Ethiopia Restoration Project Manager

About the Program:

WRI’s Restoration Initiative informs, enables, and invests in people that restore degraded land, converting it to socially, economically, and environmentally productive landscapes. WRI’s restoration work in Africa supports AFR100 and identifies large areas suitable for restoration. Since 2023, WRI is supporting landscape-focused restoration across priority African landscapes to revitalize ecosystems while enhancing human well-being through food, energy, and water systems.

Within WRI Africa, restoration is anchored in the Food, Land and Water (FLW) team, which builds resilience of natural ecosystems to sustainably provide vital ecosystem services (food, water, carbon sequestration, climate regulation). The Restore Local initiative catalyzes funding for locally led restoration across priority landscapes in Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, DRC, and Ethiopia’s Rift Valley.

Following Ethiopia’s creation of the Restoration Special Fund under the Green Legacy Initiative, Restore Local is expanding to support Ethiopia’s Rift Valley implementation and the operationalization of the Special Fund.

Job Highlight:

As the Ethiopia Restoration Project Manager, you will build and coordinate the team delivering results in Ethiopia. You will establish a strong project management structure that brings together finance, policy, and monitoring teams to enable collaboration and delivery of the program strategy. You will manage relationships with external technical partners (government agencies, monitoring bodies, NGOs, MDBs), summarize and communicate progress internally and externally, and contribute to operating procedures (MEL, grant reporting, budgeting, hiring). You will report to the Senior Technical Advisor and the Policy Director and work closely with monitoring, policy, and finance teams across multiple country offices.

What You Will Do:

Project management and delivery (70%):

• Provide project management support to WRI Ethiopia Restoration and Restore Local technical teams (monitoring, policy, finance, & gender and social equity) to ensure timely delivery of project milestones.
• Lead project management for the technical taskforce, serving as primary point of contact for partners and ensuring follow-up on progress, deliverables, and timelines.
• Maintain the project management system for taskforce partners, keeping up-to-date records of contacts, participants, tasks, progress, and deliverables.
• Follow up with WRI team members to capture progress and updates, escalating issues to management as needed.
• Manage day-to-day coordination, including meeting scheduling, progress reporting, and keeping project management software current.

Communications and engagement (20%):

• Organize and lead engagement and partnership activities.
• Liaise with stakeholders including government partners and Technical Taskforce members, following up on progress and resolving blockages.
• Represent WRI in meetings with national government, taskforce consortia, and other partners.
• Organize and support planning of key events (workshops, platform and taskforce meetings).
• Collaborate with communications to develop a comms and engagement strategy capturing insights and lessons from Ethiopia’s Green Legacy implementation.
• Contribute to communication materials (blogs, infographics, project summaries) for external partners.

Administrative support (10%):

• Coordinate WRI administrative processes (workshop planning, travel/logistics, project planning, budget reviews, donor reporting).
• Complete administrative paperwork related to contracts, sub-agreements, and vendor payments in collaboration with WRI operations staff.

What You Will Need:

• Education: Completed master’s degree in environmental science, forestry, natural resource management, ecosystem management, restoration ecology, landscape restoration, or related field. Academic training in GIS and remote sensing is an advantage.
• Experience: 6+ years professional experience managing dynamic projects; experience in stakeholder engagement, people management, and coordinating technical partners; experience in landscape restoration or watershed management.
• Understanding of policies and regulatory environment in Ethiopia on restoration and natural resource management.
• Strong writing, oral communication, and presentation skills.
• Experience with project management software (e.g., Asana, Monday.com).
• Knowledge of Ethiopian fiscal policy and financing for nature-based solutions is a plus.
• Experience in international NGOs is desirable.
• Languages: Proficiency in verbal and written English and Amharic.

What We Offer:

• Competitive salary (commensurate with experience).
• Access to the WRI global network and learning opportunities.
• Career development within a mission-driven organization.
• Diverse and inclusive workplace with opportunities to join working and affinity groups.
• Long-term hybrid working model with flexible hours and generous leave increasing with tenure.

About Us:

World Resources Institute (WRI) works to improve people’s lives, protect and restore nature, and stabilize the climate. As an independent research organization, WRI leverages data, expertise, and global reach to influence policy and catalyze change across food, land and water; energy; and cities. WRI has 2,000+ staff working in focus countries and with partners in over 50 nations.

Skills Required:

• Environmental / Natural / Resource