Deputy Country Director 

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About TaRL Africa

Position: Deputy Country Director 

Reports to: Country Director

Location: Abidjan, Côte D'Ivoire

Deadline: 31st October 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 skill 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 16 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. Since our inception, we have reached 7 million children in collaboration with partners. 

Summary of the Role: 

As the TaRL approach scales nationally in Côte d’Ivoire under the PNAPAS initiative, TaRL Africa is reinforcing its in-country leadership to ensure strong, distributed oversight and complementary capabilities. The Deputy Country Director (DCD) will work alongside the Country Director (CD) to ensure the success, scale, and sustainability of the program. While the Country Director focuses on team leadership, operational delivery, and financial stewardship, the Deputy Country Director will lead on government relations and policy engagement, strategic communications and advocacy, and programmatic strategy.

This structure ensures full-spectrum leadership for a program of increasing size, visibility, and policy significance.

Major roles and responsibilities:

1. Strategic Leadership & Program Direction

• Work with the Country Director to shape and refine the overarching programmatic strategy in line with government priorities and TaRL Africa’s goals.
• Work with the Country Director to identify strategic opportunities for expanding TaRL Africa’s work in the country.
• Drive program quality implementation and improvement activities. 
• Identify opportunities for policy influence and system integration based on learning from implementation.
• Position remediation program in CIV as the innovative approach to improving foundational reading and math skills.
• Manage TaRL Core Program team members.
• Manage and support budget holders for grants if delegated by the CD.

2. Government Relations & Policy Engagement

• Serve as the primary liaison with MENA and other senior government stakeholders on technical and strategic issues.
• Build and maintain strong, trust-based relationships at both national and regional levels, positioning TaRL Africa to ensure alignment and collaboration on  foundational learning agenda.
• Optimize existing government relations by creating more intentional interactions, creating targeted capacity building opportunities for government personnel (in light with the sustainability tracker/marker), track and reflect on the health of our government relationships. 
• Build remediation champions in the ministry & facilitate joint planning, problem-solving, and decision-making with government counterparts.
• Lead the navigation of the shifting landscape of government leadership.
• Provide guidance and coaching to the team at national and regional levels on government relations strategy, stakeholder mapping, and navigating the government system, and overseeing staff focused on government relations. 
• Support the team to understand national and subnational education priorities, to ensure their work is aligned wherever possible.
• Design organisational health framework and regularly assess organisational fitness for systems change/strengthening.
• Lead regular review of the strategic triangle process and components by a) demonstrating that remediation solution is technically correct; b) ensuring there is sufficient political support from key stakeholders and d) creating ways for implementation fidelity).
• Act as ambassador to encourage learning, collaboration, coherence and participation across foundational literacy and numeracy initiatives and actors in CIV.
  

3. Strategic Communications & Advocacy

• Develop and deliver high-quality strategic communication products to articulate TaRL’s impact and vision to policymakers, donors, and the public.
• Shape TaRL’s external presence in CIV, including contributions to national and regional learning and policy events.
• Oversee documentation, messaging, and engagement materials that support scale-up, visibility, and policy influence.
• Turn in action the advocacy strategy and monitor  the implementation of its annual plans.
• Support the Country Director in overall organisational communication and visibility.
  

4. Partner and Donor Engagement

• Co-lead  stakeholders management, particularly strategic engagement with donors, ensuring alignment on vision, expectations, and technical direction.
• Update and execute an in-country fundraising strategy. 
• Assist the Country Director to secure donor funds and ensure donors compliance.
• Contribute to funds opportunities identification, and concept notes/proposals written.
• Ensure preparation of timely and high-quality progress reports, program reports, donor reports, and stakeholder updates.
• Represent TaRL Africa in external forums when delegated by the Country Director.

5. Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Work closely with the Country Director and senior staff to align strategy and delivery.
• Support the integration of advocacy and learning into operational planning.
• Occasionally serve as acting Country Director when delegated.
  

Education and Experience 

• 8+ years of experience in government engagement, policy advocacy, education systems reform, or related fields.
• Proven ability to build high-trust relationships with government & donor stakeholders.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills in French and English.
• Strategic thinker with the ability to connect grassroots learning to national policy.
• Comfortable working in a dynamic, fast-paced environment and managing complexity.
• Ability to make decisions, work under pressure on a number of competing tasks and meet deadlines.
• Prior work with or within the Ivorian education system or in Francophone Africa.
  

Preferred:

• Experience in foundational literacy/numeracy or structured pedagogy programs.

Understanding of how to influence large-scale education reforms through policy, partnerships, and communications.

TaRL Africa Values 

1. We put children’s learning first.
2. We are always learning, improving, and innovating. 
3. We are locally rooted for high-quality delivery and sustainable impact. 
4. We are kind, respectful, and collaborative.
5. 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 organisational needs.