Project Lead, AI Skilling Initiative Africa (Sub-Saharan)

Project Lead, AI Skilling Initiative (Africa)

Supervisor

Regional Director, Africa

Supervisory Responsibility

Country Program Officers, project staff, consultants, and contractors

Purpose

Lead the end-to-end delivery of a multi-country youth AI literacy and skilling initiative across Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa. The Project Lead is accountable for reaching young people at scale and converting that reach into verified learning and applied capability, which makes this a hybrid role: program direction and delivery discipline, campaign and audience-growth leadership, and accountability for the quality of the learning itself.

IYF manages and measures its programs through the Program Performance and Accountability Framework (PPAF), an internal framework built on three commitments. The Project Lead is accountable for delivering on it by:

• Delighting the funder and partners through high-quality delivery against committed participation and learning targets,
• Stewarding the project budget, sub-awards, data, and safeguarding obligations with rigor and transparency, and
• Growing the reach, conversion, and quality of the learning pathway through experimentation and evidence.

Responsibilities

• Program Leadership and Delivery
  Own implementation across the four markets: country-level plans, workplans, milestones, and budget. Ensure delivery of outputs and outcomes in compliance with funder expectations, the award agreement, and approved budgets. Manage risk, compliance, data privacy, and youth safeguarding across all channels and venues, and lead timely, accurate reporting to the funder.
• Campaign and Audience Growth
  Own the youth engagement funnel from first exposure through active learning to applied capability, and treat it as a conversion system to be measured and improved rather than a set of one-off activities. This includes:
• Setting channel strategy and conversion targets across social, creator-led, partner, paid, and in-person channels, and reallocating effort and spend against performance.
• Managing the marketing agency, creative contractors, and youth ambassador and creator roster, including scopes of work, briefs, quality standards, and performance review.
• Translating program content into messaging and formats that reach and convert young audiences, localized by market, language, and device constraints.
• Operationalizing analytics, marketing automation, and AI-enabled tools to track reach, engagement, completion, and retention, and to run structured experiments on what moves youth from awareness into verified learning.
• Establishing lifecycle engagement that brings participants back into deeper stages of the pathway rather than treating each interaction as terminal.
• Funder Stewardship and Program Expansion
  Serve as the primary day-to-day liaison with the funder on the initiative, ensuring timely and transparent communication, responsiveness to funder priorities, and credible evidence of results. Coordinate closely with the Regional Director, who owns the senior funder relationship. Build the case for renewal, extension, and scaling by demonstrating quality, capturing lessons learned, and providing technical inputs and contextual knowledge to new business opportunities when requested.
• Learning Quality and Content
  Own the quality of what young people actually learn. Working with IYF’s pedagogy advisors and subject-matter experts, set the learning objectives and curriculum standards for the initiative, review and approve the learning content and digital learning journeys produced by the marketing agency before publication, and ensure the learning experience holds up for young people on low-end devices, limited data, and in local languages. Bring judgment on what makes practical AI skills usable in informal work, micro-enterprise, and entry-level digital jobs, rather than exposure alone. Ensure that what young people learn in the early stage builds toward the applied tools of the advanced stage, in coordination with the technical partner, so the pathway reads as one continuous journey rather than two separate offers.
• Partnership and Consortium Management
  Manage the delivery consortium, including anchor, regional, and contributing partners in each market, as well as the technical partner for the advanced learning stage. Lead partner selection, due diligence, onboarding, sub-award management, and performance oversight, ensuring consistent quality and compliance across a distributed delivery model.
• Program Quality, Budget Holding, and Operational Excellence
  Serve as Budget Holder for the initiative, ensuring rigorous fiscal oversight, accurate forecasting, and compliance with funder and IYF standards. Work with finance and operations teams to track expenditures, review financial reports, and ensure timely corrective action where needed. Identify risks in implementation and coordinate mitigation measures to protect program performance and reputation. Apply adaptive management so that data and evidence change decisions mid-implementation, and promote youth-centered approaches that position young people as active participants in design, delivery, and evaluation rather than only as audiences.
• Measurement, Learning, and Evidence
  Working with the Monitoring and Evaluation Manager, ensure participation and learning are verified through credible, privacy-conscious methods, and that engagement thresholds are applied consistently across markets. Drive a learning agenda that documents what works, feeds adaptation during implementation, and produces evidence the funder and the sector can use.
• Team Leadership and Supervision
  Supervise country-level Program Officers, project staff, and consultants, providing clear guidance, constructive feedback, and accountability for performance across four markets and multiple time zones. Promote staff learning opportunities and support career development. Build a collaborative and inclusive team culture rooted in IYF’s values and in the principles of Delight, Steward, and Grow.
• Representation
  Represent the initiative with partners, institutions, and public audiences in the region, in coordination with the Regional Director, who owns the senior funder relationship. Perform other duties as assigned.

Required Skills/Experience

• Minimum of 10 years of progressively responsible experience leading complex, multi-country programs, or equivalent senior experience leading growth, product or operations at scale in the technology or digital education sectors, with significant work experience in Sub-Saharan Africa and in youth employment, digital skills, education, or workforce development.
• Proven track record driving measurable audience growth and conversion, including reach, engagement, completion, and retention, in campaign-based or digital-first delivery models.
• Demonstrated experience in learning design, curriculum development, or skills training for youth or adult learners, including judgment on the quality and relevance of educational content produced by third parties.
• Demonstrated experience managing marketing or creative agencies, contractors, and creator or influencer partnerships, including briefs, scopes of work, and performance management.
• Deep fluency in digital analytics, CRM or marketing automation systems, and emerging AI-enabled tools, with the judgment to use them to inform decisions rather than only to report results.
• Experience managing implementing partners and sub-awards across multiple countries, including due diligence, compliance, and performance oversight.
• A mindset that is both strategic and entrepreneurial: eager to experiment, measure, learn, and adapt mid-implementation.
• Experience delivering for corporate, technology, or foundation funders, including reporting against committed targets.
• Exceptional organizational and project management skills; the ability to identify and establish priorities and attend to detail in a professional manner.
• Confident, persuasive communication skills in English, both oral and written, across internal, partner, and public audiences. Proficiency in a language widely spoken in the target markets, such as Kiswahili, Nigerian Pidgin, Yoruba, Twi or isiZulu, is highly desirable.
• Strong coaching and team leadership skills, with a collegial management style that emphasizes both results and working with a highly skilled, multi-cultural team.
• Deep personal commitment to social and economic development that recognizes youth as critical actors and beneficiaries.
• Excellent computer skills using MS Office products and other software platforms used by IYF.
• Ability to travel frequently within Africa and internationally as needed.
• A Master’s degree in Economics, Education, Communications, Social Sciences, Business, or a closely related field is strongly preferred; Bachelor’s degree plus commensurate experience is acceptable.

Job level

Director I

LOCATION

Remote position based in Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, or South Africa. (Applicants must have the legal authority to work and reside in the country of hire. IYF will not provide work authorization to individuals applying to this position.)

TO APPLY

Please submit your cover letter and CV in English.

IYF?is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are strengthened by the diversity of our colleagues, and we welcome applications from?people of all cultures, experiences, backgrounds, and perspectives.