Do you want to spearhead projects & solutions that take fact-checking in Africa to new levels?
Code for Africa (CfA) has an immediate vacancy for a full-time Special Projects Editor based in Francophone West Africa to join our PesaCheck team.
Candidates must have demonstrable experience in project management and coordination, excellent research, editorial and writing skills, specifically in the tech, civic or journalism sector.
PesaCheck is the continent’s largest indigenous fact-checking initiative, by geographic coverage, with teams in 13 African countries. It researches and debunks misinformation published both online and elsewhere in more traditional media, publishing over 2,000 fact-checks per year, in partnership with major platforms ranging from Facebook and TikTok, to traditional media. PesaCheck also tracks promises by public officials and shines a light on public finances to ensure the public is not misled. PesaCheck forms part of Code for Africa (CfA), which is Africa’s largest non-profit digital/data journalism initiative.
The successful candidates will work as part of a multinational and multilingual team using digital collaboration tools to create content for a global audience and international media partners.
Required: minimum requirements include:
- 3+ years proven experience project management and coordination in the tech, civic or media sector.
- Demonstrable experience in all aspects of project management, including developing and maintaining project documentation
- Excellent project planning and coordination
- Excellent numeracy and analytical skills, and the ability to break down complex issues and explain them in a way that any audience can understand
- Excellent written and verbal skills
- The ability to handle large volumes of work within a limited time period and deliver consistent results within deadlines
- 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:
- Work experience in transnational multilingual digital newsrooms.
- Training and capacity building experience
- An understanding of fact-checking, disinformation and misinformation, and digital tools for fact-checking
- Experience building and managing relationships with media institutions, governments, international organisations, educational institutions, relevant technology players, and other private and not-for-profit relevant stakeholders in the civic technology and media ecosystem.
- Strong decision-making skills
Language and Location Requirements:
- Location: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Mali, Senegal, Burundi or any other Francophone West African country
- Languages: Fluency in English and French
- Preferred but not required: Swahili and other local languages
About the Role:
The successful candidates will join PesaCheck’s transnational fact-checking team working as part of a network of locally-based fact-checkers in 13 African countries. The team is responsible for helping the public separate fact from fiction, using a range of journalistic techniques and digital verification tools.
Your core duty is to manage the PesaCheck special projects and ensure the project deliverables are delivered with the specified standards. This includes PromiseTracker, which helps journalists and civil society watchdogs track campaign promises and other political / government pledges, DebunkBot, a Twitter bot that debunks claims shared on social media by replying with relevant fact-checks, PesaYetu, which helps journalists and citizens explore, visualise and interpret development data that impacts their own communities, and TaxClock, which help citizens better understand how government puts their taxes to use.
You will drive fact-checking training and mentorship programmes. This will include aiding in the development of training programme, ensuring that participants meet their course targets, and, from time to time, facilitating training and mentorship sessions as needed.
We operate in a fast-paced environment, so you will need to be agile in your management approach, quick to understand and learn new things, and creative in finding solutions to any problems that arise. You will also need an obsessive attention to detail and be comfortable handling multiple tasks and deadlines.
Responsibilities: Your daily responsibilities will include:
- Manage and oversee the build of PesaCheck tools, ensuring they are built as per the requirements and the agreed timelines
- Ensure proper documentation of the special projects from detailed work plans, M&E trackers, to proposals and workshop outputs
- Establish and sustain interactions with mainstream and community media outlets to support PesaCheck’s work as part of the overall project’s outreach and engagement activities
- Lead the planning and management of training and mentorship programmes under the PesaCheck docket
- Conduct needs assessments and designing training schedules that add value to participating newsrooms, including customised weekly one-on-one training and monthly masterclasses.
- From time to time, assist the lead trainer by facilitating training workshops and roundtables.
- Support newsroom partners in producing fact-checks and ensuring that production quotas are met.
- Research the latest trends and industry standards around project management, training, and use this information to assist the BizDev project management team to improve project management processes
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 31 December 2022. 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 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.