Country Director/Response Director, Central African Republic

With 75 years of experience, our focus is on helping the most vulnerable children overcome poverty and experience fullness of life. We help children of all backgrounds, even in the most dangerous places, inspired by our Christian faith.

Come join our 31,000+ staff working in nearly 100 countries and share the joy of transforming vulnerable children’s life stories!

Key Responsibilities:

The Country Director (CD) provides overall leadership and oversight of World Vision’s humanitarian and recovery response in the Central African Republic, ensuring programs are timely, effective, compliant, secure, and adequately resourced. The role is accountable for strategy execution, program quality, financial and operational performance, risk management, donor compliance, and delivering measurable impact for vulnerable children and communities affected by humanitarian crises.

As the senior leader and principal representative of the response, the CRD engages with government authorities, donors, UN agencies, NGOs, church partners, and other stakeholders to strengthen coordination, mobilize resources, and advance recovery outcomes. The position ensures alignment with World Vision’s Child Well-Being (CWB) objectives, humanitarian principles, national priorities, and organizational policies.

• →Lead the development, implementation, monitoring, review, and adaptation of response and transition strategies in collaboration with regional leadership, response leadership, and key stakeholders.
• →Provide overall leadership for response design, implementation, performance management, and operational excellence.
• →Ensure humanitarian, recovery, resilience, development, and advocacy priorities are integrated across all sectoral programming.
• →Guide emergency preparedness, contingency planning, scenario analysis, and response readiness processes.
• →Ensure strategic decisions are informed by needs assessments, context analysis, learning, and evidence.
• →Monitor implementation progress and adapt strategies to maximize impact and effectiveness.
• →Secure and maintain required operational agreements, MoUs, contracts, waivers, and authorizations with government authorities, donors, and partners.
• →Promote innovation, continuous improvement, and sustainability across response operations.

• Ensure grant-funded projects are implemented in accordance with approved proposals, budgets, award conditions, donor regulations, partnership commitments, and World Vision policies and standards.
• Chair or oversee regular grant performance reviews, monitoring programme quality, expenditure, burn rates, procurement, staffing, risks, compliance, deliverables, and reporting deadlines, and ensuring timely corrective action.
• Ensure timely and high-quality narrative and financial reporting, effective donor communication, and proper documentation of grant decisions, approvals, amendments, waivers, and correspondence.
• Oversee grant risk management, compliance reviews, audits, and the timely resolution of findings, disallowed costs, underperformance, and other implementation issues.
• Ensure effective management and oversight of sub-grants, consortium agreements, and implementing partners, including due diligence, contracting, capacity strengthening, performance monitoring, and compliance.
• Build organizational grant-management capacity by clarifying roles, strengthening systems, and ensuring relevant staff understand donor requirements and grant-management standards.
• Build and maintain strong relationships with institutional donors, UN agencies, support offices, and funding partners.

Ensure adequate funding is secured to support response goals and long-term program sustainability.

• Over 15 years of progressive humanitarian leadership experience, including more than 7 years in senior country-level management roles, leading large-scale emergency and recovery operations in fragile, conflict-affected, and high-risk environments.
• Proven track record managing complex multi-sector humanitarian responses, overseeing portfolios exceeding USD 20 million, and administering grants from major institutional donors such as Global Fund, USG-funding, ECHO, UN agencies, EU, SDC, Philantrhopy, etc..
• Extensive experience leading multicultural, multidisciplinary teams and engaging effectively with governments, donors, UN agencies, NGOs, civil society, media, and private-sector stakeholders, including serving as an organizational spokesperson.
• Strong expertise in humanitarian operations within war zones and crisis settings, fostering innovation and calculated risk-taking while managing competing priorities under pressure.
• Preferred background includes experience as a Country Director or Response Director, work in Central or West Africa, and service with faith-based organizations and international NGOs.

• Master's degree in International Development, Humanitarian Affairs, Public Administration, Business Administration, International Relations, Public Health, Social Sciences, or a related field.
• Alternatively, a university degree in a relevant field combined with extensive humanitarian leadership experience.
• Advanced certification in Humanitarian Leadership, Emergency Management, Project Management, Organizational Leadership, or related disciplines.

• Full professional fluency in English and French (written and spoken).

Applicant Types Accepted:

World Vision is a Christian humanitarian organisation with a mission centred on following Jesus Christ in service to the world´s most vulnerable children. Therefore, in all locations to the fullest extent legally permissible, the successful applicant will affirm our core documents, observe conduct compatible with Christian principles, serve at a high level of professional ethics and strive to act in accordance with cultural sensitivities. Furthermore, regular attendance with team and office devotions, chapel and prayer gatherings are expected in line with policies in the World Vision host location and its departments.

• Humanitarian leadership, including humanitarian principles, standards, accountability frameworks, coordination mechanisms, and engagement with key humanitarian actors.
• Program and organizational management, including strategic planning, organizational development, MEAL, change management, and talent development.
• Financial, grant, and donor management, including financial stewardship, donor compliance, resource mobilization, and donor engagement.
• Risk and safeguarding management, including security, safeguarding, child protection, and operational risk management.

• Strategic thinker with strong analytical and decision-making capabilities, including the ability to operate effectively in complex and uncertain environments.
• Exceptional leadership, influencing, negotiation, and diplomacy skills, with the ability to build partnerships and manage diverse stakeholders.
• Excellent communication and presentation skills, with the ability to inspire, motivate, and lead high-performing teams.
• Highly adaptable and resilient, with strong emotional intelligence, crisis leadership, and emergency management capabilities.

• The position requires ability and willingness to travel domestically and internationally up to 25% of the time.
• Work hours are often in excess of 12 hours per day during difficult periods of the response.
• Responses are often mounted in insecure or natural disaster-prone contexts, which may disrupt normal work patterns and generate staff safety issues.
• Work and housing environments may at times be well below normal standards in terms of facilities, equipment, food availability and hygiene.