BACKGROUND ON IMPACT AND REACH
IMPACT Initiatives is a humanitarian NGO, based in Geneva, Switzerland. The organisation manages several initiatives, including the PANDA Initiative. The IMPACT team comprises specialists in data collection, management and analysis and GIS. IMPACT operates through three Initiatives: REACH, PANDA, and AGORA. This recruitment opportunity pertains to the PANDA Initiative.
PANDA is IMPACT’s lever on humanitarian aid responses which focusing on improving outcomes for beneficiaries through direct engagement with partners and their activities. Where REACH works through soft power and partnerships to affect systemic change, PANDA is direct action that allows us to ensure that system and its participants are trustworthy and delivering the most effective, efficient and equitable response possible. PANDA is praxis – it is how IMPACT manifests our vision of acting as a catalyst of change within the aid community to work through focused or multidimensional analysis of projects, programmes and policies to identify their results, strengths and weaknesses, and how they can be improved, then proposes or implements a concrete plan for improvement.
We are currently looking for a Research Manager to support our team in Nigeria.
Department: PANDA
Position: Research Manager
Contract duration: 4 months
Location: Abuja, Nigeria (with occasional stays in Dakar, Senegal)
Starting Date: ASAP.
COUNTRY PROFILE
Nigeria is among the world's most critical hunger hotspots, where protracted conflict, displacement, economic pressures, and climate shocks are driving rapidly worsening humanitarian needs. In the Northeast, more than 8.8 million people require urgent assistance, including 4.9 million children, sustained displacement, protection risks, severe funding shortfalls, a growing nutrition emergency, and a cholera outbreak. Food insecurity is expected to reach record levels, with an estimated 34.7 million people nationwide projected to face Crisis-level food insecurity or worse by August 2026. Meanwhile, the Northwest faces a different but equally severe crisis driven by chronic poverty, banditry, communal violence, and recurrent flooding, which have displaced hundreds of thousands of people (800,000 IOM DTM R18), damaged livelihoods and farmland, and contributed to sharp declines in agricultural production. Together, these overlapping shocks are undermining resilience, increasing humanitarian needs, and threatening both current food security and future harvests.
Against this backdrop, IMPACT Initiatives has developed a wide range of research cycles to provide an evidence-base for the humanitarian community. Historically, IMPACT Initiatives has been present in both the Northeast and Northwest of Nigeria. Thematically, across 2021 – 2023 IMPACT Initiatives fielded Multi-Sectoral Needs Assessments (MSNAs), Hard to Reach (H2R) assessments, Area Based Assessments (ABA), Rapid Overviews of Areas of Return (ROAR), Thematic Assessments (TA), Rapid Assessments (RA), and WASH Infrastructure Mapping, while also playing a key role in Famine Monitoring, Nutrition and Food Security Surveillance, and the Joint Market Monitoring Initiative (JMMI). Since 2026, IMPACT has reintroduced the MSNA, Acute Needs Analysis (ANA), JMMI and other thematic assessments in Nigeria in addition to the HARP TPM project which has been running since 2024.
PROJECT PRFILE
The position is recruited for the Third-Party Monitoring (TPM) Project covering FCDOs Humanitarian and Resilience Programme (HARP) Facility. For this programme, IMPACT is in partnership with FACT Foundation. While in Nigeria, staff shall be hosted by FACT Foundation and for his or her mission, the Research Manager will fall under the direct responsibility and management of FACT and their delegates for all Administrative, Security, Logistics and Finance issues. S/he will therefore fully abide by FACT’s Security, HR, Administration, and Logistics rules and regulations, and in coordination with FACT, ensure that all IMPACT staff abide by them.
FUNCTIONS
Under the management of the Country Representative, the Research Manager oversees the research activities and staff within the purview of the FCDO-funded Third Party Monitoring (TPM) Project. The Research Manager shall oversee and execute all research activities within the above-mentioned Project, meeting quarterly deliverables in a timely fashion while ensuring that the quality of research remains high. S/he will moreover liaise extensively with counterparts from Fact Foundation who are IMPACT’s partners in the Consortium for the Project, while supporting the Country Representative in stakeholder engagement with FCDO’s Implementing Partners.
RESPONSIBILITIES
The Research Manager responsibilities include the following:
Strategy development & implementation
- With specific attention to the FCDO-funded TPM Project’s, and while supervised by the CR, the RM is to ensure that IMPACT has an up to date understanding of the country’s socio-economic situation, the impact of a crisis and the aid/humanitarian situation, as well as the humanitarian planning, coordination, response mechanism developments, and key humanitarian stakeholders.
- For the TPM Project, develop and oversee the implementation of the project’s strategy. Specifically, during the inception period, in conjunction with the CR, set out the project’s overall strategy, develop concomitant workplans for each staff member, and put in place the requisite structures for the staff members such that each individual has clarity as to how to work towards the common goal of completing deliverables in a timely manner and at a high standard, and ultimately supplying impact to FCDO and Implementing Partners at the outcome level.
Research Planning
- For the TPM Project, ensure that all the research is planned in line with the relevant project and programme objectives, as well as the Project and Country Strategy. This is to include:
- Ensure that all research complies with IMPACT’s HQ Research Department guidelines and standards.
- Ensure that al necessary Secondary Data Reviews are conducted and integrated into the research.
- Ensure that research ToRs are validated by HQ prior to the commencement of data collection.
- Ensure that research ToRs are understood by the team and updated accordingly.
- Keep track of progress and delays of all assigned assessments throughout the research cycle.
- Liaise with FACT Foundation, to include their two assessment and data staff in the research.
- Liaise with FACT Foundation to ensure that the portion of the research carried out by them is validated by IMPACT HQ.
- Where necessary, proactively support the team by conducting research (research design. ToRs, tool building, data management, data analysis, product drafting).
- While supported by the CR, conduct dissemination and stakeholder meetings with FCDO and Implementing Partners.
Research Implementation
- Liaise with FACT Foundation, to ensure that the data is collected in the fashion and format that allows IMPACT to clean and analyse the data.
- Ensure that all collected data is stored in line with IMPACT’s Data Management Guidelines, as well as with the data management plan Annex in the Research ToR.
- Ensure that data is revised and cleaned, with all revisions recorded as per IMPACT data management guidelines.
- Oversee all the analyses of the collected data, as stipulated in the Research ToRs.
- Ensure that data and its analysis do not contain personal information and are validated by IMPACT HQ, before sharing to external parties.
- Supervise and where necessary support the team with the analysis and drafting of the information products.
- Review all products before they are sent to the CR or IMPACT HQ for validation.
- Ensure that all written products are validated by IMPACT HQ before release to FCDO and Implementing Partners.
Team Management and Leadership
- Ensure that all staff members understand and are able to perform their roles and responsibilities, as well as their reporting and validation duties to HQ.
- Ensure that all staff members have clear and regularly updated ToRs, Workplans, and Key performance Indicators (KPIs) against which their performance will be appraised.
- Promote team building, productivity, and staff welfare.
- Mentor and support the team to build capacities, improve efficiency and performance.
- Promote the growth and development of staff within the organisation, actively linking with HQ to provide feedback and support retention and internal mobility. Identify capacity building opportunities for growth, proactively provide high-performing staff with opportunities to surge (a short-term deployment to another mission) and develop pathways for junior staff to grow and move into management or specialist positions.
- Ensure communication and linkages with HQ are made immediately in case of the occurrence of an HR-related problem.
Internal Coordination and Communication
- Facilitate clear...