Associate Research & Policy Manager at Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) January, 2025

Position Summary

• IPA Nigeria is seeking an Associate Research & Policy Manager to collaborate closely with our partner (a telecommunication regulator)to strengthen its capacity to use evidence to improve its consumer protection programs and policies. IPA is working to set up an “Embedded Lab” to enable the government partner to use data and rigorous research to design, test, and scale evidence-based programs and policies.
• The Associate Research & Policy Manager will be embedded within the partner’s office and take a leading role in driving the Lab’s engagement with regulatory partners.
• They will focus specifically on identifying research and policy opportunities, designing the lab’s strategies to influence national-level policy processes, provide support in strengthening Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) capacity development and work with sector counterparts to build buy-in for a culture of evidence generation and use..
• The Associate & Research & Policy Manager will have a strong policy background, and ideally experience working with partners to use evidence to inform policy and programming.
• We particularly encourage Nigerian nationals to apply. The Associate Research & Policy Manager will report to the Senior Manager, Police and Consumer Protection Embedded Lab, with dotted line oversight from the Global Policy team and the Financial Inclusion Program(FIP) .

Responsibilities

Workplan management and reporting 10%

• Collaborate with the partner’s team to develop a shared workplan, ensuring alignment with project goals and effective implementation.
• Support with other project management tasks, including progress tracking, financial oversight , and internal and donor reporting.

Stakeholder management 30%

• Cultivate relationships with key local top-level decision-makers and ensure the project has their sustained buy-in and input
• Coordinate project activities alongside technical staff from the partner in a learning-by-doing approach, fostering active engagement throughout the process
• Promote engagement to raise awareness of the lab and encourage collaborative efforts for collective impact

Generating relevant evidence 20%

• Lead the co-creation of policy-driven research agenda for the lab, and facilitate the development of research projects to respond to the agenda
• Facilitate engagement with local and international academics to provide input into the lab’ s policy-driven research agenda
• Develop opportunities to leverage administrative data for research, connecting local and international researchers to pursue these openings

Sharing evidence to inform program design and delivery 20%

• Share existing evidence to inform partner’s program design and delivery
• Produce policy briefs on key policy questions
• Work together with the partner , the project team, sector team, global policy and communications teams to lead and/or participate in strategic events for policy purposes, including but not limited to summits, conferences, workshops, technical working groups, and round tables.
• In collaboration with researchers and in support of the country director, represent IPA locally in policy conversations and at events

Exploring program institutionalization 20%

• Engage with the partner’s leadership to explore opportunities to institutionalize the lab for sustainability.

Qualifications

Required

• Bachelor’s Degree and /or Bachelor’s or Master’s Degree in international public policy, social science, economics, statistics, or related fields and 3-7 years of relevant work experience. Exceptions may be made for excellent candidates who do not meet this criterion
• Hands-on experience supporting Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning systems.
• Experience working in the telecommunications sector, ideally in close interaction with government stakeholders
• Excellent written and oral communication skills, including the ability to clearly present information in a structured, non-technical, and insightful way.
• Excellent project management and organizational skills, attention to detail, entrepreneurial mindset, versatility, and strong multi-tasking skills
• Superior analytical, quantitative, and conceptual thinking skills
• Willingness to be a team player and identify connections between work streams
• Cultural and political sensitivity and demonstrated ability to work successfully with diverse constituencies
• Passion for making data-driven decision-making a reality in the development sector

Preferred

• Demonstrated ability to coach and train others in statistics, data analysis or MEL methodologies
• Experience working with government
• Familiarity with quantitative and qualitative research methods