MEL Specialist, MNTD, REACH Malaria

The Organization for Innovation in Public Health (OIPH, PATH’s local affiliate in Nigeria) seeks a Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) Specialist for the USG-funded “Reaching Every At-risk Community and Household with Malaria Services” (PMI REACH Malaria) global project. PMI REACH Malaria aims to provide implementation support services and technical assistance to countries to accelerate progress in comprehensive delivery of facility and community-based malaria services, including malaria case management, prevention of malaria in pregnancy (MiP), seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC), health systems strengthening, data collection and use for service delivery, and other malaria prevention interventions. 

The MEL Specialist will report to the MEL Manager and will support the development and management of the MEL systems for the project in Nigeria. 

Responsibilities: 

• Support the development and management of the country-level MEL plan and systems, including the development of country-level data collection tools or forms.  

• Contribute to annual work planning and ensure inclusion of MEL activities. 

• Support implementation of national level MEL activities and provide guidance and oversight for State level MEL activity implementation and data reporting. 

• Provide support to State level MEL staff for routine data collection, cleaning, processing, and analysis of MEL plan performance and context indicators, including mapping of data elements from performance indicators and data flows for reporting. 

• Support aggregation, review, and analysis of project monitoring data across the seven project State implementation areas. 

• Contribute to the design and implementation of data quality improvement activities, including data validation, data review meetings, and data quality audits. 

• Provide support to the NMEP for regular reporting of HMIS data in line with NMP programmatic needs. 

• Contribute to capacity strengthening efforts or activities for the NMEP on the use of data for quality improvement and programmatic decision-making. 

• Support knowledge management activities, including ensuring all MEL-related tools, forms, reports, presentation, and datasets are stored on the project SharePoint site and data are entered into the REACH Data Hub.  

• Support data management and submission of project datasets as per contract terms.  

• Support project reviews of performance data and development of country visualizations/dashboards. 

• Provide input into technical documents, presentations, SOPs, and reports, as requested.  

• Participate in and provide support for after-action reviews of project activities, quarterly review meetings, and other learning activities; support documentation of project learning.  

Required skills and experience: 

• Master’s degree in public health, epidemiology, demography, statistics, or related field. 

• Minimum of 5 years of experience in monitoring and evaluation in donor-funded projects, preferably USG. 

• Demonstrated experience in performance monitoring plans within donor-funded projects. 

• Experience using DHIS2 for program monitoring and performance assessments. 

• Strong data management and analytical skills to successfully conduct data quality audits and data reviews, and to use data for decision-making. 

• Familiarity with monitoring and evaluation approaches, preferably for malaria case management and/or malaria in pregnancy programs. 

• Experience in building capacity in monitoring and evaluation, and data use activities in country.  

• Familiarity with stakeholders in the malaria services space, including malaria case management, prevention of MiP, SMC, surveillance, health systems strengthening, data collection and use for service delivery. 

• Experience with data analysis using Excel or other software such as R, Stata, SPSS, and data visualization tools (e.g., Excel, Power BI, Tableau). 

• Strong problem-solving, organizational skills and a positive, solution-oriented approach to challenges. 

• Excellent analytical, presentation, and report writing skills.  

• Excellent skills in facilitation, team building, and coordination.  

• Extremely detail-oriented, with the ability to communicate effectively and concisely, both orally and in writing. 

• Strong work ethic, resourcefulness, integrity, credibility, and dedication to PATH’s mission.  

• Professional proficiency in English required, fluency in local languages preferred.  

• Proficiency with Microsoft Office Suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams) required. 

• Ability to travel up to 30 percent in-country.