Country Director Nigeria

We are currently recruiting for a Country Director Nigeria:

• Contract: National contract – initial two‑year assignment with the possibility of extension
• Location: Abuja, with frequent travel to Lagos

Position overview
The Country Director leads and enables the country programs through their teams and local implementation partners, focusing on upscaling and strengthening our country position with an ambitious strategy, ensuring high‑quality delivery of operations, and securing adequate funding to sustain and grow opportunities to deliver impact. In this role, you are the face of SNV in the country, ensuring a positive image and strong visibility. You will report to the Deputy Director of Country Programmes.

Your core assignment is to expand our network and funding opportunities by building strong relationships with embassies, donors, institutions, and the private sector, while providing clear leadership to a small team of about ten staff. You remain well informed about national and international development priorities and steer sectors and themes in response to these priorities.

Success in this role means growing SNV’s visibility, forging new partnerships and alliances with key national and international actors, stimulating collaboration for impact, and enabling teams to perform confidently and effectively. We are looking for a strategic, externally focused leader with strong negotiation skills, proven business development experience, and the ability to represent SNV at senior levels while frequently traveling between Abuja and Laos to build private‑sector engagement.
In this role you will also be responsible for the following tasks:

• Strategic leadershipof the country and future programmes. Providing innovative leadership and encouraging people to take an active role in programme design and proposal development and ensuring quality and implementation in line with the strategic directions within the annual Plan and SNV’s global strategy;
• Strong and supportive people leadershipenablingthe country team: creating and nurturing an environment that supports high performance, continuous learning and teamwork at all levels;
• Representation and profiling: building partnerships and maintaining excellent relationships with donors, partners, local governments, businesses, policy makers and other relevant stakeholders;
• Oversight and quality assurance of project implementation (including project director roles) ensuring the delivery of impact to the satisfaction of key stakeholders and compliance with SNV’s and the donor’s financial standards and monitoring protocols;
• Business development to grow the country position and its programs, ensure financial sustainability of SNV and ensure a high-quality project design;
• Collaboration with other SNV countries to effectively exploit opportunities for synergy, deliver at scale (including multi-country projects), exchange knowledge and strengthen SNV’s position;
• In addition, the Country Director fosters innovation of SNV products and services: facilitates learning, documentation and evidence-based knowledge development in collaboration with SNV’s global team and partners; and ensures collaboration with renowned knowledge institutes and networks.