Vacancies

Background information on the programme

Invest Salone (ISL) is a 6-year, FCDO-funded private-sector development initiative aimed at facilitating inclusive economic growth in Sierra Leone by working with the private sector, government, and partners to attract investment, generate exports, create jobs and diversify and transform the economy. ISL is conveyed through three interconnected high-level workstreams:

Pillar 1: Market Development – Working with Firms: supporting firms to grow their exports and/or become ready for investment. This pillar mainly works directly with firms to build their capacity to improve productivity (the key firm-level challenge in Sierra Leone) and to support their growth. It seeks to increase the efficiency of markets through supporting a range of innovative business models, services and offers.

Pillar 2: Investment and Export Promotion – Working with Investors: ensuring that increased engagement in Sierra Leone by a diverse range of domestic and foreign investors and buyers leads to increased investment, exports and local procurement, resulting in increased revenue, profits, income and jobs safeguarding and creation.

Pillar 3: Investment Climate Reform – Working on the Enabling Environment: facilitating the design and implementation of reforms that reduce the risks, costs, and uncertainty of doing business in Sierra Leone.

Objectives of the services

The Portfolio Manager is responsible for managing and overseeing the portfolio of interventions identified by Invest Salone. This role involves providing project management expertise and leadership across the Invest Salone team to ensure the portfolio remains well-balanced and high-performing. The Portfolio Manager will support the intervention teams, utilising strong planning and budgeting skills, along with the ability to prioritise and balance a variety of competing portfolio activities and perspectives. The role also demands effective management and motivation of a diverse team of both long-term and short-term consultants, ensuring consistency between the portfolio and Invest Salone’s overarching strategies and logframe outcomes.

This is a fixed-term, full-time consultancy position based in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

Scope of work of the services

Key responsibilities

• Oversee and manage the portfolio of interventions across all sectors identified and led by ISL’s Intervention Managers.
• Day-to-day operational management of the ISL Freetown team, ensuring effective planning, management, monitoring and reporting. Guide the development of the portfolio team’s workplan and utilise other key project management tools, along with MIS tools, to ensure organisational efficiency and the delivery of programmatic impact
• Facilitate effective coordination between the Freetown team and the MEL team to document justifications for intervention areas, forecast outcomes, and compile evidence of results; ensure that portfolio adjustments are based on solid evidence and market intelligence.
• Quality assure ISL’s intervention streams and continually review portfolio activities and interventions to prioritise effectively and lead the review process.
• Lead on work planning, forecasting and budgeting for the portfolio of interventions and cross-cutting areas and generally support operations plans.
• Conduct scenario-based forecasting to identify new, complementary interventions, assessing their feasibility and potential to de-risk and support ongoing initiatives.
• Ensure that intervention teams follow the Value for Money (VfM) framework, regularly analysing and reporting on the portfolio’s VfM performance.
• Manage and quality assure short-term technical consultants’ contributions, preparing call-down statements with the right focus, clear on technical requirements of the role and consultant skills, clear outputs linked to the activity outputs, and the right balance of inputs to demonstrate VFM.
• Contribute to progress and performance reporting for the client and key stakeholders, including quarterly and annual reviews, and against the logframe.

Other programme duties

• Serve as secretariat to the Intervention Investment Committee and Technical Assistance Facility Committee to ensure timely meetings, adequate servicing, necessary document preparation and distribution and prompt follow-up.
• Design and implement internal control systems and ensure compliance with client requirements and Senior Management Team needs.
• Manage and mitigate risks and fraud within the portfolio of interventions and be the point of escalation for any emerging issues or concerns.
• Work with the finance and administration team to ensure efficient administration and distribution of grant funding. Ensure the team is following transparent and fair procurement processes and internal procedures to ensure value for money.
• Other tasks as determined by the Team Lead, Deputy Team Leader or Programme Manager.

Deliverables

• Portfolio and planning trackers in place and updated weekly with clear progress on deliverables and results.
• Budget and forecast requirements to deliver on the portfolio updated monthly on a timely basis to feed into client requirements.
• Ensure that technical SOWs and CDS (Part A) prepared by the portfolio team to engage the necessary personnel or organisations to deliver portfolio scoping and interventions are clearly defined.
• Scoping and intervention notes prepared and/or updated as required by the contract.
• Clear and timely drafting of portfolio-related MoUs and other partnership agreements to ensure effective delivery and support on due diligence.
• Maintain a schedule of meetings with a clear purpose, participation and outputs.

How to apply

• Candidates should submit both a CV and a cover letter to Alexander.kazovsky@cadmusgroup.com
• Candidates can expect to go through a screening call with the Programme Manager or Co-ordinate, and 1-2 rounds of interviews with the Current Deputy Team Leader and/or Team Leader.

View the full job description here.