Position in: Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, or anywhere else in Africa
Do you want to help deepen public understanding of Africa’s watchdog media and digital democracy pioneers?
Code for Africa (CfA) has immediate vacancies for one full-time Research Analyst on our CivicSignal team, based at any of our hubs in Kenya, Nigeria or South Africa.
We’re also open to exceptional applicants from elsewhere in Africa.
Applicants must have demonstrable experience in analytical research and open source intelligence into media ecosystems or digital civic engagement, and should be comfortable with using data-driven social analytics, survey/polling methodology, landscape analysis and a combination of data mining and media monitoring tools to produce actionable insights and citable reports for a range of partners including international donors, development agencies and policymakers.
The ideal applicant is fluent in English. Additional proficiency in French and/or Arabic would be an advantage.
Successful candidates will join CfA’s transnational CivicSignal research team, which drives analysis of the continent’s media ecosystem and emerging civic technology sector. As part of a multinational and multilingual team, you will use digital collaboration tools and natural language processing (NLP) and machine intelligence toolkits to create research reports and datasets for a global audience and international institutional partners.
Required: minimum requirements include
- An understanding of media ecosystems and/or digital advocacy and/or digital civic engagement.
- A minimum of one year’s experience in the field, and/or evidence of a substantive research project using ML/NPL/AI analysis tools.
- Proficiency in Python or R
- Proficiency in statistical analysis and market research, along with related qualitative and quantitative research methods.
- Competence in survey/polling methodology and questionnaire design, with specific reference to sample weighting, etc, for Africa-specific circumstances.
- Strong analytical and logical skills, with a demonstrable track record translating data into actionable insights.
- Excellent communication skills, including the ability to write for publication, present research insights and shape research proposals.
- Meticulous eye for detail to ensure data integrity and precision.
- The ability to collaborate with a diverse set of multidisciplinary project stakeholders.
- Experience in working with remote, distributed teams with agile methodologies.
Preferred: candidates who are able to demonstrate the following will have an advantage
- Competence in computational linguistics, Natural Language Processing, and specifically the methodologies and tools offered by the MediaCloud.org platform.
- Competence in other open source intelligence (OSINT) research techniques, including data scraping, data mining and other intelligence gathering techniques.
- Previous experience of contributing to reports and research publications
- Multiple languages, such as French, Arabic and other languages spoken in Africa.
- Knowledge of network analysis.
Language and Location Requirements:
- Location: Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria, or anywhere in Africa
- Languages: English
- Preferred but not required additional languages: French or Arabic
Responsibilities: Your daily responsibilities will include
- Designing, and reporting on, research projects for external and internal partners.
- Collaborating with the CfA tech and data teams to source, mine and analyse required research data
- Use relevant software, including a version of the Mediacloud software, to cover the end-to-end process of pulling out raw data, analysing and extracting insights, and delivering reports
- Research and mine datasets to create impactful analyses and reports on CfA’s key topics
- Media monitoring, media data analytics, deep diving into competitor landscape analysis, insights reports, tracking media exposure and volume
- Work proactively and think critically to help improve data and research capabilities in CfA’s research department.
- Liaise with the Senior Programme Manager: Engagement and Civic Signal, to coordinate report launches and related events.
You will join Code for Africa’s Civic Signal Research team, implementing, conducting and publishing research projects focussed on African media ecosystems. Fundamentally, Civic Signal operates to address issues and topics that impact democracies, civil society and the general polity. The projects range across a broad spectrum, and have several use values. Civic Signal monitors and analyses a range of media sources, automating the collection and classification of online textual news content and other data sources, in real-time, and deploying a range of advanced machine learning and other artificial intelligence tools and techniques, including sentiment analysis, n-gram analysis, cluster analysis, social listening to analyse content.
The outputs include actionable intelligence, the development of early-warning systems around toxic speech and hate speech, and the development of lexicons of country- and language-specific terms and phrases, to trigger early warnings about inflammatory or otherwise dangerous content.
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.
- 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.
How to apply:
Please fill in this form: https://bit.ly/34auNT1 by 30 June 2021
Applications shall be reviewed on a rolling basis
About Us:
Code for Africa (CfA) is the continent’s largest network of indigenous African civic technology and investigative data journalism laboratories, with over 70 staff in 19 countries, who build digital democracy solutions that are intended to give citizens unfettered access to actionable information that empowers them to make informed decisions and that strengthen civic engagement for improved public governance and accountability.
This includes building infrastructure such as the continent’s largest open data portal, open.AFRICA, and largest open source civic software portal, commons.AFRICA, as well as the largest repository of investigative document-based evidence, source.AFRICA, as well as incubating initiatives as diverse as the africanDRONE network that gives citizens their own ‘eyes in the sky’, the PesaCheck fact-checking initiative in 12 African countries, and the sensors.AFRICA remote-sensing citizen science initiative to combat air/water pollution.
CfA also incubates the African Network of Centres for Investigative Reporting (ANCIR), as an association of the continent’s best investigative newsrooms, ranging from large traditional mainstream media to smaller specialist units. ANCIR member newsrooms investigate crooked politicians, organised crime and big business. The iLAB is ANCIR’s in-house digital forensic unit, with teams in east, south and west Africa. ANCIR uses its resources to strengthen newsrooms’ own internal capacity, by providing access to the world’s best whistleblower encryption and investigative semantic analysis technologies, as well as skills development, and seed grants for cross-border collaboration.
At CfA, we don’t just accept differences – we celebrate it, we support it, and we thrive on it for the benefit of our employees, our products and our community. CfA is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.
To all recruitment agencies: CfA does not accept agency resumes. Please do not forward resumes to our employment application line, CfA employees or any other CfA contact. CfA is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes.