Position in: Cameroon, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania or Uganda
Do you want to help us nurture CfA’s network of journalists, data analysts and technologists in Africa?
Code for Africa (CfA) has an immediate vacancy for a full-time bilingual Community Coordinator. This position is based in one of our hubs in Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, or Uganda, but exceptional candidates from other countries will also be considered to join our Communities team.
Candidates must have demonstrable experience in community management or a related field, project management skills, and excellent written and verbal communication skills. Additional skills will include providing and moderating community events and sessions, engaging with stakeholders, developing partnerships, managing information, and reporting. French speaking applicants will have an advantage.
CfA’s Communities initiative is a peer-to-peer learning and collaboration initiative that focuses on ecosystem/network building, fellowships, and career and professional development to increase media influence and make pertinent contributions to important development issues in Africa and around the world. This includes CfA’s flagship networks such as the africanDRONE community, African Fact-Checking Alliance network (ACFA), Hacks/Hackers, sensors.AFRICA network (EcoSense Collective), WanaData, and the African Wikipedian Alliance (AWA) the Wikipedian-in-residence (WiR) community, with a network of more than 1500 members across Africa.
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:
- A minimum of 4 years of experience in community management or a related field, working directly with groups and individuals.
- Excellent project management skills, including handling multiple priorities and meeting deadlines.
- Experience delivering on contractual project requirements and producing regular reports for monitoring purposes.
- Experience organising and coordinating local and international events and community outreach (including offline, online, and hybrid events).
- Comfortable with facilitating and delivering training, skills coaching and mentoring.
- Significant experience in stakeholder engagement, with a proven ability to build relationships and engage with diverse audiences, including academics, journalists, storytellers, data analysts, researchers, technologists, and editors.
- Excellent organisational and communication skills, written and verbal, for large and small groups, in-person and via phone and email.
- Experience designing and implementing community-informed research strategies, including writing and designing surveys and questionnaires to solicit feedback on various topics.
- Familiarity with growth and impact metrics, as well as web analytics
- Ability to work creatively and accurately under pressure, with excellent attention to detail.
- Ability to multitask, prioritise, and manage time efficiently.
- Proficiency in the English language (spoken and written).
Preferred: candidates who are able to demonstrate the following will have an advantage:
- Experience working in the technology, non-profit and/or media environments will be advantageous.
- An understanding of database management and familiarity with spreadsheets.
- Experience managing content distribution, such as blogs and stories through various channels, including social media, and websites (Medium, WordPress).
- Good working knowledge of HTML, WordPress and SEO.
- Experience working with a multinational and fully remote organisation.
- Bilingual in English and French (spoken and written).
Language and Location Requirements:
- Location: Cameroon, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania or Uganda. Exceptional candidates from other African countries will be considered.
- Languages: English
- Preferred but not required: Arabic, French, Swahili, or any other major African languages.
About the Role:
The successful candidate will join the Communities team as the continental champion of CfA’s Francophone and Anglophone WanaData and Hacks/Hackers Community and is responsible for growing and managing the network of academics, journalists, storytellers, fact-checkers, data analysts and scientists, researchers, technologists, editors, and activities across Africa.
As community coordinator, you will manage the communities’ activities (such as planning and
coordinating monthly and quarterly events), foster and encourage community member engagement
and maintain sustainable relationships with new and relevant stakeholders and partners across Africa
and beyond. You will also support Communities-related projects, including managing fellowships,
facilitating training and mentorship, and marshalling resources.
The ideal candidate will have strong strategic analysis, research, and critical thinking skills, as our
projects are varied and fast-paced, requiring the ability to understand and learn new things quickly.
They should possess a keen attention to detail, be comfortable handling multiple tasks with multiple
ongoing deadlines, and have previous experience working with digital collaboration tools such as
Slack, Google Drive, and Trello.
Responsibilities: Your daily responsibilities will include:
- Managing and expanding a geographically dispersed community across three or more African countries.
- Organising, coordinating, and facilitating community events, including monthly meetups for each chapter and quarterly continental events.
- Identifying gaps and needs within the Communities and developing appropriate and effective programmes tailored to meet those needs.
- Monitoring and evaluating programme effectiveness and community member feedback to improve programme outcomes.
- Developing assets that can be leveraged to inform and energise CfA’s partners, stakeholders, and community members about CfA’s Communities events and programmes, including creating detailed-oriented presentations, briefings, memos, and other communications.
- Forming partnerships with development-related organisations such as governments and CSOs.
- Growing community membership and ensuring effective engagement with all community members.
- Creating weekly and monthly community engagement plans.
- Reporting on all activities and managing community information while ensuring databases are up to date.
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 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: 19 July 2024
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.