A CALL FOR APPLICATION: Finance And Admin Officer | ALIGN – Advancing Local Innovations For Adolescent Health & Nutrition

Position Title: Finance and Admin Officer | ALIGN – Advancing Local Innovations for Adolescent Health & Nutrition

Contract Type:Consultancy

Duration: 14 months

Eligibility and Geographic Scope : Kenya, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Mauritius, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe (with occasional travel to target countries)

Reports To: Project Manager – ALIGN at The Youth Café

Mode of Engagement: Hybrid/online

Project: ALIGN – Advancing Local Innovations for Adolescent Health & Nutrition

Collaborates With: Grants, Reporting and Compliance officer, Logistics and Procurement Officer, Consortium Partners, CSOs, and YLOs


About the Project

ALIGN is an initiative funded by the Global Financing Facility for Women, Children, and Adolescents (GFF) and administered by the World Bank. The project aims to improve adolescent health and nutrition outcomes by empowering local civil society organisations (CSOs) and youth-led organisations (YLOs) to adapt, scale, and integrate proven, community-driven innovations into national health systems across up to 12 African countries.

A two-member consortium implements the project. Action Against Hunger USA (ACF USA) serves as the prime recipient and leads overall programme management and fiduciary responsibility. The Youth Café (TYC) is the youth-focused implementing partner responsible for youth engagement, sub-grant portfolio management, community-of-practice facilitation, and evidence-based advocacy. The Emergency Nutrition Network (ENN) serves as the technical knowledge and research partner.

Project Components

Component 1: Strengthening CSO and YLO Capacities for Networking and Enabling Pathways to Scale

This component strengthens the organisational and technical capacity of CSOs and YLOs to co-design, expand, and integrate high-quality adolescent health and nutrition innovations into public systems. It delivers Technical Support Packages covering baseline capacity assessments, tailored technical assistance and mentorship in programme design and grant management, policy dialogue facilitation, and the establishment of youth engagement mechanisms. It establishes and manages a Cross-Country Community of Practice connecting local innovators with technical experts, policymakers, and partners through peer learning platforms, stakeholder convenings, and structured knowledge exchange.


Component 2: Supporting CSOs and YLOs to Effectively Engage Government Entities in Adolescent Health and Nutrition

This component provides sub-grants to eligible CSOs and YLOs across up to 12 countries to scale proven adolescent health and nutrition innovations. It covers grant management and administration, including the development of an Operational Manual, sub-grantee selection, and compliance and fiduciary management. It focuses on sub-project implementation by supporting CSOs to scale promising interventions, conduct sensitisation workshops, and execute awareness and communications campaigns.

Component 3: Generating Evidence and Influencing Policy

This component builds a robust evidence base to drive policy change and sustainable scale. It covers operational research and M&E, including mixed-method studies, M&E capacity strengthening, and adolescent feedback mechanisms. It covers knowledge management and advocacy: documenting co-design models, producing policy briefs, and engaging with national and global decision-making forums.

The Youth Café's Role in ALIGN

As a consortium partner, The Youth Café leads youth engagement, sub-grant portfolio management, Community of Practice facilitation, and evidence-based advocacy across the project. TYC's ALIGN team is based in Nairobi with responsibility for country-level coordination across all target countries. Staff recruited under ALIGN operate within TYC's administrative and programmatic structure, in close coordination with ACF USA and ENN, and are governed by TYC's human resources policies, the World Bank's Environmental and Social Framework requirements, and the ESCP safeguarding and labour standards.

Note to Applicants

The position for which you are applying is part of The Youth Café's ALIGN project team. This background document is a standard introduction provided with all ALIGN Terms of Reference and should be read together with the specific position description that follows. Applicants are encouraged to demonstrate in their application how their experience relates to the project's three-component structure and to TYC's specific implementation responsibilities.

PURPOSE OF THE ROLE

The Finance and Admin Officer is the financial engine of TYC's ALIGN project team  responsible for ensuring that every transaction is accurately processed, every account is reconciled, every report is correct, and every document is audit-ready. The role manages TYC's day-to-day financial operations across all three project components, maintains the project's accounts and designated donor accounts in full compliance with GFF, World Bank, and ACF USA financial management standards, and provides the financial data and documentation that underpin the Grants, Reporting and Compliance Manager's reporting and compliance work. Beyond internal finance, the role carries a direct capacity building responsibility, training CSOs and YLOs in financial management and accountability to ensure TYC's sub-grant portfolio is financially sound at every level.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

  1. Financial Management and Accounting

  • Maintain TYC's ALIGN project accounts in the financial management information system (FMIS), ensuring all income and expenditure is recorded accurately, coded correctly to approved budget lines and donor project codes, and reconciled monthly.

  • Manage all project bank accounts, including TYC's GFF designated account, processing payments, monitoring balances, reconciling statements monthly, and ensuring no commingling of restricted donor funds with TYC's general operating funds at any time.

  • Process all payment requests for ALIGN activities by verifying completeness and accuracy of supporting documentation, confirming alignment with approved budget lines, obtaining the required authorisations per TYC's payment authorisation matrix, and issuing payment promptly.

  • Prepare and monitor the ALIGN project budget, producing monthly budget versus actual variance reports for all active components and flagging significant variances or risks of over- or under-expenditure to the Project Manager and Grants, Reporting and Compliance Manager.

  • Manage payroll processing for all ALIGN project staff, verifying timesheet allocations against project budget lines, processing salaries and consultant fees on schedule, and ensuring NSSF, NHIF, and PAYE deductions and remittances are calculated correctly and submitted on time.

  • Maintain a complete, chronological, and audit-ready records system for all financial transactions by ensuring every payment has a complete paper trail from requisition through to bank confirmation, filed in a manner that supports retrieval within 48 hours of any audit request.

2. Financial Reporting and Audit Support

  • Prepare accurate monthly, quarterly, and annual project financial reports, including interim unaudited financial reports (IUFRs) for submission to ACF USA and the donor within the timelines specified in TYC's Subaward Agreement and the Grants, Reporting, and Compliance Manager's reporting calendar.

  • Collaborate closely with the Grants, Reporting, and Compliance Manager to align financial and narrative reporting, ensuring that budget expenditure figures and narrative descriptions of activities are fully consistent and cross-referenced in every donor report.

  • Support the financial due diligence screening of prospective sub-grantees as part of the technical selection committee process, reviewing financial statements, reviewing existing audit reports where available, and assessing financial management capacity against TYC's sub-grantee risk profiling criteria.

  • Maintain audit-ready financial documentation throughout the project and provide auditors with timely, complete, and well-organised access to all financial records during external audits, donor supervision missions, and World Bank post-reviews.

  • Prepare management responses to financial audit findings, coordinate with the Project Manager and Grants Manager on agreed corrective actions, and track implementation against the Corrective Action Tracking Register.

3. Administrative Management

  • Maintain TYC's ALIGN administrative systems, including physical and digital filing, document version control, office supply management, and equipment asset register by ensuring records are organised, accessible, and consistent with TYC's document management standards.

  • Coordinate administrative support for project activities across all three components: manage room bookings, travel advance processing, per diem calculations and disbursements, and post-activity expense liquidations for workshops, training sessions, CoP events, and consortium meetings.

  • Ensure efficient financial and administrative communication and coordination across the ALIGN project team and with consortium partners by circulating financial guidance, reminding team members of submission deadlines, and resolving routine financial and administrative queries promptly.

  • Support the Logistics and Procurement Officer on the financial processing side of procurement, verifying invoices against purchase orders and delivery notes, raising goods received notes, and processing supplier payments in accordance with contract terms and TYC's procurement policy.

  • Manage staff expense claims, travel advances, and liquidation processes by verifying supporting receipts, calculating eligible amounts, processing approved reimbursements, and following up promptly on any outstanding or unretired advances.

4. Sub-Grantee Financial Capacity Building

  • Design and deliver financial management and accountability training for CSOs and YLOs under Technical Support Packages covering topics including basic bookkeeping, bank reconciliation, financial report preparation, supporting documentation standards, and internal control principles adapted to grassroots organisational contexts.

  • Develop standardised financial reporting templates and tools for sub-grantee use, including cash books, payment voucher formats, bank reconciliation templates, budget monitoring tools, and supporting documentation checklists aligned with GFF and donor requirements.

  • Review sub-grantee financial reports submitted to the Grants, Reporting, and Compliance Manager, providing a first-level financial accuracy check and identifying common errors or capacity gaps that should be addressed through follow-up training or technical assistance.

  • Track sub-grantee financial management improvements through the periodic review process and provide targeted follow-up support by direct coaching, template refinement, or additional training where persistent weaknesses are identified.

Deliverables

  • Annual budgets and financial plans by July 2026

  • Monthly, quarterly, and annual financial reports

  • Audit-ready financial documentation

  • Administrative records and filing systems maintained throughout the project

  • Payroll records and statutory remittance confirmations for all ALIGN staff

  • End-of-project financial and administrative summary report by May 2028

Qualifications and Experience

Essential

  • Bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting, Business Administration, or a related field. Professional certification in accounting or finance (CPA-K, CIFA, ACCA, or equivalent), fully certified or at an advanced stage of an ongoing certification programme, is preferred. 

  • Minimum 3 years of experience in financial and administrative management within international development or humanitarian projects.

  • Strong working knowledge of donor financial compliance frameworks and financial management standards applicable to multi-country development programmes.

  • Demonstrated experience in full-cycle financial management - budgeting, payments processing, bank reconciliation, payroll, and financial reporting.

  • Proven track record in preparing accurate, timely financial reports for bilateral or multilateral donors.

  • Experience maintaining audit-ready financial records and supporting external audit processes.

  • Proven experience delivering financial management capacity building to CSOs, YLOs, or community-based organisations.

  • Applicants must hold a valid work permit or be legally authorised to work in their country of residence at the time of application. The Youth Café will not sponsor or facilitate work permits for this assignment. 

  • High attention to detail, strong numerical accuracy, and excellent organisational skills.

  • Fluency in English.

Desirable

  • Direct experience on World Bank-financed projects, including familiarity with designated account management, IUFR preparation, and World Bank disbursement procedures.

  • Experience using accounting software or financial management information systems in a project context.

  • Familiarity with IPSAS or IFRS for SMEs financial reporting standards.

  • Experience working in multi-currency environments across Sub-Saharan African countries.

  • Proficiency in French, given the project's Francophone country coverage.

 Duration and Compensation

Duration: 14months

Compensation: Competitive salary aligned with donor budget provisions

Payment Schedule: Monthly, upon submission of deliverables and timesheets

Application Process

Interested candidates should submit:

  • A cover letter of not more than one page setting out your suitability for the role and confirming availability from 1 July 2026.

  • An updated CV of not more than four pages.

  • Contact details for two professional referees. Referees will not be contacted without prior notification to the candidate.

Email applications to: human.resource@theyouthcafe.com      

cc:admin.compliance@theyouthcafe.com

Subject Line: Finance and Admin Officer – ALIGN Project

Deadline for submission: 30th June 2026

Equal Opportunity

The Youth Café is committed to fostering diversity and inclusion and strongly encourages applications from women, youth, persons with disabilities, and other underrepresented groups.