Finance Assistant

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About the Role

The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) is seeking a Finance Assistant to provide financial and accounting support to the GAIN Nigeria operations team. This role will be offered on a two(2) year fixed term contract, subject to availability of funding and will be based in Abuja, Nigeria.

The Finance Assistant will be responsible for providing financial and accounting support to the operations team. In addition, the post holder will support the operations team, to develop and strengthen strategies relating to financial and other operations management across the Country Office.

Reporting to the Finance Manager, the responsibilities of the Finance Assistant will include overall responsibility for all aspects of bookkeeping and accounts, procurement support assets tracking and control, effective financial reporting processing in a timely, accurate, relevant, and informative manner and general administration or operations duties. Given the context of responsibilities, it is vital to have a good knowledge of the milieu of international organizations operating on the Grant model of international financing.

Key Responsibilities include:

Responsible for handling all payment processing and cash handling to include documenting resources and transactions; facilitating and post payments; generating payments runs; handling the petty cash fund and replenishment process and maintaining filing; verifying necessary documents; preparing payment requests and presenting for appropriate approvals; ensuring existence/renewal of contracts before effecting payments; preparing payment vouchers.
Staff Advances: supporting the processing of all employee/consultant claims for travel-related and other expenses; ensuring documentation accuracy and that requests all are in line with policies and procedures; tracking and ensuring that staff advances are liquidated within the approved tenure; ensuring that staff advances are recovered in the currency they are issued; advancing offsets all of the expenses employees submits on the expense report; monitoring ageing and due dates of payables and arranging to account and pay in a timely manner.
Banking: creating uploads on the internet banking, compiling all requests for cash disbursements, and ensuring all disbursements have appropriate supporting documents; maintaining cheques books; filing all bank statements, track bank deposits and payments etc.
Internal Controls: supporting to establish and maintain internal control procedures and ensuring that accounting standards are met; ensuring that all the transactions are completely approved by all approval levels; ensuring that internal risks are mitigated; verifying and properly analyzing supporting documents of all payments; ensuring timely payment requests are sent to the Finance Manager for review and to the Country Director for approval.
Responsible for collecting, collating, managing and analysis of the data.
Ensure the preparation of the various documents required for operational implementation.

The ideal candidate should have experience within an NGO setting handling payment processing and documenting resources and transactions. You should have experience verifying necessary documents; preparing payment requests and presenting for appropriate approvals; ensuring existence/renewal of contracts before effecting payments; preparing payment vouchers. Knowledge of various donor grant practices highly desirable.

The post holder should be familiar handling staff Advances by supporting the processing of all employee/consultant claims for travel-related and other expenses; ensuring documentation accuracy and that requests all are in line with policies and procedures; tracking and ensuring that staff advances are liquidated within the approved tenure.

You should be a team player and able to work with a wide range of stakeholders at support level. Be proactive with a commitment to quality and accuracy with close attention to detail and be proficient in the use of accounting software such as Navision, SAP or related software. An education background with a bachelor’s degree in accounting or related discipline is required. Professional certification is desirable.

About our Offer

The starting gross salary on offer for this role is from NGN 6,385,980 – NGN 7,282,260 per annum, depending on experience.

GAIN has a fair and competitive salary structure that allows for annual progression subject to good performance. In addition, GAIN offers a total of 37 days holiday per year (including annual leave, public holidays and additional office closure days), an attractive pension scheme and competitive insurance cover including health, travel and life assurance. We are committed to the health of our staff, especially in these challenging times, and have developed a programme of wellbeing that includes flexible and hybrid working, additional leave allowances, wellbeing days, mindfulness coaching and access to independent and confidential counselling.

GAIN also has a strong commitment to professional development. We will support you to grow in your career through both formal and informal training, and are committed to providing opportunities through internal recruitment, secondments, and promotion. All of this is delivered in a supportive and collaborative environment.

About GAIN

The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) is a Swiss-based foundation launched at the United Nations in 2002 to tackle the human suffering caused by malnutrition. Due to COVID19, conflict in Ukraine and climate change, malnutrition and hunger have worsened significantly since 2019, reversing a decade of progress. There is growing recognition that our food systems need to change if we are to reverse these trends.

GAIN’s Strategy aims to transform food systems to make healthier diets from sustainable food systems accessible to all people and especially those whose are most vulnerable to shocks. By 2027, we aim to improve the access of 1.5 billion people to nutritionally enhanced staple foods, improve the access of 25 million people to healthier diets, and support positive food system change in 10 countries. This is bold and complex, and the only way to achieve this is to work together with partners including governments, businesses, and civil society at the country and global level. These goals, and the ways of achieving them, build on our twenty-year legacy of transforming people’s lives with improved nutrition through concerted action and effective policy change.

Our Working Culture and Environment

We provide a flexible working environment that includes a combination of home and office working opportunities through our global hybrid working policy. This encourages our staff to have a healthy work-life balance and increases staff motivation, enriches employee wellbeing, and improves performance and productivity.

All of our positions are based in one or more of GAIN’s designated offices as stated on our job advertisements. Successful candidates will be based in one of GAIN’s country offices and must have the existing right to live and work within a reasonably commutable distance of the relevant city / cities in which the role is advertised. Please note, that GAIN does not sponsor working visas and relocations.

GAIN reserves the right to withdraw an offer of employment for candidates who are considered to ineligible under the above conditions during or after the recruitment process.

Applicants must have the right to work and be currently based in the advertised country location, to be eligible to apply for this position.

This advert closes on 30th August 2023. Early applications are encouraged. GAIN reserves the right to close this advert early should we receive suitable candidates ahead of the closing date.

The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition is committed to equality of opportunity and creating an inclusive environment where diversity is valued. We are keen to reflect the diversity of our society at every level within our organisation and therefore welcome applications from talented and committed people from all backgrounds, representing the diverse societies we operate in.