Code for Africa (CfA) has an immediate vacancy for a Verification Project Manager to join our our Investigative Labs (iLAB) team in Nairobi, Kenya.
Minimum Qualifications
- Experience working as a researcher or fact checker in a journalistic or academic setting
- Rigorous research skills, news judgment, and commitment to accuracy
- Familiarity with major research databases, government sources and news outlets
- The ability to work quickly and flexibly with changing publication schedules, juggling multiple tasks, and meeting deadlines
- The ability to communicate and work effectively with writers, editors, and project team members who work remotely and in different time zones
- Amazing presentation skills
- The ability to work in a multicultural environment distributed across Africa
- You have a commitment to accuracy and rigorous attention to detail in order to find and verify information on diverse topics
- You’re persistent and resourceful when it comes to tracking down information and sources.
- You can work independently.
Preferred Qualifications
- You have 2+ years work experience.
- Previous experience working on the digital collaboration tools that CfA uses, ranging from Slack and Google Drive, to Trello would be an advantage.
About the Role
The successful candidate will work with a team of forensic researchers and data scientists/analysts at the iLAB, who work in support of local partner newsrooms and other civic watchdog organisations.
The iLAB’s role is to offer these newsrooms/civic watchdogs a robust toolkit of open source intelligence (OSINT) leads and resources, along with investigative support for identifying and exposing disinformation and other influence operations intended to undermine our democracies and our economies. This will include helping to identify the botnets, fake accounts and unwitting proxies used by the shadowy ‘puppet masters’ who are producing and disseminating false content. The iLAB also builds actionable data that helps civic watchdogs better understand the nexus between politically exposed people (PEPs) and organised crime networks, and their role in subverting public resources.
You will be supporting the Investigative Manager in a ‘Deputy Editor’ role on Code for Africa’s iLAB initiative. As the Verification Project Manager, you will be responsible for ensuring accuracy across all iLAB content and will be a go-to resource for verification and fact-checking within the larger project team. This role is primarily dedicated to fact-checking, but also to helping newsrooms set up their own internal verification processes. You will report to the Investigative Manager, and will work with the researchers, newsroom champions and other members of the iLAB project team.
Responsibilities
- Work with the iLAB project team to develop unique thematic focus areas for interventions targeting misinformation and disinformation for partner newsrooms.
- Setting production targets and timelines, as well as resource and production expectations with newsroom managers and editors.
- Supporting the production of training decks on verification and fact-checking.
- Editing all content produced by the project fact-checkers and partner newsrooms to a suitable standard for publication.
- Verifying facts, dates, and statistics used in the stories produced by the partner newsrooms based on acceptable sources.
- Developing story and content ideas, considering the reader or audience appeal.
- Establishing and sustaining interactions with mainstream and community media outlets to support verification, fact-checking and related activities as part of the overall project’s outreach and engagement activities.
- Actively managing a content calendar and tracker.
- Supporting partners to put out newsroom-produced fact-checks on schedule established in the Content Calendar in a timely manner, and ensuring that production quotas are met.
- Conducting needs assessments and designing training schedules that add value to participating newsrooms, including customised weekly one-on-one trainings and monthly masterclasses.
- Amplifying outputs and project wins on social media.
- Tracking audience impact using analytics and data to figure out where the main areas of interest are.
- Producing reports on project progress, risks and opportunities, including impact reports.
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 digital-first workplace, with the opportunity for regular remote work, occasional international travel, and generous vacation benefits.
- An innovative cutting-edge project portfolio, that regularly helps push the envelope globally by pioneering new techniques/technologies and that demonstrates real-world applications with grassroots impact for digital tools
How to Apply:
Please fill in this form: http://bit.ly/2lSZqc2 to apply for this position.
About Us:
Code for Africa (CfA) is the continent’s largest federation of independent civic technology and data journalism laboratories, which build digital democracy solutions giving 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 like openAFRICA and sourceAFRICA, as well as incubating initiatives as diverse as the africanDRONE network, the PesaCheck fact-checking initiative and the sensors.AFRICA network.
The African Network of Centres for Investigative Reporting (ANCIR) is a CfA managed 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 difference – 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 jobs alias, CfA employees or any other company location. CfA is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes.