Do you want to drive investigative research and analysis that helps African democracies thrive?
Code for Africa (CfA) has an immediate vacancy for a full-time Insights Editor to join our iLAB investigative and forensic analysis team.
The Insights Editor will coordinate the data-driven investigative reports and analysis generated by the iLAB to produce actionable insights into the continent’s media ecosystem and emerging civic technology sector.
The position is based at one of our hubs in Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal or South Africa. We’re also open to exceptional applicants from elsewhere in Africa.
The successful candidate will join CfA’s transnational iLAB team. The iLAB works in support of the African Network of Centres for Investigative Reporting (ANCIR), which is a CfA initiative that brings together the continent’s best muckraking newsrooms to investigate crooked politicians, organised crime and big business. The iLAB spearheads investigations that individual ANCIR newsrooms are unable to tackle on their own. This includes forensic analysis of suspected digital disinformation campaigns or toxic content aimed at misleading citizens or triggering social discord or polarisation using hate speech or radicalisation or other techniques.
You will be the editorial sherpa for the team’s multinational and multilingual team that uses digital collaboration tools and machine intelligence toolkits to create reports and datasets for a global audience and international institutional partners.
Candidates must have demonstrable experience in managing investigative processes and research diaries, driving content production pipelines that involve collaboration across multiple multinational and multilingual teams across Africa to ensure they deliver world-class reports and data-driven insights to an agreed-upon schedule.
The ideal applicant is fluent in English. Additional proficiency in French and/or Arabic would be an advantage.
Required: minimum requirements include:
- Demonstrable newsroom management skills in a mainstream media or equivalent digital publishing environment.
- Strong interpersonal communication skills and demonstrable aptitude for operationally managing multiple content production teams across countries.
- Demonstrable ability to create team timelines and milestones with clear systems/processes.
- A solid understanding of journalistic or other media-related production systems and workflow methodologies.
- Digital workplace skill sets, including proficiency in collaborative digital 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).
- An understanding of media ecosystems and/or digital advocacy and/or digital civic engagement.
- Excellent communication skills, including the ability to present research insights and shape research outputs.
- The ability to collaborate with a diverse set of multidisciplinary project stakeholders.
- Experience in working with remote, distributed teams with agile methodologies.
- Proactive, solutions-oriented approach to problem solving
- Ability to work under tight deadlines with good prioritisation and time management skills
- Ability to work with minimal instruction in a teamwork environment
- Strong organisational, analytical and interpersonal skills
- High professional standards and ethics
- The basics – research, reporting, grammar, Associated Press style – are priorities in writing. .
Preferred: candidates who are able to demonstrate the following will have an advantage:
- Competence in open source intelligence (OSINT) research techniques, including data scraping, data mining and other intelligence gathering techniques.
- Multiple languages, such as French, Arabic and other languages spoken in Africa.
Language and Location Requirements:
Location: Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal or South Africa. Exceptional candidates from elsewhere in Africa will be considered.
International Language: English
Preferred but not required: Arabic, French, KiSwahili or any other major language spoken in Africa.
About the Role:
The successful candidates will join CfA’s transnational iLAB digital forensic team, to craft and manage the content production process and output for the iLAB team. Outputs take the form of research reports, briefing documents and presentations, among others.
As part of a multinational team within a growing organisation, you must be agile and able to thrive in a multicultural environment.
You will need to work easily with people from different backgrounds who may speak different languages.
The role also will involve the ability to multitask as a writer, an editor and publisher. Developing cutting edge contents like dossiers that speak directly to the actions and advocacy needed. It is intended that the role will help shape the skills of other team members to enable them to become better writers and storytellers.
Responsibilities: Your daily responsibilities will include:
- Managing the editorial production process and content diaries for the iLAB producing analytic and investigative reports.
- Scheduling and running the weekly ‘insights diary’ used to shape iLAB reports and investigative outputs.
- Ensuring that reports, presentations and briefing documents are delivered on time by the relevant teams.
- Ensuring that analytical and investigative outputs are aligned with organisational goals and lead to meaningful outcomes.
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 by 15 February 2023. Applications will 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 100 staff in 21 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.