Job Description

Local Humanitarian Leadership and Partnership Manager

Closing date: 14^th June 2025

Location: Mogadishu, Somalia

Contract: 12 Months

Reports to: Program Director

Starting Date: As soon as possible

The Role: Oxfam Somalia is looking for a Local Humanitarian Leadership and Partnership Manager


JOB PURPOSE:

Oxfam has been working in Somalia with local communities, civil society, and local authorities, delivering humanitarian assistance and longer-term development initiatives. Oxfam works in close collaboration with civil society actors, including NNGOs, and multiple government ministries and departments. Oxfam in Somalia has also instigated wide-ranging reform of the humanitarian system, particularly in addressing the power imbalances between local/national and international humanitarian actors (LNHAs), for example through investments in the establishment and growth of the Somali Nexus Platform.

Oxfam in Somalia is committed to more transformational and strategic partnerships and a clearer sense of capacity strengthening and capacity sharing approaches that facilitate real knowledge transfer and partnerships driven by mutual accountability and respect and value addition. Oxfam’s humanitarian work will take a stronger approach on local humanitarian leadership, the integration of resilience given the climate crisis effects across Somali regions and ensure safe programming and ethical, principled, and feminist humanitarian action. The country program plans to maintain over 50% of aid channeled through local partners with the aim of empowering national and local actors.

The Local Humanitarian Leadership (LHL) and Partnership Manager will provide overall leadership and technical oversight to the partnership processes within the Somali program, particularly those related to building, strengthening, and maintaining relationships with partners. The role will coordinate with the Country Strategy Pillar Leads, Program/Area Managers in the field offices (South Central, Somaliland, Puntland) and the technical advisors/coordinators to ensure institutionalization and refinement of partnership ways of working, partnership processes and guidelines, and manage potential risks that may evolve from partnership ways of working. In collaboration with the support functions in the country, the role will be responsible for supporting the country program in the effective scoping and building of (new) partnerships, managing, and maintaining partnerships, incl. providing support to joint programming and advocacy activities, reviewing and revising partnerships, as well as graduating from partnerships and responsible exits as relevant for the program.

The role will be responsible for ensuring in-depth understanding, practical application and periodic monitoring of Oxfam’s partnerships principles and ways of working, including Oxfam’s commitments to the Charter for Change, the Grand Bargain, Pledge for Change, and the Humanitarian Principles of Partnership. The role will also support institutional development of civil society organizations through capacity sharing and exchanges as well as connecting them to the relevant technical focal points of humanitarian aid delivery, peacebuilding, development, durable solutions, nexus programming, CSO networking and alliance building, as per the needs of the respective local actors.

The role will be responsible for effective communications, visibility of partners’ work on LHL and partnerships, coordination with all stakeholders involved, coordination of capacity strengthening and exchange processes in different projects in the country.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES  

Partnership Management: 

• Roll-out the Partnership and Local Humanitarian Leadership Strategy and design appropriate interventions and approaches in conjunction with partner organizations and Oxfam teams in the country.
• Ensure a strong and enabling focus on local actors’ leadership, capacity and influence, with a specific attention on organizations working with IDPs, minority, women, youth, persons with disabilities, and organizations working to protect and support the rights and wellbeing of the most vulnerable.
• Ensure and support partnership-centric ways of working throughout the different projects and program management cycles in close collaboration with the program/area managers and technical coordinators.
• Draft partnership, localization and capacity strengthening/sharing/exchange related narrative input to proposals, including workplans and budgets.
• Represent the country teams in partnership and localization focused coordination meetings and Oxfam internal planning processes.
• Support on partner-led advocacy, influencing and communications activities, in collaboration with the policy and communications/media leads.
• Encourage and support civil society organizations, government agencies and local start-up companies/social innovators and entrepreneurs to take part in formal coordination structures and activities that will amplify voices of Somalis.
• Ensure that local actors’ leadership is central to narratives to media and in donor visits to contribute to the visibility and promotion of local and national civil society’s role.
• Report regularly to the PD and BSM about opportunities and issues emerging from partnerships, Oxfam’s ways of working, and joint programming.
• Support the program teams in meetings with partners on issues related partnership and provide support to mitigating challenges and seeking solutions to challenges.
• Support and facilitate troubleshooting in the partnering relationship with a proactive approach of early identification of issues and addressing them together with partner and Oxfam colleagues.
• Working with Program Quality Manager, ensure that partners are equal stakeholders in project management, reporting, and MELSA, and that the way that we engage with partners in these areas is empowering, principled and fully aligned with the Oxfam LHL & Partnership strategy.
• Support partner scoping and relationship building activities, including field networking trips, events, and meetings as well as monitoring and supportive supervision to partners.
• Lead on the implementation of the partnership assessments and the Due Diligence processes.
• Provide and ensure open access to both him/herself and the wider Oxfam team, promoting continuous dialogue and ongoing feedback from partner organizations.

Project Management

• Lead in day-to-day coordination of all relationships, activities, and communications with a particular focus on local humanitarian leadership and partnership initiatives.
• Support Business Development Manager in facilitating grants to partners, ensuring good partnership conversations, and compliance with Oxfam’s mandatory procedures on appraisals, transparent partner selection, monitoring, reporting and project closures.
• Support the Senior Management Team (SMT) in conducting annual partnership meetings and see through the implementation of agreed action points.
• Coordinate with partner organizations to ensure that all reports are submitted in a timely manner and in accordance with donor and Oxfam requirements, collaborating early to identify potential delays, challenges or capacity gaps and coordinating with colleagues to address and rectify.
• Contribute to involving partner organizations in early involvement of co-creation of projects and proposals, fully apprising them of timing, requirements, and status throughout.

Capacity sharing and exchanges:

• Lead the identification of capacity strengthening needs, the development and the delivery of capacity sharing strategies and activities, in collaboration with the programme/area managers, and technical teams.
• Ensure program/area managers and country teams are familiar with Oxfam’s principles of partnership, including the commitments to the localization agenda, Pledge for Change, Charter for Change, Grand Bargain, etc.
• Support in regular learning exercises jointly with partners.
• Jointly with the humanitarian lead, support in contingency planning at field and country level, with specific roles for partners (joint contingency plans of Oxfam and partners).
• Support partners in preparation of contingency plans through appropriate capacity sharing.
• Support in planning and implementation of emergency response simulation exercises for Oxfam and partners as per the contingency plans.

Business Development

• Closely work with the Business Development Manager to support in developing business proposal to support delivery of country goals and ambition on LHL and P.
• Supports Business Development Manager to communicate/respond to donor/investor information requests related to partnerships.
• Support other Technical Coordinators, Area Managers and collaborate with Partners in producing high quality concept notes, proposals, and “pitches” contributing to strengthening Oxfam programs on LHL and P; and ensure timely submission of such to potential donors and/investors.

Performance Management

• Manage direct report and consultants/service providers that may be assigned to him/her, and ensure competencies are equal to the program’s demands.
• Provide recommendations to line manager/HR on issues related to managing staff/consultant performance and other related concerns.

Other

• Required to adhere to Oxfam’s principles and valuesas well as the promotion of gender justice and women's rights 
• Understanding of and commitment to adhere to equity, diversity, gender, child safety and staff health and wellbeing principles.

Experiences and Qualifications

• At least five (5) years of relevant experience in development and humanitarian work.
• Demonstrated competencies in partnership development and management, particularly in humanitarian partnerships and promoting local humanitarian leadership.
• Knowledge of and demonstrated commitment to Oxfam's values, mission and work including feminist approach to humanitarian responses and Oxfam’s partnership principles.
• Excellent understanding of, and experience with, brokering, developing and managing (humanitarian) partnerships with and among CSOs, government, private institutions, federations, networks and platforms, academia and research institutions etc.
• Strong knowledge and understanding of development and humanitarian issues including the political environment, sensitivity to working with CSOs within the Somali region.
• Excellent and demonstrable people, collaboration, and networking skills.
• Effective communication internally and externally towards government and NGOs, donors, and internally towards management, program/area managers, technical experts and business support specialists.
• Strategic planning skills with ability to contribute to programme overall strategies.
• Good assessment, analytical and planning skills, incl. project management experience.
• A proven capacity for mentoring, facilitation, training, capacity sharing and coaching.
• Excellent written and spoken English.

Skills Required

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