Jobs at Code for Africa (CfA)

About the Role:

The successful candidates will join CfA’s CivicSignal Research team, managing, conducting and publishing research projects focussed on African media ecosystems. Previous research partners included the Global Disinformation Index Media Market Analysis for South Africa and Kenya, as well as several Reuters Institute Digital News Reports.

Fundamentally, CivicSignal addresses issues and topics that impact democracies and civil society, seeking to provide the data and analysis necessary for government and citizens to make informed decisions. The projects range across a broad spectrum, including internal and external mis/disinformation, media sustainability, monitoring of hate speech and xenophobia, and general media ecosystem mapping.

As part of a multinational team within a growing organisation, you must be agile and able to thrive in a multicultural environment. You will need to work easily with people from different backgrounds who may speak different languages. 

Responsibilities:

• Setting the research agenda, overseeing research projects, and coordinating and managing the research team
• Standardising research methodologies/taxonomies/schema, research approaches and documentation according to international benchmarks. 
• Ensuring research outcomes are aligned with organisational goals and lead to meaningful outcomes.
• Designing, and reporting on, research projects for external and internal partners.
• Collaborating with the CfA tech and data teams to ensure that CivicSignal is in sync with larger organisational goals.
• Work proactively and think critically to help improve data and research capabilities in CfA’s research department.
• Liaise with the Senior Programme Manager for our Engagement and CivicSignal teams,  to coordinate report launches and related events. 

Required:

• Evidence of managing a substantive research project, or research team.
• Experience in building design approaches and methodologies for research teams, and a familiarity with taxonomies and schema that inform research projects. 
• Strong analytical and logical skills, with a demonstrable track record translating data into actionable insights.
• An understanding of media ecosystems and economies and/or digital advocacy and/or digital civic engagement.
• Excellent communication skills, including the ability to write for publication, present research insights and shape research proposals.
• Meticulous eye for detail to ensure data integrity and analytical precision.
• The ability to collaborate with a diverse set of multidisciplinary project stakeholders.
• Experience in working with remote, distributed teams with agile methodologies.
• Previous experience of contributing to reports and research publications
• Proactive, solutions-oriented approach to problem solving
• Ability to work under tight deadlines with good prioritisation and time management skills
• Ability to work with minimal instruction in a teamwork environment
• Strong organisational, analytical and interpersonal skills
• High professional standards and ethics

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About the Role:

The Chief Copy Editor will manage PesaCheck’s copydesk and specialist translators. You will work closely with the editorial team, and occasionally collaborate with other team members in each of the countries where PesaCheck operates in order to verify claims from a variety of sources. The content produced will be published on pesacheck.org, and will also be syndicated with various media partners. 

You will be working to hold public figures accountable and ensure that the media is accurate in its reporting and coverage of issues of public interest. This will require a familiarity with social media as a source of news, as well as a familiarity with news and media consumption patterns in your country. You will also need to have solid news judgement, and a deep knowledge of the media landscape in your country of specialisation and in Africa in general. 

The copy desk will apply a five-step copy editing process to all content to ensure factual accuracy/coherence, legal compliance/fairness, context, grammar/syntax consistency and adherence to PesaCheck’s editorial style/standard guidelines. The Chief Copy Editor will be responsible for ensuring that copy flow management sticks to agreed deadlines and quality standards, that journalists respond promptly to requests for clarity or corrections on draft content, and that multimedia materials (such as infographics) are commissioned timeously. The Chief Copy Editor will also ensure that feedback to journalists and/or designers is framed as constructive guidance, to help ensure that teams progressively improve the standard of raw content produced by partner newsrooms. This will include custodianship of a PesaCheck style guide, and convening regular ‘brownbag’ skills webinars to improve and standardise editorial quality.

The copy desk will receive support from CfA’s in-house data/design teams, as well as technical support programmes.

Responsibilities:

• Recruit and manage a core team of highly skilled copy editors, that transforms raw journalism into award-winning multimedia storytelling.
• Manage a centralised news diary/schedule, in consultation with the Managing Editor, that governs copy flow with clear production milestones and that delivers content for publication on deadline.
• Implement a rigorous proofreading/quality control editing system, that ensures factual accuracy/coherence, legal compliance/fairness, context, grammar/syntax consistency and adherence to PesaCheck’s editorial style/standard guidelines.
• Design and curate PesaCheck’s editorial style/standard guidelines, including tipsheets or learning resources for journalists and other content producers to incrementally improve the quality of their raw reportage.
• Provide regular constructive feedback, guidance, and mentoring for both copy editors and journalists, to nurture and grow new talent. 

Required:

• Excellent journalistic copy-editing and proofreading skills to ensure factual accuracy/coherence and grammar/syntax consistency.
• Experience in managing a copydesk and team in a mainstream multimedia environment, where content is packaged for publication in a wide variety of formats.
• Demonstrable understanding of technical editorial production systems and CMS tools, involving multi-stage copy-editing processes.
• A track record for copy flow management that sticks to editorial deadlines and quality standards.
• Experience in coordinating digital multimedia content (such as infographics or social media collateral) as an element of copy-edited reportage.
• Experience in creating or refining editorial guidelines, style guides and playbooks that set the tone, voice and standards for storytelling. 
• Passion for mentoring young talent and growing new voices. 
• Strong organisational and decision-making skills, with the ability to coordinate multiple tasks and projects simultaneously, while meeting deadlines and maintaining standards.

Preferred:

• At least 3 years experience in a managerial/leadership role on a fast-paced multilingual and transnational copy desk in mainstream digital media, such as international news agencies/wire services or digital first media platforms.
• Experience in working with cross-platform data-driven journalism or other multimedia storytelling.
• A keen eye for data visual storytelling techniques, including experience in integrating social video and interactive infographics into story packages.
• An understanding of social media storytelling techniques, and editing guidelines, with insights into the strengths/differences of different platforms, including ‘dark social’ channels.
• A track record for using copy-editing to actively and formally mentor/train award-winning digital storytellers.
• Experience in using digital collaboration tools, including Slack, Google Workplace, and Trello to manage editorial workflows, alongside more traditional editorial CMS platforms.
• Proven ability at working effectively in virtual or distributed newsrooms, coordinating multicultural and multilingual writers, editors, and other project teams across different time zones.

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About the Role:

The successful candidates will join CfA’s transnational CivicSignal research team, to craft and manage the content production process and output for CfA’s content production teams. These include iLab, our digital forensics investigative team, and PesaCheck, our fact-checking team, as well as the CivicSignal research team. Outputs take the form of research reports, briefing documents and presentations, among others.

As part of a multinational team within a growing organisation, you must be agile and able to thrive in a multicultural environment. You will need to work easily with people from different backgrounds who may speak different languages. 

Responsibilities:

• Managing the editorial production process and content diaries for CfA’s teams producing analytic and investigative reports.
• Scheduling and running the weekly ‘insights diary’ used to shape CfA’s reports and investigative outputs.
• Ensuring that reports, presentations and briefing documents are delivered on time by the relevant teams.
• Ensuring that analytical and investigative outputs are aligned with organisational goals and lead to meaningful outcomes.

Required:

• Demonstrable newsroom management skills in a mainstream media or equivalent digital publishing environment.
• Strong interpersonal communication skills and demonstrable aptitude for operationally managing multiple content production teams across countries.
• Demonstrable ability to create team timelines and milestones with clear systems/processes.
• A solid understanding of journalistic or other media-related production systems and workflow methodologies.
• Digital workplace skill sets, including proficiency in collaborative digital work solutions such as Google Drive (Google Docs, Slides, Sheets, etc.), Slack (or equivalents such as Teams), and project management tools like Trello (or equivalents).
• An understanding of media ecosystems and/or digital advocacy and/or digital civic engagement.
• Excellent communication skills, including the ability to present research insights and shape research outputs.
• The ability to collaborate with a diverse set of multidisciplinary project stakeholders.
• Experience in working with remote, distributed teams with agile methodologies.
• Proactive, solutions-oriented approach to problem solving
• Ability to work under tight deadlines with good prioritisation and time management skills
• Ability to work with minimal instruction in a teamwork environment
• Strong organisational, analytical and interpersonal skills
• High professional standards and ethics

Preferred:

• Competence in open source intelligence (OSINT) research techniques, including data scraping, data mining and other intelligence gathering techniques.
• Competence in computational linguistics, Natural Language Processing, and specifically the  methodologies and tools offered by the MediaCloud.org platform.
• Multiple languages, such as French, Arabic and other languages spoken in Africa.