Social media platform accountability in Francophone Africa
Do you want to improve the transparency, content moderation, and information integrity of social media platforms?
Code for Africa (CfA) has immediate vacancies for part-time research positions in Madagascar (2 positions), Morocco (2 positions), Senegal (1 position), Côte d’Ivoire (1 position), and DR Congo (1 position), to join our CivicSignal team.
Candidates must have demonstrable experience in human rights, digital rights, or media research, with strong analytical skills and cultural familiarity with Madagascar or Morocco.
CivicSignal is Africa’s largest non-profit media monitoring/mapping initiative that uses machine learning/natural language processing tools for ‘AI’ analysis of media content across the continent.
The successful candidates will work as part of a multinational and multilingual team to assess digital platforms’ transparency, content moderation, user protection, and information integrity.
Required: minimum requirements include:
- Background in human rights, digital rights, media studies, journalism, social science, development studies, or civil society work
- Strong research and analytical skills, with the ability to read and summarise dense legal or policy text accurately
- Digital investigation techniques, including content archiving and evidence preservation
- Cultural familiarity with Madagascar or Morocco, including the local information environment and social conditions
- Working knowledge of major social media platforms, their settings and reporting tools
- Comfort with structured data entry and attention to detail
- Familiarity with spreadsheet or database software
- Understanding of disinformation, content moderation, or platform governance
Preferred: candidates who are able to demonstrate the following will have an advantage:
- Prior experience with qualitative research or fact-checking
- Experience with Airtable or structured research databases
- Previous work on platform accountability, digital rights, or online safety research in Madagascar or Morocco
- Experience with content archiving tools (archive.org, perma.cc, or similar)
- Familiarity with the Appel de Villers-Cotterêts, the EU Digital Services Act, or comparable platform accountability frameworks
Language and Location Requirements:
- Location: Madagascar, Morocco, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, and DR Congo. Other locations will be considered should the candidate have the necessary cultural and linguistic expertise.
- French and English, reading and writing (required)
- Malagasy (for the Madagascar fellowship), Arabic (for the Morocco fellowship), Dyula (for the Côte d’Ivoire fellowship), Wolof (for the Senegal fellowship), Lingala (for the DR Congo fellowship), reading and writing (required)
- Preferred but not required: local languages such as Tamazight (Tashelhit, Tarifit) for Morocco, or regional Malagasy dialects for Madagascar.
About the Role:
The successful candidates will join the CivicSignal team, assessing how major digital platforms uphold commitments under the Appel de Villers-Cotterêts in Madagascar and Morocco. Working remotely, you’ll test platform policies and tools directly, comparing performance in French against the country’s other main local language, and document findings across content moderation, child safety, data protection, disinformation and fact-checking support, political advertising transparency, and platform AI governance.
The role involves desk research into platform policies, hands-on testing of accounts and reporting tools, and contributing structured, evidence-based findings to a shared research database.
This part-time, 4-6 weeks remote position offers an opportunity to contribute to vital work protecting platform accountability and user safety in Madagascar and Morocco, while developing expertise in digital investigation techniques.
Responsibilities: Over the course of the project, you will:
- Review platform policy documents and extract relevant information
- Record findings in a structured research database
- Manage test accounts to assess platform behaviour
- Report content that breaches platform rules and track platform response times
- Screenshot, name, and file evidence following set conventions
- Archive online content for evidence preservation
- Monitor recommendation algorithm behaviour over time
- Assess platform performance across languages
How to apply:
Please fill in this form: by August 7, 2026
About Us:
Code for Africa (CfA) is the continent’s largest network of indigenous African civic technology and investigative data journalism laboratories, with over 120 staff in 26 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.
Please note: Due to high volumes of applications, we are unable to respond to each one individually. If you are selected for an interview, we will contact you.