Helpdesk Intern – GCAiN at African Academy of Sciences

Department: Programmes

Reporting To: Programme Officer – GCA

Duration: 6 Months

Organisation Overview                                                                                    

The AAS is a pan African organisation headquartered in Kenya, which aims to drive sustainable development in Africa through science, technology and innovation. It has a tripartite mandate of pursuing excellence by recognizing scholars and achievers; providing advisory and think tank functions for shaping the continent’s strategies and policies; and implementing key Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) programmes that impact on developmental challenges through the new agenda setting and funding platform, the Alliance for Accelerating Excellence in Science in Africa (AESA).

Position Overview

The intern will provide support the numerical growth of users and engagement levels as laid out in the GCAiN marketing plan; this includes direct marketing efforts, events (physical and virtual) and social media campaigns. They will enhance the efforts to make GCAiN a world class network by facilitating curation of learning resources to be posted as content in GCAiN, performing integrity checks on profile and posts created by users, feedback collection and clean-up of data.

The intern should be a results-oriented individual with strong organisational skills coupled with a good communication skill. The individual should be passionate and knowledgeable about innovation and entrepreneurship especially in Africa.

Key Duties and Responsibilities 

1. Supporting the growth of subscriber numbers by

• Following up on emails and social media campaigns to ensure continuous onboarding of new users
• Supporting registration /profile creation by new users
• Ensuring that profiles are complete on the platform on time
• Handling any queries regarding registration on the platform
• Sharing reports on new users on weekly basis
• Support in preparation and execution of events (virtual or physical) meant to promote GCAiN.

2. Driving engagement in GCAiN

• Preparing a weekly Media digest for Innovations. This involves scoping the ecosystem
• for news, breakthroughs, calls for funding and opportunities for innovators and partners
• Social media agility and researching discussions from other platforms e.g. Creating
• LinkedIn posts for promoting GCAIN. Facebook discussions. Ongoing on VC platforms
• Flagging important conversations within the network for follow up.

3. Enhancing security and maintaining standards

• Scrutinizing and moderating posts and blogs and undertaking background checks on profiles to ensure they conform to the AAS standard operating procedures to avoid any form of misrepresentations and escalating any issues that need urgent attention to the designate Programme Officer.

4. Feedback consolidation

• Following up interview and questionnaires issued to users for feedback and compiling
• the same into reports
• Managing the help desk (need to activate)
• Feeding technical issues notified in the issue log (shared folder with developers).

5. Support the team with various assignment from time to time.

Requirements and Qualifications

1. A minimum of undergraduate degree in ICT or equivalent;
2. Strong Information Technology or Computer Management Information System background
3. Strong verbal and communication skills, excellent analytical and problem-solving skills
4. Ability to work well in teams, some experience in database management would be an added advantage
5. Entrepreneurial: Views this as an opportunity to build an enterprise and takes the initiative to identify and develop new opportunities.