The Clinton Health Access Initiative, Inc. (CHAI) is a global health organization committed to our mission of saving lives and reducing the burden of disease in low-and middle-income countries. We work at the invitation of governments to support them and the private sector to create and sustain high-quality health systems.

CHAI was founded in 2002 in response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, with the goal of dramatically reducing the price of life-saving drugs and increasing access to these medicines in the countries with the highest burden of the disease. Over the following two decades, CHAI has expanded its focus. Today, along with HIV, we work in conjunction with our partners to prevent and treat infectious diseases such as COVID-19, malaria, tuberculosis, and hepatitis. Our work has also expanded into cancer, diabetes, hypertension, and other non-communicable diseases, and we work to accelerate the rollout of lifesaving vaccines, reduce maternal and child mortality, combat chronic malnutrition, and increase access to assistive technology. We are investing in horizontal approaches to strengthen health systems through programs in human resources for health, digital health, and health financing. With each new and innovative program, our strategy is grounded in maximizing sustainable impact at scale, ensuring that governments lead the solutions, that programs are designed to scale nationally, and learnings are shared globally.

At CHAI, our people are our greatest asset, and none of this work would be possible without their talent, time, dedication, and passion for our mission and values. We are a highly diverse team of enthusiastic individuals across 40 countries with a broad range of skill sets and life experiences. CHAI is deeply grounded in the countries we work in, with the majority of our staff based in program countries. Learn more about our exciting work: http://www.clintonhealthaccess.org

CHAI is an Equal Opportunity Employer, and is committed to providing an environment of fairness, and mutual respect where all applicants have access to equal employment opportunities. CHAI values diversity and inclusion, and recognizes that our mission is best advanced by the leadership and contributions of people with diverse experience, backgrounds, and culture.

Program Overview

CHAI established its presence in Sierra Leone in 2015, evolving from initial Ebola response assistance to become a strategic partner for health systems strengthening, initially focusing on Human Resources for Health and Supply Chain. Building on strong government relationships, CHAI expanded its programs to include sexual and reproductive health, vaccines, assistive technology, geospatial data, medical oxygen, and malaria elimination. This strategy consistently prioritizes maximizing sustainable, government-led impact at national scale, with global learning dissemination.

Position Overview

In 2024, CHAI commenced support to the National Malaria Control Programme (NMCP) within the Ministry of Health (MoH). At the outset, CHAI worked with NMCP to understand strengths and gaps within the malaria programme, the broader health system, and the landscape of partner and donor support. Through a set of technical and operational assessments, including a surveillance assessment, stakeholder consultations, a supply chain landscape assessment, a community health worker (CHW) desk review, and epidemiological analysis, CHAI and NMCP defined priority interventions and milestones to reduce malaria morbidity and mortality.

CHAI is now supporting NMCP to translate these priorities into delivery, with an increasing focus on implementation discipline across the malaria portfolio. This includes strengthening routine planning and performance management, improving budgeting and expenditure tracking, supporting grant management processes, building simple monitoring tools and dashboards, and improving the quality and consistency of communication products for government and partners. This phase requires structured portfolio management so that priorities are costed, financed, sequenced, tracked, and delivered.

The 2026 to 2030 National Malaria Strategic Plan has now been developed, setting national priorities and coverage targets. The immediate next phase is to operationalise the strategy through costed annual and quarterly implementation plans and to prepare a high quality Global Fund Grant Cycle 8 (GC8) application. Given an evolving and tightening global funding landscape, this will require clear prioritisation, value for money analysis, and trade off decisions so that available resources are directed to the highest impact interventions and commitments are realistic and deliverable.

CHAI is recruiting an Associate, Malaria Management, Strategy, and Finance (MSAF) to provide dedicated support on portfolio planning, performance management, grant budgeting and expenditure tracking, and strategic analyses that inform operational and allocative decisions. The Associate will help translate agreed priorities and grant commitments into costed implementation plans and practical monitoring tools, and will support preparation of high-quality briefs and presentations for government, partners, and CHAI leadership. While GC8 readiness will be a major near term focus, the MSAF role goes beyond Global Fund processes. The Associate will support financing and performance management across malaria workstreams, including coordinating inputs from technical teams, tracking execution against work plans and budgets, flagging delivery and absorption risks early, supporting reallocations and course correction, and strengthening routine governance and decision-making forums with NMCP, DDPC, and partners.

The Associate will be embedded within the MoH and will work closely with NMCP, providing analytical, operational, and coordination support to NMCP, DDPC, the TSU, and partners. The role is suited to a candidate with strong analytical skills who is comfortable working across management, strategy, and finance, and who can shift between detailed quantitative work and engagement with government and partners. The Associate will report to the CHAI Malaria Program Manager and collaborate closely with the HSS team and finance teams. The position is based in Freetown, with periodic travel within Sierra Leone.

Strategy, planning, and performance management

• Support NMCP to operationalise the 2026 to 2030 National Malaria Strategic Plan through costed annual and quarterly implementation plans, including sequencing, dependencies, and delivery timelines.
• Maintain simple but robust trackers linking activities, milestones, outputs, and indicators across the malaria portfolio, and flag delays, risks, and capacity gaps for timely course correction.
• Support routine performance management cycles (weekly and monthly check ins, quarterly reviews), including agenda setting, pre reads, action tracking, and follow up with owners.
• Conduct decision grade analyses to inform programme choices, for example, bottleneck analyses, geographic prioritisation, coverage and equity gaps, and feasibility assessments.
• Support development and regular update of malaria program budgets and activity-based costing, ensuring that work plans, staffing plans, and procurement plans are fully costed and linked to available resources.
• Prepare high-quality briefs, slides, and updates for MoH leadership, partners, and CHAI leadership to support clear decisions and coordinated action.

Financing, costing, and value for money

• Lead or support activity-based costing for strategic plan components, annual plans, and major implementation priorities, ensuring assumptions are transparent and documented.
• Support prioritisation and trade off decisions under a tightening funding landscape, including scenario planning and value for money analyses (unit costs, cost drivers, delivery models, and efficiency opportunities).
• Support development, review, and iteration of malaria budgets, ensuring alignment between workplans, staffing plans, procurement plans, and available resources.
• Track budget execution and absorption, comparing planned versus actual expenditure, identifying variance drivers, and recommending corrective actions, including reallocations and reprogramming where needed.
• Provide financing support across malaria workstreams by translating technical priorities into costed activities, monitoring frameworks, and practical budget tracking tools.

GC8 and grant management support

• Coordinate technical and operational inputs required for Global Fund Grant Cycle 8 (GC8) preparation, including consolidation of gaps, targets, intervention packages, and implementation arrangements.
• Support development of a coherent GC8 investment case that links epidemiological context, national priorities, coverage targets, implementation capacity, and financing.
• Support end-to-end grant management processes, including mapping grant commitments, maintaining deliverable calendars, organising evidence repositories, and ensuring readiness for reporting and assurance.
• Draft or coordinate donor facing updates, reports, and presentations, ensuring consistency across narrative, budgets, and results, and maintaining version-controlled repositories of key documents.
• Maintain organised, version-controlled repositories for malaria workplans, budgets, analysis files, NSP and GC8 drafts, and key meeting documentation.
• Monitor grant and budget execution for malaria (for example, Global Fund and other major grants), comparing planned against actual expenditure, identifying under or overspending, and proposing options for reallocation or reprioritization.
• Contribute to financial and programmatic gap analysis for the malaria program, including identification of unfunded or underfunded priorities and opportunities to improve technical and allocative efficiency.

• Master’s degree in public health, health economics, health policy, business administration, finance, statistics, or a related field, or a bachelor’s degree in one of these fields with substantial relevant experience.
• At least three years of relevant professional experience in programme management, health financing, strategic planning, management consulting, or monitoring and evaluation in government, a development partner, or a technical assistance organisation.
• Demonstrated strong quantitative and analytical skills, including advanced proficiency in Microsoft Excel (for example, complex formulas, pivot tables, scenario analysis, and costing models), and ability to work confidently with large programmatic and financial datasets.
• Experience with budgeting, grant management, or resource tracking for health programmes, preferably including Global Fund or similar donor grants.
• Experience supporting strategic planning, costing, or funding requests (for example, Global Fund applications), including preparation of budgets, documentation of assumptions, and scenario analysis.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with a track record of producing clear, well-structured briefs, reports, and slide decks for senior government and partner audiences.
• Strong organisational skills and ability to manage multiple workstreams simultaneously, deliver high-quality outputs within tight timelines, and work with limited day to day supervision.
• Proven ability to build and maintain effective working relationships with government counterparts, partners, and colleagues, and to contribute constructively in multi stakeholder settings.
• Willingness and ability to travel as required.

Advantages

• Direct experience with malaria programmes in Sierra Leone or similar settings.
• Prior involvement in Global Fund malaria grants (for example, budgeting, grant making, grant revisions, or grant management).
• Experience developing costed workplans, investment cases, or allocative efficiency analyses for health programmes.
• Familiarity with statistical or data visualisation software (for example, Stata, R, Power BI, or Tableau).
• Fluency in Krio or other local languages of Sierra Leone.

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