Role: Country Project Lead – Malawi
Reports to: Global Project Lead
Location: Malawi
About Living Goods:
We're on a mission to ensure no woman or child dies from easily preventable diseases. To bring high-quality healthcare door to door, we've partnered with African governments to ensure that community health workers (CHWs) have the tools, support, and knowledge they need to save lives. We believe CHWs should be recognized as essential health workers who are digitized, equipped, supervised, and compensated to deliver quality care. By harnessing community-level data, we help governments strengthen health systems and improve health outcomes. Living Goods has supported more than 12,000 CHWs, reaching over 6 million people across Africa.
About the Project:
This is a multi-country, multi-year, donor-funded initiative delivered through a consortium of partners, focused on strengthening community health systems and advancing the use of data and digital solutions to improve service delivery. The project supports governments to strengthen performance management approaches, build workforce capabilities, and improve the quality, scale, and sustainability of community health services.
The Opportunity:
Living Goods is seeking experienced Country Project Lead to lead country-level implementation of its flagship multi-country initiative in Malawi.
The Country Project Lead is accountable for the successful execution of the country project workplan, ensuring delivery of agreed milestones, deliverables, and implementation targets in alignment with project objectives, donor commitments, and government priorities.
Working closely with the Global Project Lead, Ministry of Health, consortium partners, and Living Goods teams, the role drives planning, coordinates implementation, stewards project resources, fosters strong stakeholder partnerships, and ensures implementation remains responsive to emerging risks, opportunities, and changing realities.
The Country Project Lead serves as Living Goods’ primary representative for the project in-country and plays a key role in strengthening Government ownership, embedding project interventions within existing systems, and driving the use of data and learning to improve delivery and maximize project impact.
Key Responsibilities:
Country Implementation Leadership
Accountable for the successful planning, coordination, and execution of the country project workplan and delivery of agreed milestones, deliverables, and implementation targets. Responsibilities include:
- Lead development and execution of country workplans, implementation schedules, and budgets aligned with project objectives and donor commitments
- Coordinate implementation across Living Goods teams, consortium partners, and government stakeholders
- Ensure effective deployment, adoption and integration of digital health solutions and performance management approaches within project implementation, working in partnership with technical specialists and government stakeholders.
- Monitor delivery performance and project progress against agreed work plans, indicators, and milestones, addressing implementation challenges proactively.
- Identify implementation risks, opportunities and emerging delivery challenges and recommend adaptive actions to strengthen delivery and maximize project impact.
- Address country-level challenges and work with the Global Project Lead to resolve risks, dependencies, and decisions requiring wider coordination.
Government Partnership and Stakeholder Engagement
Accountable for strengthening government ownership and ensuring project interventions are aligned with national priorities and sustainable within existing health systems:
- Serve as the primary point of contact for the Ministry of Health and other key government stakeholders.
- Build and maintain strong working relationships with consortium partners, implementing partners, and other key stakeholders.
- Foster effective collaboration and problem solving among stakeholders to drive alignment around project priorities, plans, dependencies and results, and to address implementation challenges and maintain delivery momentum.
- Represent Living Goods in technical working groups, coordination meetings, and relevant project forums.
- Embed project interventions within government systems, processes, and ways of working to strengthen ownership and long-term sustainability.
Performance, Learning and Adaptive Management
Accountable for ensuring implementation decisions are informed by data, evidence, and learning and that opportunities to improve impact are identified and acted upon:
- Ensure timely collection, analysis, and use of project data to inform decision-making and improve implementation.
- Track project performance against agreed performance indicators and ensure timely reporting on achievements, challenges, and lessons learned.
- Prepare high-quality technical project reports, presentations, performance updates, and other project documentation that support donor, consortium, and internal reporting requirements.
- Foster a culture of data use, accountability, continuous improvement and evidence-based decision-making.
Grant Management & Compliance
Accountable for ensuring sound stewardship of project resources and compliance with donor, organizational, and regulatory requirements:
- Ensure full compliance with donor requirements, Living Goods policies, and applicable government regulations.
- Oversee project budget management, financial forecasting, and expenditure monitoring in collaboration with Finance teams.
- Monitor project risks and implement mitigation measures throughout the project lifecycle.
- Ensure appropriate documentation and compliance with procurement, financial, and reporting requirements.
- Drive timely resolution of financial, operational, and compliance risks that may affect project delivery.
Education and Experience:
- Bachelor's degree in public health, Social Sciences, Information Technology, Business Administration, Project Management, or related field. A master's degree is an added advantage.
- Project Management Professional (PMP) or equivalent certification is desirable.
- At least 8-12 years' experience managing complex health or development programs, preferably in community health or primary healthcare.
- Demonstrated experience leading donor-funded projects involving multiple stakeholders.
- Experience coordinating consortium partners, implementing partners, and cross-functional teams to deliver shared project objectives.
- Experience leading digital health, health systems strengthening, or performance management initiatives, including supporting the adoption and integration of digital solutions.
- Experience using project data, monitoring results, and applying learning to improve implementation and delivery.
- Strong understanding of government health systems and proven experience working closely with Ministry of Health to implement projects aligned with national priorities.
- Experience managing restricted grants and ensuring donor compliance.
- Experience working within international development or non-profit organizations.
Skills and Competencies:
- Strong programming and project management skills.
- Demonstrated leadership and management capability.
- Excellent stakeholder engagement and partnership-building skills.
- Strong understanding of government health systems and health sector coordination mechanisms.
- Strong analytical, problem-solving skills with ability to use data and evidence to inform decisions and improve project performance.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
- Strong financial and grant management capability.
- Ability to identify implementation risks, recommend adaptive solutions, and drive timely resolution of challenges.
- Experience using digital tools and data to drive program performance.
- Ability to work independently while collaborating effectively across multidisciplinary teams.
- Strong influencing and negotiation skills, particularly with government stakeholders.
- Fluency in English is required. Knowledge of local languages is an advantage.
Compensation:
A competitive salary and benefits package commensurate with experience including health insurance and bonus opportunity. The opportunity to be your best while making lives better for those in need.
Living Goods is an equal opportunity employer and will consider every qualified applicant for employment. Living Goods does not discriminate based on race, ethnicity, national origin, ancestry, religion, gender, sexual orientation or disability.
Our current job openings are displayed on our website, where you can search for open positions and apply directly. Living Goods does not offer any positions without an interview and never asks candidates for money. If you are asked for money, we strongly recommend that you do not respond and do not send money or personal information. If offered a role at Living Goods, we’ll request consent to complete a background check, which is part of our hiring process.
