The Senior Project Officer will be the senior manager and strategic technical authority of the Project Management Unit (PMU) for the Kilimanjaro Transboundary Aquifer System (KTAS) Project. The incumbent will lead the PMU and be accountable to UNESCO for coherent, timely and high-quality project execution across Kenya and Tanzania, providing strategic and technical direction, integrating project result areas, supervising staff, ensuring compliance, advising the Project Steering Committee, and maintaining high-level relationships for joint country ownership and sustainability.
Responsibilities
- Translate the approved project document and inception decisions into a sequenced implementation strategy, multi-year plan, annual work plans and budgets, procurement priorities and performance objectives.
- Direct implementation across all components, resolve interdependencies and bottlenecks, and ensure that scientific work, field investments, governance processes, capacity development, safeguards and communication advance as one coherent programme.
- Exercise delegated management authority over PMU work, resources and schedules, establishing clear assignments, controls, escalation routes and follow-up mechanisms.
- Maintain a strategic risk register and lead adaptive management, recommending material changes to UNESCO, FAO and the PSC through the applicable approval processes.
- Serve as UNESCO’s principal project-level interface with FAO, the co-chairing ministries, national coordinators, basin institutions, the Jumuiya Water Fund and other strategic partners.
- Lead substantive and secretariat support to the PSC by shaping agendas, presenting decision papers, ensuring accurate records and tracking implementation of decisions.
- Guide the Technical Committee and draw on the Knowledge and Scientific Advisory Board for independent advice, while preserving their advisory and country-led roles.
- Steer the political and institutional processes for the permanent transboundary consultation and information-exchange body, the SAP, and related policy and regulatory dialogue.
- Represent the project at authorized national, regional and international forums, including GEF International Waters knowledge platforms, and communicate agreed project positions.
- Set the project-wide technical assurance framework, including review gates, acceptance criteria and agreed standards for hydrogeology, geophysics, hydrochemistry and isotopes, modelling, drilling, monitoring, managed aquifer recharge, ecosystem restoration and data management.
- Approve, within delegated authority, scopes of work and technical specifications, and provide final substantive clearance of key outputs before formal submission by UNESCO.
- Ensure that the TDA, conceptual model, harmonized maps, monitoring framework, information system, Hydro-Environmental Observatory, pilots and SAP are scientifically credible, mutually consistent and suitable for national and transboundary decision-making.
- Convene multidisciplinary review where evidence is uncertain or contested and document the basis for significant technical decisions.
- Ensure cross-cutting integration of gender equality, Indigenous and local knowledge, youth participation, climate resilience, environmental and social safeguards, and conflict sensitivity.
- Lead, supervise, coach and assess PMU personnel, including the Project Technical Officer, and promote an accountable, collaborative and inclusive working environment.
- Provide technical supervision of consultants, contractors and service providers; chair key inception and review meetings; assess deliverables against contractual requirements; and recommend acceptance or corrective action through UNESCO procedures.
- Coordinate the performance of co-executing and implementing partners against agreed work packages, milestones, budgets and reporting obligations without displacing their institutional mandates.
- Ensure that terms of reference, technical evaluation criteria and deliverable-review arrangements are fit for purpose and maintain appropriate separation of technical and administrative controls.
- Lead results-based management against the project results framework and GEF core indicators, using disaggregated and verifiable evidence and ensuring early correction of performance gaps.
- Oversee the timely preparation and substantive quality of progress and financial narratives, annual implementation-review inputs, PSC documentation, co-financing reports and other reports required by UNESCO, FAO and GEF.
- Ensure compliance with the UN-to-UN Agreement and applicable UNESCO, FAO and GEF requirements on fiduciary management, procurement, safeguards, gender, ethics, visibility and records management, in coordination with responsible specialists.
- Lead management responses and follow-up for audits, supervision missions, the Mid-Term Review and Terminal Evaluation.
- Maintain strategic partnerships with government, regional organizations, academia, communities, civil society, the private sector and development partners, and ensure complementarity with related programmes.
- Track the realization and alignment of confirmed co-financing, identify gaps, and mobilize additional or parallel financing consistent with the approved project and country priorities.
- Guide the partnership conference and investment dialogue around SAP, including preparation of credible priority investment propositions.
- Embed sustainability and institutional ownership of governance mechanisms, monitoring networks, information systems, the Hydro-Environmental Observatory, capacity and knowledge products beyond project closure.
Requirements
- Advanced university degree (Ph.D) in hydrogeology, geology, water resources management or a closely related field
- Minimum of seven years of progressively responsible relevant professional experience
- Demonstrated experience leading a complex, multidisciplinary water, environment or natural-resource programme
- Substantive experience in groundwater assessment or management
- Ability to direct and quality-assure multidisciplinary technical work
- Experience supervising personnel and consultants
- Experience managing work plans and budgets
- Experience delivering results and donor reporting under formal accountability frameworks
- Demonstrated experience facilitating government-led processes
- Experience building partnerships across public institutions, technical organizations, civil society and development partners
- Strong strategic judgement
- Ability to translate complex scientific and institutional issues into clear decisions and implementation priorities
- Excellent leadership, negotiation, facilitation and diplomatic skills in a multicultural and politically sensitive transboundary setting
- Strong command of results-based management, risk management, quality assurance and clear technical and executive writing
- Ability to manage competing priorities, make timely decisions and maintain accountability
- Digital proficiency, including standard office and project-management tools, and sufficient familiarity with hydrogeological data, GIS and information systems to oversee quality and use
- Excellent knowledge of English (written and spoken)
- Excellent knowledge of Swahili (written and spoken)
Application Instructions
- The selection process may include pre-recorded video interviews and/or written assessments, a panel interview, and reference checks.
