Africa Regional Operations Associate Director/Director at IDinsight

Role Responsibilities

Strategy and Cross-Regional Integration

• Set the strategic direction for Africa Ops, ensuring both regions work toward shared standards rather than solving the same problems independently.
• Translate organizational and regional priorities into Africa-wide Ops operating plans, service standards, and team workflows; identify where ESA and WNA can be better integrated and drive those improvements.
• Represent Africa Ops in global leadership conversations,  bringing Africa’s operating realities and priorities into cross-functional planning and advocating for the resources and investments the region needs.
• Spot structural inefficiencies or risks across the Africa office and project footprint before they become crises; build systems and standards that make the function more resilient over time.
• Apply a data-informed lens to assess performance across regions, including service levels, escalation patterns, compliance risks, staffing bottlenecks, and cost drivers, and use those insights to drive improvement.
• Design and maintain a fit-for-purpose Africa operating model that balances standardization, local compliance, responsiveness to client teams, and cost stewardship

Standards, Systems, and Governance

• Own Africa-wide Ops standards, policies, handbooks, compliance frameworks, and operating norms, ensuring consistency where it matters while respecting local legal, regulatory, and cultural context.
• Oversee operational coordination across multiple legal entities and country contexts in Africa, in partnership with local legal counsel, payroll and accounting providers, Finance, and Global Operations.
• Oversee risk management across the Africa portfolio, including compliance, vendor dependency, safety and security, and audit readiness; ensure regional Managers have the tools and escalation paths they need.
• Lead Africa-wide duty-of-case systems, including travel protocols, office and temporary location risk management, incident response readiness, and coordination with the Global Safety & Security function
• Drive a culture of continuous improvement focused on operational effectiveness and staff experience. Identifying where legacy systems need to be challenged and creating space for the team to innovate and iterate.
• Partner with Finance and Legal on Africa-wide financial and compliance decisions, strategic investment decisions and ensure cross-regional resource allocation reflects organizational priorities.

Managing and Developing Regional Ops Managers

• Directly manage the regional Ops Managers for ESA and WNA, providing coaching, direction, and support to help them lead their teams effectively.
• Set clear expectations, develop plans, and create stretch opportunities for regional Ops Managers; hold them accountable for outcomes while protecting team well-being and momentum.
• Coach managers to move from reactive execution toward proactive, strategic ownership, anticipating needs rather than responding to them.
• Serve as an escalation point for sensitive or complex people matters that regional Managers surface; exercising sound judgment, discretion, and consistency with People Ops and leadership.
• Build a strong, cohesive Africa Ops team that fosters collaboration across ESA and WNA, rather than siloed regional operations.

Organizational Leadership

• Communicate with executive presence, synthesize complex, cross-regional operational information into clear recommendations for senior leadership and global partners.
• Serve as a trusted thought partner to Regional Directors and global function leads, bringing the Ops lens to strategic decisions from the design through execution.
• Model IDinsight's values,  honesty, humility, and inclusivity, and set the tone for how the Africa Ops function shows up internally and externally.

Qualifications

Must-Have

• 8+ years in operations, people operations, HR, or an adjacent function in international or multi-stakeholder environments.
• Experience managing managers, setting direction, coaching for ownership, and holding teams accountable across geographies.
• Track record of building and improving systems at scale, not just running them, and driving cross-functional integration across complex organizations.
• Strategic thinker who can hold the big picture while ensuring execution stays on track; able to translate ambiguity into clear priorities for their team.
• Strong financial judgment: experience owning budgets, guiding investment decisions, and communicating tradeoffs to senior leadership.
• Experience overseeing statutory compliance, external audits, and operational coordination across multiple legal entities or country contexts
• Experience with safety, security, travel risk, or duty-of-care systems in complex operating environments.
• Data-informed decision-maker who uses analysis to shape strategy, not just track activity.
• Executive presence in written and verbal communication; able to represent the Ops function credibly in senior forums.
• Sound judgment and discretion in handling sensitive people and organisational matters.
• Travel regularly across Africa offices, likely 25%, depending on business needs 
• Familiarity with MS Office, Google Docs, and ideally other relevant systems such as BambooHR, Asana, and Slack.
• Fluency in English required; Professional French strongly preferred.

Nice-to-Have

• Passion for global development and social impact.
• Working knowledge of compliance contexts in Kenya, Zambia, Senegal, and/or Morocco.

Behaviors and mindsets

• Calm under ambiguity and able to bring structure to fast-moving environments; 
• Low-ego, high judgment leader who can influence across functions and seniority levels;
• Strong cross-cultural manager who builds trust, accountability, and inclusion across distributed teams. 
• Self-starting team player
• Deep alignment with IDinsight's mission and a stewardship mindset.