Senior Associate, Grants and Compliance (Bilingual)
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Position: Senior Associate, Grants and Compliance (Bilingual)
Reports to: Director Finance and Operations
Location: Any country in Africa
Deadline: 9th December 2025
About TaRL Africa
TaRL Africa initiative is hosted by Empower Learning Africa, a not-for-profit organisation registered and headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, with teams in Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, and Zambia and locally registered offices in Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire. TaRL Africa began as a joint venture by Pratham and J-PAL in 2019, with the goal of supporting governments and organisations across Africa to accelerate children’s foundational skills (reading and maths) learning using the evidence-based “Teaching at the Right Level” (TaRL) approach. TaRL Africa’s vision is for every child across Africa to have foundational skills so that they can have a better future. Our mission is to ensure education systems effectively equip children with these foundational skills. We support governments and organisations in over 17 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa to design, deliver and scale impactful TaRL programmes while learning and sharing how the approach can be improved for different contexts. Together with partners, TaRL Africa has reached over 7 million children with TaRL programming.
About the Role
Senior Associate, Grants & Compliance ensures TaRL Africa’s grants adhere to donor rules, financial policies, and legal requirements. Their duties include monitoring all compliances on grants and subgrants including reporting and expenses eligibility, conducting partner capacity building, supporting budget holders in preparing budgets, support budget holders in managing budget burn-rates, donor partners communications, support in reviewing awards and subgrants and ensuring the proper close-out of grants and agreements. This role is cross-functional, working closely with finance, project management, and partner organizations to maintain compliance and financial integrity.
Key responsibilities
1. Donor Contract and Compliance Management
- Review and interpret donor agreements (e.g., FCDO, UNICEF, Founders Pledge, Co-Impact, Gates, GPE,) and translate complex terms into clear operational guidance.
- Develop and maintain donor compliance checklists and trackers for each active grant.
- Develop and maintain an internal compliance dashboard for all grants and joint programming to track programmatic, financial, and administrative deliverables committed to as per donor contracts.
- Conduct regular reviews of project spending, procurement, and documentation to ensure alignment with donor and internal requirements.
- Support the development and review of donor reports and supporting documentation to ensure accuracy and compliance before submission.
- Maintain an organized repository of all donor agreements, amendment reports, and correspondence.
- Train staff on donor compliances and internal policies compliances
2. Internal Controls and risk management
- Work with the Finance and Operations teams to strengthen internal control systems that mitigate compliance risk.
- Proactively participate in Joint Programming Organisational Capacity Assessments and ensure grant management aspects are documented and gaps identified are addressed in consultation with the Finance team.
- Review procurement, travel, and subgrant transactions for compliance with both donor and internal policies.
- Support the design and implementation of compliance monitoring tools and risk registers.
- Identify compliance gaps and coordinate with relevant teams to address them through corrective actions and training.
- Conduct spot checks or internal compliance checks to assess adherence to donor rules and organizational policies.
- Work with the Director, Finance & Operations to develop an organisational risk register incorporating all the five steps of risk management viz: -identification, analysing the risk, evaluation, treatment, and monitoring and review.
- Maintain a log of compliance risks and advise management on mitigation strategies.
3. Partner and Sub-grantee engagements
- Review partner budgets, agreements, and reports to ensure alignment with donor and TaRL Africa standards.
- Develop and standardize templates of contracts/addendums and other relevant agreements for joint programming and sub-granting in compliance with the Sub-Grants Policy, ensuring all documents align with donor regulations and organizational standards. Oversee and track the development of sub-grant contracts and memorandum of understanding (MoUs) with monetary value and ensure compliance on terms and conditions as prescribed in the contracts are fulfilled promptly and accurately.
- Assist with any adjustments to sub-grant agreements or MoUs based on evolving project needs, donor guidelines, or compliance issues.
- Conduct partner due diligence and capacity assessments.
- Provide training and ongoing technical assistance to implementing partners on donor compliance, financial documentation, and reporting.
- Support monitoring visits to subgrantees and other partners to verify supporting documents and compliance practices.
4. Support budget holders with award specific and organisational budgets development and monitoring burn-rates against such budgets
- Support budget holders with preparation of award specific and annual organisational budgets
- Prepare relevant reports for project leads and the relevant finance team on the status of grant agreement compliance and provide recommendations where necessary.
- Prepare regular reports on sub-grant compliance status, highlighting potential issues and recommending corrective actions where needed.
5. Grant documentation and filing
- Summarise incoming awards highlighting key administrative and other compliance requirements and assign roles to different functions as needed
- Assist in preparing grant proposals, sub-award agreements, and managing grant files and databases.
- Prepare award amendments, as needed, for review by the management
- After projects are completed, ensure closeout grants in accordance with applicable policies and procedures.
- Organise good filing system (online) for all donor awards, correspondences and reports
6. Others
- Support development (or acquisition) and maintenance of Contracts & Grants Information System and use it to maintain accurate, complete, and up-to-date information on all assigned awards. This will include documents from pre-award to closeout and evidence of monitoring and support.
- Maintain excellent working relationships with coworkers, colleagues in other TaRL Africa offices, and partners.
- Other relevant duties as assigned by the supervisor.
Education, Experiences and Qualifications
- A university degree in social sciences fields like finance, Law, economics, accounting, Project management or business management is required.
- Certification Training on project management courses like PMP pro, Prince2, PMI Risk management professional among others shall be a necessary
- Master’s degree is an added advantage
- At least eight years of experience in grants management, financial administration, risk management and compliance, often within an NGO setting, is necessary.
- Expertise in interpreting and applying donor regulations (like those from multilateral and bilateral donors) is crucial.
Skills:
- Strong financial and analytical skills
- Program management skills
- Understanding of grants compliance
- Attention to detail
- Excellent communication skills
- Proficiency in software applications like Microsoft Excel, power point and ability to prepare dashboards are essential.
TaRL Africa Values
- We put children’s learning first
- We are always learning, improving, and innovating
- We are locally rooted for high-quality delivery and sustainable impact
- We are kind, respectful, and collaborative
- We are proactive, committed to integrity, and doing our best each day
This job description covers the main tasks and conveys the spirit of the sort of tasks that are anticipated proactively from staff. Other tasks may be assigned as necessary according to organizational needs.
TaRL Africa provides a nationally peer-benchmarked compensation package aligned with organisational salary scales, taking into account both qualifications and professional experience.
TaRL Africa is an equal-opportunity employer committed to having a diverse workforce.
This position was originally posted by TaRL Africa and has been curated by PurposePhil Career. To apply, please visit the original listing on the "apply" link on the side. We are not affiliated with the employer organization of this job ad or consultancy, and provide this curated listing as a service to our users.
