experience holding leadership roles in public policy design, applied economic research, or strategic management within the international development sector.
• Stakeholder Management History: Proven track record of managing high-level relationships, navigating policy discussions with senior government officials (Ministers, Permanent Secretaries), and international donor agencies (USAID, FCDO, World Bank).
• Research Literacy: Direct experience managing or participating in quantitative and qualitative field research projects, with a strong preference for candidates demonstrating deep familiarity with Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs).
• Linguistic Mastery: Complete professional fluency in written and spoken English, paired with excellent public speaking and technical memo writing skills.

Preferred Technical Attributes

• Sector Specialization: Direct experience designing or evaluating programs within the Education or Social Protection sectors in Sub-Saharan Africa.
• Institutional Capacity Building: Proven experience running embedded technical assistance initiatives, change-management plans inside state ministries, or evidence-to-policy translation programs.
• Business Development Success: Demonstrated capability to design, pitch, and win technical research grants and policy consultancy agreements exceeding six figures.
• Cross-Cultural Leadership: A natural ability to lead large, diverse, multi-disciplinary teams in high-pressure, multicultural environments while prioritizing local staff skill building.

Expected Outputs & Deliverables

• Impact-evaluation strategies, cross-country work plans, and performance metric charts.
• Successful integration of data labs into government processes, backed by signed inter-ministerial partnership agreements.
• Rigorous project research budgets, balanced monthly variance logs, and transparent project financial forecasts.
• Winning institutional grant applications, policy briefs, and peer-reviewed research summaries.

Skills Required:

• Economics / Statistics
• Political / Science / Ir