AMI Programme Manager: Digital Innovation Programme

Programme Manager Digital Innovation Programme

The African Media Initiative (AMI) seeks to strengthen the media sector, from an owner and operator perspective, so that it can play its full role in promoting social development and economic growth, and in empowering citizens to hold governments and other institutions to account.

AMI is incorporated in the Republic of Kenya as a non-profit, non-governmental organization. To strengthen its institutional building, AMI is looking to employ a dynamic and self-motivated Programme Manager for its portfolio of Digital Journalism Initiatives.

He/She will be responsible for execution of a wide portfolio of digital projects and will also manage AMI’s various online and offline tech innovation communities.

As such, he/she will be an important public face of AMI’s stakeholder engagement programmes, responsible for producing tangible successes through proof-of-concept digital projects, while harvesting and documenting re-usable knowledge, and serving as a steward to AMI’s community members by building trust, seeding information, creating ambassadors, and nurturing collaboration and experimentation.

The position requires someone with the following attributes:

● Strong understanding of the African journalism and wider media ecosystem ● Strong understanding of digital innovation & information technologies ● Strong planning & organisational skills ● Strong timekeeping & deadline management skills ● Strong analytical ability, critical thinking, & problem-solving skills ● Strong community management & stakeholder mobilisation skills ● Strong report-writing and narrative skills ● Budget planning and resource management skills

The position is an office-based job, located at AMI’s secretariat in Nairobi, but will require occasional local and international travel, as well as weekend/evening work.

It may also require occasional public appearances at international events, as a speaker, panelist, or representation at AMI’s digital projects.

The successful candidate will report to AMI’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), and his designated deputy/s, but will work under the day-to-day direction of AMI’s chief digital strategist. He/She will also assist on the digital components of the organisations programmes’ portfolios.

The job will consist of three distinct sets of duties and responsibilities:

1.) Digital Project Management

He/She will be responsible for providing day-to-day support services to AMI’s digital strategist, as well as management of flagship projects. This will include implementing digital innovation projects initiated by the strategist, as well as seconded support for projects managed by AMI’s knowledge manager and other AMI programme managers.

Flagship projects that the successful candidate will be responsible for managing include the:

● African News Innovation Challenge (www.AfricanNewsChallenge.org): an annual $1m fund for digital innovation in African newsrooms. ● Ujuzi Skills Programme (www.Ujuzi.org): a portfolio of event-based training and capacity building initiatives, including dBootcamps, dRoundtables, dMasterclasses, MBA-style mid-career seminars for newsroom managers, Code for Democracy hackathons, and DataLiberation scraperthons, etc. ● Code for Africa (www.Code-Africa.org): the continent’s leading Open Data and Open Government initiative, currently running country-based fellowships and civic tech labs in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa, with additional countries set to be added in the near future. ● AMI Prototype Fund: a micro-grant programme that supports small, fast-track seed grants for newsrooms to build prototypes of new digital tools, methods, platforms for improved impact.

The incumbent’s duties relating to the above projects, plus his/her wider support responsibilities, will be spelled out in detail in a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) annexure, but will include:

1.1) General support services to the digital strategist 1.2) Designing the scope, technical specs, and implementation schedule for projects 1.3) Identifying and manage project developers / designers, & other sub-contractors 1.4) Ensuring delivery of projects on schedule & to tech specs 1.5) Assist with management of project budgets & procurement 1.6) Produce project progress reports, proposals and presentations 1.7) Build, develop & grow stakeholder relationships as required by projects 1.8) Design and execute social media & content strategies in support of projects 1.9) General office admin (including record-keeping & stakeholder CRM)

A crucial part of the successful candidate’s responsibilities will be to ensure that projects under his/her management integrate (from both a technical and content perspective) with the rest of AMI’s programmes.

2.) Community / Stakeholder Coordination

He/She will also be responsible for assisting the AMI digital strategist in initiating, managing, and growing an ecosystem of inter-related niche communities under the AMI aegis.

This will include managing physical stakeholder communities, such as AMI’s HacksHackers network, as well as managing the sub-contractors, digital platforms, support systems, and events that empower such communities.

The duties will be spelled out in detail in a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) annexure, but will include:

2.1) Design and implement stakeholder engagement & recruitment strategies 2.2) Identify, locate and engage advocates / influencers within targeted communities 2.3) Recruit community members & guide the election of self-governing community leadership 2.4) Develop community charters, protocols, & organisational structures 2.5) Provide general support services & governance oversight to stakeholder communities 2.6) Foster community dialogue & coordinate community activity / events / campaigns 2.7) Monitor and moderate community activity to ensure governance, growth, & performance 2.8) Maintain community databases, & manage community digital platforms 2.9) Leverage synergies and/or opportunities for AMI created by the communities 2.10) Document community activity, produce analytic reports, & create engagement manuals

3.) Digital Platforms

He/She will furthermore work with the CEO and programme managers to shape AMI’s digitisation strategies, and will oversee AMI’s digital platforms.

The duties will be spelled out in detail in a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) annexure, but will include:

3.1) Contributing research and thought-leadership on AMI’s digital engagement strategies 3.2) Technical management of AMI’s digital programme web portal, and affiliated project websites 3.3) Implementation of Open Knowledge and Linked Data systems within AMI 3.4) Oversight of UI / UX and other usability standards, including cross-platform functionality 3.5) Management of membership and stakeholder databases 3.6) Production of meaningful analytic / metric reports for all AMI digital platforms

The detailed KPIs, with quarterly delivery targets, for each of the above responsibilities will be developed in consultation with the successful candidate, and will form the basis for a performance-based contract.

How to apply:

Application Process:

For more information on the enlisted job position kindly visit www.africanmediainitiative.org
Interested candidates should submit electronic applications, consisting of a letter of interest (two pages or fewer) and complete curriculum vitae, in either Microsoft Word or Adobe PDF Format, to the following AMI email address by close of business on Friday, 19 April 2013: jobs@africanmediainitiative.org Please include the job title in the subject line.