Country Director - Chad and Central African Republic (CAR), War Child Alliance. Full time, based in Chad (two-country role covering Chad and CAR). Recruited via Oxford HR; the full appointment brief can be downloaded from the vacancy page.
About the War Child Alliance: formed in 2023 by five War Child fundraising members (Netherlands, UK, Germany, Sweden and Children in Conflict in the US) and 14 programme members based in or near conflict-affected areas. In 2025 War Child reached more than one million people through country programmes and partnerships across 30 countries, with work grounded in child protection, education, and mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS), delivered increasingly through evidence-based methodologies and local partners.
Background: Under its Strategic Presence Management Framework, the Alliance has decided to transition its decade-long operation in CAR to a partner-led presence through a network of local actors delivering MHPSS, child protection and education with WCA technical support, and to start a new country programme in Chad in response to the influx of refugees and returnees from Sudan in eastern Chad, with a light WCA team putting local actors at the forefront.
Your challenge: lead this strategic repositioning across two countries with a small team in each. In CAR the role requires strong change management skills to guide the team towards a new form of presence; in Chad it will build a new operation aligned with the new global strategy. The organisation sees this as part of redefining its role in the localisation of humanitarian work.
Main purpose: The Country Director provides overall leadership and strategic direction for operations in both countries; leads the participatory development, delivery and review of strategy and annual plans; and is accountable for programme quality, sustainable locally led partnerships, financial health, safety and security, people leadership, risk management and compliance. The role represents War Child externally and ensures programme, operational and support functions meet organisational and accountability standards.
Core responsibilities:
- Country leadership, strategy and programme accountability, including driving the transition to locally led and partner-led programming.
- People leadership: lead, coach and develop the country teams in an inclusive, safe workplace.
- Partnerships, representation and fundraising: build relationships with governments, donors, UN agencies, INGOs and local organisations; lead institutional fundraising jointly with partners; oversee proposals.
- Safety, risk, compliance and operations: overall accountability for safety and security management, registration and legal compliance, budgets, financial controls and logistics; ensure partners meet standards on safeguarding, security and financial control.
- Context responsibilities: build lean, empowered country teams with capacity sharing across the two operations; determine the operating model, office footprint and partnership arrangements; keep links with other countries in the cluster; uphold minimum global standards for safeguarding, integrity and Do No Harm.
(The vacancy page is bilingual English and French; see the downloadable appointment brief for the full person specification and application process.)
Closing Date 6th November 2026
Application link: https://oxfordhr.com/jobs/country-director-chad-and-car/