Positions in: Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal,  or elsewhere in Africa

Do you love to empower others in order for them to do their best work?

Code for Africa (CfA) has an immediate vacancy for a full-time HR Manager to join our Secretariat team.

Candidates must have demonstrable experience in both people operations and policy development. 

The successful candidate will play an active and key role throughout the employment process, from job design and recruitment to performance management and talent development. You will need to lead by example and nurture CfA’s core principles and culture throughout the organisation. 

CfA is a 12-year old pan-African network of digital democracy and journalism technology labs, registered as a public benefit non-profit organisation that has full-time staff in 22 African and European countries. The headquarters are in South Africa, with subsidiary non-profits in Kenya and Nigeria. The successful candidates will join the Secretariat team – a small, agile team that supports the organisation’s operations  across the continent.

The successful candidates will work as part of a multinational and multilingual team that works across a variety of programmes and projects.

Required: minimum requirements include:

  • 5+ years of experience in a similar role
  • Experience drafting HR policies and procedures
  • Experience creating and managing HR processes, such as performance management
  • Experience managing a team of other HR professionals
  • Self-motivated and independent worker, while also being a team player, able to work well across different cultures and languages
  • Superb organisational skills, detail oriented and an eye for accuracy 
  • Fluency in written and spoken English
  • Experience in or familiarity with digital collaboration tools, including Slack, Google Drive, and Trello

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

  • Bachelors degree in human resources management  or equivalent qualification
  • Experience working in the technology, non-profit and/or media environments will be advantageous
  • Experience working with a multinational &  fully remote organisation

Language and Location Requirements:

  • Location: Anywhere in Africa
  • Languages: 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 core Secretariat team. The Secretariat team supports the entire organisation and all of its programmes, overseeing operations and governance, as well as handling all financial and HR matters.

As the Human Resources Manager, you will lead our HR team to support our 100+ staff members in over 20 African countries. You will take the lead on a number of activities, such as performance management, policy creation, and disciplinary procedures. You will mentor and guide your team on all their duties, including interviewing, paperwork preparation, and onboarding and onboarding of employees.

As part of a multinational team within a growing organisation, you must be agile and must thrive in a multicultural environment, and must work easily with people from different backgrounds who may speak different languages. You will be a digital native, who instinctively takes initiative, and is happy to juggle several tasks at a time while still being able to prioritise your own work.

It is vital that you embody CfA’s ethical code of integrity, transparency and excellence in all your work and dealings. As HR Manager, you will help foster this culture throughout the organisation at all times. 

Responsibilities: Your daily responsibilities will include:

  • Oversee and refine CfA’s recruitment process, from job ad development to due diligence to  onboarding into the organisation.
  • Oversee the onboarding/orientation process for new employees, ensuring that all new employees start their journey with us from a solid foundation 
  • Lead on CfA’s cycle of performance reviews, with regular one-on-one staff check-ins, monitoring performance milestones, proactively identifying staff challenges/opportunities, and developing actionable insights and feedback for team managers and CfA strategists.
  • Refining and maintaining CfA’s HR digital recordkeeping systems, to ensure that staff records, timesheets, holiday/leave logs and other records are accurate.
  • Lead on disciplinary and grievances processes, ensuring that they strictly adhere to protocols 
  • Lead on the development of new HR policies or updates to existing policies when  needed, ensuring that policies follow international best practice
  • Lead on offboarding processes, such as exit interviews or termination paperwork
  • Mentor and support the HR Assistants in their daily duties, ensuring that they are provided with the support they need in order to support the wider organisation 

What We Offer:

  • A competitive salary, subject to experience, with opportunities for performance-based growth, both in terms of career path and public stature.
  • Medical insurance cover, underwritten by a remote-first provider to ensure cover wherever you are
  • A dynamic workplace, with a multinational 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 July 2023.  Candidates 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.