Job Description

  Somali Response Innovation Lab (SomRIL) Manager

The Role:

The role will be responsible for managing the innovation projects and ecosystem partnership in Somalia. The position entails locally leading the Response Innovation Lab approach: ecosystem mapping and convening, matchmaking, co-creation, and evidence generation. The position holder will be responsible for delivering Design Thinking training to unpack the key challenges in the humanitarian spaces, closely working with the innovation partners and private sectors in Somalia and East Africa to matchmake the solutions with the problem owners, support the piloting of the innovative solutions and work closely with the SomReP MEAL team to generate evidence for scale-up and lessons learned from the process.

Key Responsibilities:

• The position holder is responsible for continuous engagement with both the new and existing ecosystem actors to map out new and promising innovative solutions and approaches in the local landscape. This entails constantly monitoring the innovation landscape, supporting the local and regional innovators with matchmaking and showcasing solutions, and strengthening the local ecosystem. The ecosystem partners include but not limited to start-ups, MSMEs, academia, NGOs, trade associations, private sectors and UN agencies who are keen to promote innovative solutions for the wellbeing of the most vulnerable groups in Somalia.
• Facilitate conveners’ by bringing together both the traditional and non-traditional actors to unpack the pressing humanitarian challenges in Somalia. The theme of the convener might be mandated by the existing project stakeholders or as per the need of the local ecosystem. This process includes exploring the depth and breadth of the challenges, mapping the key pain-points and defining the challenge statements by incorporating the inputs from the key ecosystem partners.
• The responsibility of the role is to broker partnerships between the problem owners, primarily humanitarian actors and the solution providers. This includes matchmaking the problem owners with the right innovative solutions, consists of convening key discussions between different stakeholders to develop implementation plans, testing the feasibility of the solutions and crafting business models and piloting strategies. This may include leading the technical conversations with the stakeholders to ensure that the key implementation risks and opportunities are mapped out.
• Work with the local ecosystem partners to roll-out the piloting of the innovative solutions.
• Support in the facilitation of co-creation process for customizing/reiterating the solutions to fit-in the need of the users.
• Facilitate the process of navigating the systemic challenges of coordination between humanitarian agencies and innovators to ensure that the process is conducive for both the parties.
• For scale-up, work closely with the agencies that have successfully piloted to develop tested business model to pilot in other agencies.
• Develop evidence materials like video case-studies, infographics, annual reports, pivot diaries, business case, from the successful pilots to showcase the results for piloting in the broader contexts
• Roll-out RIL MEAL tool-kits to support innovators to ascertain the effectiveness of the pilots

Experiences and Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent from a reputable education institution in in Social Sciences/ Business Studies/ Product Design or Engineering.
• Minimum three years of experiences in the area of innovation, enterprise developments, or youth capacity development.
• Strong professional skills of facilitating innovation process including conducting innovation challenges.
• Good understanding of the Somali as well as East African innovation ecosystem.
• Strong skills to facilitate the co-creation process.
• Ability to map the local innovation ecosystem landscape and strengthen the capacity of the ecosystem.
• Strong professional aptitude to broker sustainable partnerships including public-private partnerships
• Technical skills and prior experience of facilitating design thinking workshops 
• Knowledge of Design Thinking approach of humanitarian innovation

Working Environment:

The position is office-based in Hargeisa, Somaliland with regular travel to other field locations for donor and stakeholders’ consultations.

Skills Required

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