View Vacancy - VNM - Head of Development Programmes (Prosperity Fund), Vietnam, C5 (L)

Main purpose of job:

The UK government Prosperity Fund (PF) was established with the primary aim of supporting growth in recipient countries and thereby reducing poverty. The Fund uniquely focuses on promoting growth in ODA-eligible middle income countries, which are home to around 60% of the world’s poor and where the development challenges remain significant, but at the same time are important business partners and drivers of prosperity. By delivering high impact, strategic multi-year programmes, across high opportunity countries, regions and sectors, the Fund will help create opportunities for international business, including UK companies.

Working across the six biggest SE Asian countries until 2023, the Fund’s official development assistance (ODA) programmes aim to reduce poverty in the region and create opportunities for international business, including for UK companies. We are recruiting a Head of Prosperity Fund in Vietnam to provide strategic support and direction to the portfolio of programmes.

In Vietnam, the Prosperity Fund is planning to deliver programmes on economic reform, low carbon energy, health, future cities, infrastructure, anti-corruption, trade and business environment. For more information, see the Prosperity Fund Annual Report 2017/18. These are a combination of regional programmes led by the team in the Singapore Programme Office and programmes led by UK Government departments in London (primarily Foreign and Commonwealth Office). Programmes are being delivered predominantly by commercial partners or multilateral organisations, working with a dedicated programme manager resource within the Embassy, and the Singapore regional PF Programme Hub.

The Prosperity Fund has two flagship programmes in South East Asia (including Vietnam) – low carbon energy and economic reform – these are in the inception phase and will be shortly be moving to implementation. The low carbon energy programme will focus on green finance and energy efficiency. The economic reform programme will work on the overarching business environment (e.g. intellectual property, regulatory reform, transparency) and financial services. Other programmes will focus on transport and flood resilience in Ho Chi Minh City, digital health and health education, Building Information Modelling (BIM), market access barriers to trade and integration of local SMEs into global value chains.

To succeed in delivering on the Prosperity Fund’s aims, it will be essential to ensure these programmes are well managed, including through continuous assessment of impacts and value for money. Strong oversight will be crucial as much of the programmes’ delivery will be undertaken by external suppliers and sub-contractors.

The successful candidate will build senior-level relationships and work closely with delivery partners, businesses, beneficiary agencies, NGOs and other external stakeholders to ensure successful delivery. S/he will work to the Head of Prosperity at the British Embassy in Hanoi and will coordinate, the regional Prosperity Fund Programme Office in the British High Commission in Singapore, other Posts in the region and government colleagues in the UK to achieve UK policy objectives and to ensure that programmes comply with OECD rules for ODA. S/he will manage numerous PF Programme Managers in the British Embassy in Hanoi and Consulate General in Ho Chi Minh City, as well as draw expertise from a wider array of policy and communications officers. An important aspect of the job will be working with Department of International Trade colleagues in Vietnam and in London to unlock the opportunities created by the Programmes’ interventions for increased inward trade and investment, particularly for UK companies.

This is a challenging and exciting opportunity to play an influential role in a high-profile and strategic development initiative in South East Asia, which aims to have a positive impact on economic development and trade, as well as strengthening the relationship between the UK and the Vietnam.

Roles and responsibilities / what will the jobholder be expected to achieve?

We are looking for an individual who will proactively engage at a senior level and has a passion for delivering development impacts. The job holder will have three main responsibilities: oversight of portfolio delivery, including managing the Programme Managers; stakeholder engagement and co-ordination; and ensuring programmes contribute to the delivery of UK Government prosperity and trade objectives.

Driving Successful Portfolio Delivery (30%)

The jobholder will be responsible for strategically managing the portfolio of Prosperity Fund programmes operating in Vietnam to ensure programmes deliver on FCO and wider UK Government policy objectives and Vietnam’s development needs by:

• Ensuring policy colleagues have the necessary guidance and support to advocate for the programmes with stakeholders and leverage the programmes to support policy aims. The jobholder will reach out to colleagues to understand UK policy aims in this space and work with policy leads at Post and in the region to ensure programme activities remain aligned to these aims.
• Managing relationships and co-ordinating the team’s engagement with senior level stakeholders – ministries & agencies (health, finance, construction, trade, environment, investment & planning, market surveillance, intellectual property office), other donors and the business community (with DIT). Responsibility for the relationships with The World Bank Group and Ministry and Planning and Investment on the two programmes that do not have dedicated programme managers in Hanoi (business environment and infrastructure).
• Lead on the portfolio’s communication plan in Vietnam.
• Coordinating with other Heads of Prosperity and programme officers in the SE Asian Prosperity Fund countries to drive consistency, deliver efficiencies and increase impact.
• Identifying and capturing synergies between the programmes. Likewise, ensuring potential conflicts and duplications, for example in programme design and stakeholder management, are surfaced and resolved collaboratively.
• Working with programme managers to ensure programme design, implementation and monitoring delivers on the Fund’s high ambition to improve gender equality and inclusion.
• Demonstrating strong governance of the portfolio of programmes, through for example, chairing portfolio group meetings, and attending steering boards.

Managing the Prosperity Fund Team (50%)

The jobholder will be responsible for managing the team of Prosperity Fund Programme Managers, including through:

• Building team capability, collaborative working and resilience. Recruitment when required
• Driving knowledge sharing and lesson learning across the programmes in-country, including through the use of the on-line portal PFLearning
• Liaising with the regional networks and Communications colleagues to deliver effective communications activities.
• Championing the consideration and promotion of gender equality through all aspects of the programmes (e.g. consultation, focus beneficiaries, gender impact assessments.)
• Overseeing Post’s contribution to the programmes’ Monitoring, Reporting, Evaluation and Learning (MREL) obligations (activity reported through online portal, Prospero)

Using Prosperity Fund programmes to help deliver UK Government prosperity and trade strategies (20%)

Drawing in the whole of the embassy and other stakeholders in support of delivering the Prosperity Fund programmes and cementing their long term impact:

• Having strong insight into the impact of programmes beyond delivery of activity to inform wider economic and commercial policy objectives.
• Support the secondary prosperity benefits of the programme by identifying and promoting commercial opportunities to expand the market for international (including UK) trade and investment. Work to maximise synergies across the various PF Programmes in Vietnam to ensure these maximum value for money and impact.
• Seek opportunities and carry out activities to use the programmes to add value to the wider prosperity objectives of the Embassies and relevant regional networks – this could include presenting the programmes at national conferences, arranging briefing for colleagues to use in their work.
• Represent the Vietnam portfolio to colleagues in the UK Government, the Programme Office in Singapore and around the network.

Resources managed:

Staff: Line management responsibility for at least three (C4L) Programme Managers, covering Economic Reform, Trade, Future Cities, Infrastructure and Health. Team management and leadership experience is essential given the job holder will be responsible for ensuring strategic direction of the portfolio as a whole which will involve leading and negotiating with others. Experience of managing teams across a network is desirable (PF staff are based both in the Embassy in Hanoi and Consulate General in Ho Chi Minh City).  

• Graduate with a university degree relevant to the job and at least 10 years of experience in a relevant field.
• Senior level experience of delivering complex programmes
• Understanding of ODA/International development
• Strong people and personnel management skills
• At least 5 years’ experience in programme management ideally in a development context.
• A flexible and creative problem-solver, able to come up with innovative solutions to complex challenges.
• Excellent communication and influencing skills including in giving presentations to senior external audiences.
• Team player driven by values.