Location: India or East Africa
BFA Global is a social enterprise working at the intersection of finance, technology, and development. We combine research, advisory, venture building, and investment to build systems that expand access, resilience, and opportunity for underserved people.
We work with financial institutions, governments, investors, and startups across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Our focus areas include inclusive finance, climate resilience, livelihoods, and food systems. Increasingly, our work is focused on making artificial intelligence accessible to all across these focus areas.
BFA Global is seeking an experienced Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) expert to support BFA Global’s portfolio of partner organizations, and specifically to provide targeted technical assistance (TA) and evaluation support to a select group of grantees of our client, the Livelihood Impact Fund (LIF). The focus is on helping organizations design and execute increasingly robust impact studies as they move from promising initial results toward increasingly robust evidence of impact and social return on investment.
The MEL Expert will work in close partnership with both the funder and grantees. We are not looking for a monitoring compliance officer. We want someone who is genuinely excited about building the evidence that will help our partner organizations grow their impact and who can meet organizations where they are. You will be embedded enough in the work to understand the organization’s theory of change and the funder’s strategic priorities. You will communicate the results and implications to the funder, the organizations, researchers, and other non-specialist audiences.
Evaluation design & management
- Co-design evaluations with partner organizations, including randomized controlled trials (RCTs) or quasi-experimental designs where appropriate.
- Advise on counterfactual design, helping partners think through what is most relevant and appropriate given the situation, the context, and the decisions LIF is hoping to make on the back of the evaluation.
- Manage ongoing evaluations, including RCTs and quasi-experimental studies, getting up to speed quickly on the context and key decisions and steering the work to successful delivery.
MEL technical assistance
- Conduct rapid diagnostic assessments of existing MEL systems across a defined cohort of grantees and portfolio companies.
- Provide hands-on coaching to grantees, in some cases building MEL capacity from the ground up while leveraging internal systems where they already exist.
- Exercise judgment about when to lean in and when to step back, taking a coach-led approach that respects the realities of each grantee organization and avoids overwhelming partner teams.
- Guide implementation of stronger data collection, analysis, and learning processes that take into account the realities of staffing and organizational capability.
General
- Maintain regular check-ins with grantees and with LIF, providing timely written updates on progress, risks, and findings.
- Support grantees in communicating results externally to donors, investors, and researchers.
- Flag learnings across the portfolio and share them with appropriate audiences, including funders and the general public.
Qualifications & requirements
- 8+ years of MEL experience with organizations working in international development or economic inclusion
- Demonstrated experience designing or managing RCTs, ideally in collaboration with IPA, J-PAL, or similar research institutions
- Track record of working directly with implementing organizations in Africa, understanding their operational constraints and translating rigor into reality
- Advanced skills in statistical analysis; Proficiency in R or Python for data analysis, statistical modeling, and data visualization
- Ability to translate technical MEL concepts into practical, accessible guidance for non-specialist audiences
- Exceptional written and verbal communication skills in English: able to engage credibly with grantee program staff and with technically sophisticated funders and researchers
- High responsiveness and comfort working in a fast-moving, lean funder environment
Preferred
- Advanced degree in economics, public policy, development studies, or a related field
- Experience across multiple African contexts (East, West, or Southern Africa)
- Familiarity with BFA’s impact areas of financial inclusion, livelihoods, and climate, and/or LIF’s strategic priority areas such as food systems, entrepreneurship, and skills development.
- Prior work with philanthropic funders in a TA or embedded advisor capacity
- French language capability
This is an Individual Consultant role.
Anticipated start date: As soon as possible
Preferred location: India and East Africa
Candidates must have local work permits. Compensation will be commensurate with experience.
Only shortlisted candidates who provide the required information will be contacted for follow-up.
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At BFA, we are committed to providing an environment of mutual respect where equal employment opportunities are available to all applicants and teammates without regard to race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy (including childbirth, lactation, and related medical conditions), national origin, age, physical and mental disability, marital status, sexual orientation, military, and veteran status, and any other characteristic protected by applicable law.
BFA believes that diversity and inclusion among our teammates are critical to our success as a global company. We seek to recruit, develop and retain the most talented people from a diverse candidate pool and to carry out the best inclusion work we undertake.
- BFA will not sponsor work permits.
**BFA will not pay for relocation expenses.
