MEAL Coordinator

Location: Benishangul Gumuz or Gedaref (TBD), Ethiopia

Deadline: 13 Feb 2026

Job Description

Overall purpose of the role:

The Hope, Empowerment, and Resilience (HER) Project is a multi-country, consortium-led initiative implemented in Sudan and Ethiopia with financial support from Agence française de Développement (AfD). The project aims to strengthen the resilience of displacement-affected women and girls by addressing immediate humanitarian needs while laying the foundations for inclusive, gender-responsive, and sustainable systems recovery across protection, health and nutrition, economic recovery, and social cohesion.

Given the project’s geographic spread, multisectoral scope, strong gender and protection focus, and consortium governance structure, the MEAL Coordinator plays a critical role in ensuring high-quality, harmonized, and accountable monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning systems across both countries. The position ensures that evidence, feedback, and learning meaningfully inform adaptive management, consortium decision-making, and AfD reporting requirements. The position operates at the interface between the CMU and country implementation teams, ensuring alignment between strategic oversight and field-level data generation.

Your main duties and responsibilities will be:

A. Monitoring, Evaluation, and Results Management:

• Lead the operationalization of the HER Project MEAL Plan in line with the AfD-approved logframe, indicators, and reporting requirements.
• Coordinate the development, validation, and rollout of standardized MEAL tools across Sudan and Ethiopia, ensuring contextual adaptation where required.
• Ensure systematic tracking of outputs, outcomes, and cross-cutting indicators related to gender equality, GBV risk mitigation, social cohesion, and systems strengthening.
• Oversee baseline, midline, and end-line studies and periodic outcome monitoring exercises, including sampling design, tool development, data collection supervision, and analysis.
• Support country teams and partners to integrate qualitative methods (e.g. FGDs, KIIs, outcome harvesting) to capture women’s empowerment, resilience, and social change outcomes.
• Conduct regular data quality assessments (DQAs) and verification visits in coordination with country teams.

B. Accountability to Affected Populations (AAP):

• Coordinate the design, rollout, and monitoring of project-level Complaints and Feedback Mechanisms (CFMs) that are accessible, safe, confidential, and appropriate for women and girls.
• Ensure accountability systems are aligned with Core Humanitarian Standards (CHS), AfD expectations, and consortium safeguarding commitments.
• Strengthen partner and field staff capacity to collect, analyze, respond to, and close feedback loops with communities.
• Consolidate and analyze feedback and complaints data, ensuring trends and risks are regularly communicated to the CMU and country teams.

C. Learning and Adaptive Management:

• Facilitate regular reflection and learning processes at country and consortium levels, including quarterly learning reviews and after-action reflections.
• Generate learning products (briefs, dashboards, presentations) that translate data into actionable insights for program adaptation.
• Support the CMU and Technical Working Groups to use evidence for adaptive management, risk mitigation, and strategic decision-making.
• Promote cross-country learning between Ethiopia and Sudan, with particular attention to women-led recovery, HDP nexus programming, and systems-oriented approaches.

D. Consortium Coordination and Partner Support:

• Serve as the focal point for MEAL coordination across consortium partners, ensuring harmonized approaches and shared standards.
• Provide technical guidance and hands-on support to partner MEAL staff, including capacity assessments and tailored capacity strengthening plans.
• Contribute to Technical Working Groups (TWGs) to ensure MEAL integration across protection, health, economic recovery, and social cohesion interventions.

E. Reporting and Compliance

• Support the preparation of high-quality donor reports (narrative and MEAL sections), ensuring consistency between reported results, datasets, and learning.
• Ensure compliance with AfD requirements, DRC MEAL standards, data protection policies, and ethical research principles.
• Maintain organized and auditable MEAL documentation, datasets, and evidence repositories.

F. Evaluations and Assessments

• Lead or support the design and management of external evaluations and thematic studies, including development of TORs and coordination with consultants.
• Ensure ethical standards, safeguarding, and do-no-harm principles are applied throughout evaluation processes.

Experience and technical competencies:

Experience

• Minimum 7 years of progressive experience in MEAL roles within humanitarian or development programmes.
• Demonstrated experience working in complex, displacement-affected, and conflict-affected contexts.
• Proven experience in consortium or multi-partner projects, preferably multi-country.
• Strong experience designing and managing gender-responsive and protection-sensitive MEAL systems.
• Experience with accountability mechanisms and community feedback systems.
• Prior experience with EU or AfD-funded projects is a strong asset.

Technical Competencies

• Strong qualitative and quantitative data analysis skills.
• Experience with digital data collection platforms (e.g. Kobo, ODK).
• Experience developing and managing a project learning plan.
• Excellent report writing and data visualization skills.
• Solid understanding of CHS, safeguarding, PSEA, and data protection standards.

EDUCATION: (include certificates, licenses, etc.)

• Degree Social Sciences, Development Studies, Public Health, Economics, or a related field (required). Postgraduate degrees are an added advantage.
• Certification in data, evaluation, analyses etc.

Languages: (indicate fluency level)

• Full professional proficiency in English (required).
• Arabic and/or Amharic strongly preferred.

In this position, you are expected to demonstrate DRC’ five core competencies: 

Striving for excellence: You focus on reaching results while ensuring an efficient process.

Collaborating: You involve relevant parties and encourage feedback.

Taking the lead: You take ownership and initiative while aiming for innovation.

Communicating: You listen and speak effectively and honestly.

Demonstrating integrity: You uphold and promote the highest standards of ethical and professional conduct in relation to our values and Code of Conduct, including safeguarding against sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment.

We offer

Contract length: 12 Months

Contract Type: National Contract

Band: G1 – Non- Management

Designation of Duty Station: Benishangul Gumuz, with frequent travel to Gedaref and Addis Ababa (TBD) or Gedaref, with frequent travel to Benishangul Gumuz and Addis Ababa (TBD)

 Start date:  ASAP

Salary and conditions will be in accordance with Danish Refugee Council’s Terms of Employment for National employees

How to Apply

Application process

All applicants must upload a cover letter and an updated CV (no longer than four pages) in English  through: >>https://drc.ngo/job?id=175195. Applications sent by email will not be considered.

Closing date for applications: Feb 13, 2026

For further information about the Danish Refugee Council, please consult our website drc.ngo.

Gender Equality: DRC is committed to achieving gender parity in staffing at all levels. In light of this, women candidates are particularly encouraged to apply to bridge the gendergap.

Equal Opportunities: DRC is an equal opportunity employer. We value diversity and we are committed to creating an inclusive environment based on mutual respect for all employees. We do not discriminate on the basis of age, sex, disability status, religion, ethnic origin, colour, race, marital status, or other protected characteristics

We strongly encourage female candidates to apply for the position!

DRC considers all applicants based on merit.