Latest Vacancies at Code for Africa (CfA)

Job Brief

• Code for Africa (CfA) has an immediate vacancy for a Senior Programme Manager in its New Initiatives team.
• The role would preferably be based at any of CfA’s primary hubs in Kenya, Nigeria or South Africa. CfA has full-time staff in 21 African countries, and is therefore also open to exceptional applicants from elsewhere on the continent.
• You would work closely with the CEO to manage the team that drives two key portfolios at CfA, namely our Business Development (BizDev) team and the Impact Accelerator. The BizDev team is responsible for CfA’s fund-raising and other revenue generative partnerships, while the Accelerator helps incubate/scale CfA grantees and initiatives.
• CfA currently has staff in 21 African countries, with active digital democracy or watchdog technology projects/investments that reach beyond the continent. 
• In order to thrive in this role, candidates should enjoy fast-paced creative problem-solving and systems building, in a multicultural transnational environment, and should have experience in programme/project management or leadership roles in the digital media and/or technology space.  
• Senior Programme Managers provide leadership for both the BizDev and Accelerator teams, with a strong focus on securing new resources through fundraising and growing partnerships that advance CfA’s strategic objectives. Candidates with experience working with business development, international funders, and proposal writing are therefore encouraged.

About the Role

• Your role is to work with CfA’s rainmakers to help ensure that CfA’s partnerships and projects live up to their full potential.
• As one of a small team of Senior Programme Managers for New Initiatives, you will oversee in-country teams across the continent who actively manage incubated projects, such as africanDRONE, the iLAB, PesaCheck and sensors. AFRICA.
• You will help build their teams and shape their systems, and improve their products. In addition to incubated projects, you will help supervise CfA’s portfolio of external investments and grant-making, into digital democracy NGOs or civic technology startups. This will include helping set expectations, monitoring progress on deliverables and solving challenges.
• You will also work closely with the CEO to identify new funding or partnership opportunities, and to develop compelling proposals that align strategically with CfA’s development roadmap. This will include liaising with CfA’s funding partners, both traditional donors and global technology companies, to set expectations and then ensure that CfA delivers on its commitments.
• Creative solutions will be important, alongside obsessive attention to detail and deadlines. Your team will include mid-level project/programme managers, supported by specialist teams of technologists, data analysts and content specialists elsewhere in CfA.

Responsibilities
Your Daily Responsibilities will include:

• Nurture and grow your team of programme / project managers and support staff, proactively keeping the team focused, removing roadblocks and instilling efficiencies.
• Proactively manage CfA’s relationship with external partners/donors, keeping them informed about project progress, managing expectations and synchronising partnership activities.
• Actively monitor and evaluate implementation and qualitative progress on CfA projects and grantees, including ensuring that expenses and workplans remain on-track, preemptively identifying challenges and opportunities.
• Develop fundraising leads and co-develop competitive funding proposals and manage the submission process in consultation with the CEO.
• Ensure the programmes’ quality standards, project milestones and reporting deadlines meet donor expectations.
• Oversee product development and project rollout, guided by coherent documentation, with appropriate risk management strategies in place.

Required
Minimum Requirements Include:

• 4+ years of demonstrable relevant experience in a programme/project management role in either the media or digital innovation space
• Proven track-record for creative problem-solving in fast-paced impact-driven environments, where solutions involve balancing human/technology considerations 
• Demonstrable ability to self-manage, creating your own and wider team timelines and milestones, with clear systems/processes
• Evidence of nurturing leadership skills, for building and growing effective and happy teams of ambitious multicultural and multilingual domain experts
• Digital first workplace skill-sets, including proficiency in collaborative work solutions such as Google Drive (Google Docs, Slides, Sheets, etc) and Slack (or equivalents such as Teams), as well as project management tools like Trello (or equivalents)

Preferred
Candidates who are able to demonstrate the following will have an advantage:

• Experience managing new product or business development teams in the media or technology industries
• Alternatively, experience with impact investment and/or grant-making/management, including portfolio management 
• Proposal/pitch writing for impact investment and/or international philanthropies in the digital innovation or digital democracy space
• Experience managing a diverse portfolio of projects/products/partners across multiple timezones/cultures

Language and Location Requirements:

• Location: Kenya, Nigeria or South Africa preferred, but open to candidates based elsewhere in Africa 
• Languages: English primary language 
• Preferred but not required: Arabic and French, plus major African languages such Fulani, Kiswahili, isiZulu, Yoruba, etc.

What We Offer

• A competitive salary, subject to experience, with opportunities for performance-based growth, both in terms of career path and public stature
• A dynamic workplace, with a transnational team, occasional international travel, and generous vacation benefits. This includes an organisation Summer Holidays break over the December festive season, over and above employees annual leave.
• Ongoing opportunities to learn new cutting-edge skills and techniques/technologies to future-proof yourself in a rapidly evolving industry
• A chance to shine on a global stage, writing for international audiences and interacting with colleagues around the world.

Applicants should use this link to apply

Click here for more information

go to method of application »

Job Brief

• Code for Africa (CfA) has an immediate vacancy for a full-time Managing Editor to steer its new pan-African StoryLab, which co-produces hard-hitting and award-winning multimedia storytelling in partnership with leading African newsrooms and other global media.
• The role would preferably be based at any of CfA’s StoryLab’s primary hubs in Kenya, Nigeria or South Africa. CfA has full-time staff in 21 African countries, and is therefore also open to exceptional applicants from elsewhere on the continent.
• Candidates must have demonstrable experience in leading high-impact newsrooms, with visionary agenda-setting and robust technical news production skills, and proven success at shaping creative editorial initiatives. 
• Candidates with a track-record for identifying and nurturing emerging storytellers will have an advantage.
• The role will be for an English-speaking managing editor. Proficiency in local African languages and any additional international languages, such as Arabic/French, will be a plus.
• The StoryLab is the virtual newsroom for CfA’s Data Academy, which spearheads digital storytelling initiatives and data journalism training partnerships. It also includes CfA communities such as the WanaData women data science/storytelling network, the africanDRONE civic drone community and the sensors.AFRICA sensor journalism initiative, with a network of more than 50 partner newsrooms and 30 partner universities across Africa. The Data Academy is also the custodian of other major CfA public infrastructures, such as the continent’s largest open data portal, openAFRICA, and Africa’s largest census data portal, HURUMap.
• The StoryLab will be supported by CfA’s larger pan-African network of full-time data analysts, digital designers and newsroom mentors/trainers, with additional support from CfA’s software engineering and forensic research teams in 21 countries across the continent.

About the Role

• The successful candidate will work with CfA’s executive committee (ExCo) to transform the organisation’s existing editorial resources into a centralised virtual StoryLab newsroom, to drive pioneering digital journalism projects across the continent.
• While the StoryLab will focus on digital and data-driven multimedia reportage, the managing editor’s core ‘superpowers’ will be compelling storytelling and high-impact journalism, as well as building and managing winning teams, rather than just digital expertise. CfA has a strong technical team to support the data/digital aspects of the StoryLab’s mission.
• The managing editor’s core team will include a digital-savvy deputy editor, at least two full-time copyeditors, and a number of veteran ‘beat’ or topic editors managing thematic desks focused on everything from health emergencies and gender inequality, to religious extremism and state capture, as well as our ‘Dominion’ portfolio of climate and land-focused projects.
• Collaborative field reporting will be undertaken by CfA’s network of 50+ mainstream newsroom partners across the continent, our affiliated innovation partners such as the Oxpeckers Centre and InfoNile, as well as selected journalism fellows from CfA’s WanaData network of 450+ women data scientists/storytellers. The resulting stories will be published by networks of African and global media partners, including major European and North American media. 
• Journalism projects will be underpinning by sophisticated data/digital resources, such as CfA’s OUTBREAK toolkit for tackling health emergencies, or by support from its in-house investigative forensic research lab, its network of fact-checkers in 13 African countries or its AI/machine learning research team at CivicSignal.
• The role will require a combination of editorial agenda/vision-setting skills and charisma, as well as robust journalistic storytelling talent, and strong people/systems management skills to ensure that all the moving pieces sync into polished story packages, on deadline and within budget. 
• The successful candidate will need to be a culture fit with CfA, and must have a passion for co-creating solutions-driven products, through visual/multimedia storytelling that offers audiences actionable insights or information, underpinned by evidence-based investigative analysis. The candidate must also embrace peer-mentoring, nurturing both their team and partners through collaborative co-production
• Key performance indicators will include setting and maintaining international-level editorial standards; growing an award-winning multidisciplinary editorial team; meeting editorial targets and production deadlines; mentoring and growing a pan-African network of reporting partners/journalists.

Responsibilities
Your Daily Responsibilities will include:

• You will, in consultation with CfA’s ExCo and with the support of its ManCom, transform the organisation’s disparate editorial resources into a centralised virtual newsroom, as the StoryLab.
• You will grow and forge the existing full-time core team of editors and copyeditors into a dynamic newsroom that produces international award-winning content.
• You will steer development of a strategic editorial roadmap for the StoryLab, identifying issues and countries for prioritised attention and suggesting storytelling techniques and partners for amplifying our impact.
• You will shape CfA’s editorial standards, setting product benchmarks and quality guidelines, as well as creating editorial policies and playbooks.
• You will help set and then achieve editorial targets, will establish production schedules and will help ensure the StoryLab delivers on project deadlines, at agreed quality standards, while meeting partner and audience expectations within the agreed budgets/resources. 
• You will champion adherence to the StoryLab’s editorial standards and methodologies within CfA, and externally with partners and in industry fora, in the pursuit of editorial excellence.
• You will embrace CfA’s philosophy of solutions-driven actionable information, and will ensure the accuracy, relevance and quality of the StoryLab’s content.
• You will set the tone and pace for peer-mentoring CfA’s storytelling partners, in the WanaData network of 450+ women data scientists/journalists and our network of 50+ newsroom partners. 

Requirements
Minimum Requirements Include:

• Demonstrable newsroom leadership skills honed during at least seven years in a mainstream media or equivalent digital publishing environment.
• Strong interpersonal communication skills and demonstrable aptitude for nurturing young talent, and drawing out the best in emerging voices.
• Exceptional writing and editing skills which will help set benchmarks for world-class editorial standards.
• Robust critical thinking and creative solution aptitudes, with strong research and investigative skills.
• Proven track-record for creative problem solving in fast-paced and impact-driven environments, where solutions involve balancing human and technology considerations.
• Demonstrable ability to self-manage, creating your own as well as wider team timelines and milestones with clear systems/processes.
• A solid understanding of journalistic production systems and workflow methodologies, including how to integrate multimedia and digital storytelling techniques, built around actionable information, to create compelling storytelling.
• Digital workplace skill sets, including proficiency in collaborative work solutions such as Google Drive (Google Docs, Slides, Sheets, etc.), Slack (or equivalents such as Teams), and project management tools like Trello (or equivalents).

Preferred
Candidates who are able to demonstrate the following will have an advantage:

• Experience managing/working with transnational teams, across multiple time zones, with diverse cultural backgrounds.
• Proficiency in data-driven or investigative journalism, and/or visual (infographic/social media video) storytelling or other multi-platform news production.
• A strong track record for peer-to-peer mentoring of young journalists and newsroom teams.
• Working knowledge of at least one major regional African language, such as Amharic, Fulani, Swahili, Yoruba, etc.

Language and Location Requirements:

• Location: Kenya, Nigeria or South Africa preferred, but open to candidates based elsewhere in Africa 
• Languages: English primary language 
• Preferred but not required: Arabic and French, plus major African languages such Fulani, Kiswahili, isiZulu, Yoruba, etc.

What We Offer

• A competitive salary, subject to experience, with opportunities for performance-based growth, both in terms of career path and public stature
• A dynamic workplace, with a transnational team, occasional international travel, and generous vacation benefits. This includes an organisation Summer Holidays break over the December festive season, over and above employees annual leave.
• Ongoing opportunities to learn new cutting-edge skills and techniques/technologies to future-proof yourself in a rapidly evolving industry
• A chance to shine on a global stage, writing for international audiences and interacting with colleagues around the world.

Applicants should use this link to apply

Click here for more information