POSITION: Head of Growth
REPORTS TO: CEO
LOCATION: Anywhere in Africa (remote) with a priority for South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, and Nigeria
Longterm/Full time
Applications Due on October 18th, 2021 at 11:59pm EAT
UBONGO is Africa’s leading producer of kids’ edutainment. As a non-profit social enterprise, we create fun, localised and multi-platform educational content that helps kids learn, and leverage their learning to change their lives. Ubongo reaches millions of families across Africa through accessible technologies like TV, radio and mobile phones. Our show’s Ubongo Kids and Akili and Me currently air in 41 countries across Africa, in Swahili, English, French, and Kinyarwanda. We are currently adapting the shows to even more languages including Kikuyu, Luo, Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, and Twi. This is a great time to join an organisation that’s rapidly growing across the continent, and work with a creative and impact-driven team committed to reaching as many families in Africa with life-changing edutainment.
We are looking for a Head of Growth. The ideal candidate must be extremely passionate about the work that we do with a ‘can do’ attitude, have integrity, great communication skills, be self-motivated, organised and energetic. Working at Ubongo won’t be easy, but it will challenge and excite you with lots of responsibilities, plenty of fun, and give you the opportunity to impact the lives of millions of kids every day.
By 2025, we plan to reach over 60 million kids across all of Sub Saharan Africa, to help us get there the Head of Growth will lead our growth to new markets, distribution of content through broadcast and through other means to reach underserved kids, and support our country operations led by Country Representatives currently located in Malawi, Kenya, Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire, and Uganda. As our pan-Africa presence increases, Ubongo seeks to increase operational efficiency and provide data-driven insights and planning tools that guide local strategy and help implement strategic and defined tactics that are both locally relevant and pan-regionally aligned. The ideal candidate will work collaboratively with our teams across Africa to develop country specific strategies that guide our content distribution, partnerships building, fundraising and marketing. They will oversee strategy implementation and work closely with country representatives, managers and head of distribution.
They should be results driven, inventive self-starters who want to be part of a growing organization, and willing to roll up their sleeves and collaborate in a manner that engenders trust and engagement from across the organization.
Who are you?
- A Natural Team Leader – you have the ability to build strategic foundations, conceptualize project approaches and articulate the needs for the region to the cross-leadership team partners
- A Solution & Data-driven Collaborator – you love facilitating, contributing and supporting cross-functional alignment and planning discussions whilst leveraging insights and learnings
- An Empathetic Pusher – you are able to navigate complex operational problems and take into consideration that different partners may have varying priorities — requiring you to push to get things done, while still being understanding and empathetic
- An Outside-of-the-Box Thinker – you approach tasks with a fresh perspective rather than leveraging past or existing frameworks and methodologies, always taking into consideration cross-functional team input and doing what is best for the business long-term
- A Trustworthy Partner – you are accountable and authentic. One of our key organizational values is ‘Utu’ (which means shared humanity in Kiswahili), and having Utu characteristics is essential to working well with other Ubongoers, partners, and representing the organization effectively
- A Concise Communicator & Good Listener – you have a solid written & oral English skills; multilingual skills in Swahili and/or French is a nice to have
RESPONSIBILITIES:
- Lead broadcast and distribution strategy. Support and manage broadcast managers and mitigate any risks or challenges affecting distribution.
- Thought Partner with country representatives, country managers and other teams to develop country specific strategies that support content distribution, broadcast business development, marketing activities and other activations.
- Oversee strategy execution across markets while working closely with country representatives on the ground, mobilize resources by supporting organizational fundraising efforts and marshall resources from Ubongo HQ to country teams as needed.
- Grow a pan African team through expansion to new markets, recruitment of new talent and coaching of existing team members – setting them up for success.
- Understand key market trends, gather business intelligence through market research and make data driven decisions.
- Lead strategically to develop partnerships with government institutions, broadcasters, non-profit organizations and corporations across Africa.
- Serve as the cross-functional brand ambassador providing high-level guidance, best practices, and on-going plans to support country reps serving as country ambassadors, build partnerships, collaborate with other internal teams, and grow content/brand throughout the region.
- Create opportunities for knowledge exchange and capacity building across the country teams.
- Partner with the marketing and communications teams to ensure long-term planning and alignment upstream on business priorities, growth initiatives, content strategy, project prioritization, timelines, and budgeting allocations.
- Seek innovation opportunities working cross functionally by identifying new workflows, templates, and automated tools to optimize deliverables and increase efficiencies
- Support country reps with budget management and disbursement of funds. Eg working with the operations team to build templates for them to use, and ensuring they are compliant according to Ubongo procedures and regulations
- Provide them with business intelligence and having systems for tracking progress. Building dashboards for each country to track their metrics.
- Develop playbooks and guides that can help them understand how to address and overcome challenges they meet along the way. Eg, access to tools with critical information.
- Travel across Africa to support country teams.
- Ensure standardization of approaches and processes across countries eg. Set up systems to streamline processes such as travel, financial management.
REQUIREMENT:
TO BE A MATCH, YOU’LL NEED TO BE:
- A visionary with a deep understanding of franchise and brand-building with technology and operations management success
- Strategic and analytical approach to solutions and decisions, problem-solving and ability to work through ambiguity to align departments/teams on goals
- Long-term strategy development and lifecycle planning experience
- A great, interpersonal communicator, with a high EQ, excellent written and oral communication skills in English; multilingual experience a plus
- Stellar multi-tasking, project management and organizational skills with a high attention to detail and the ability to meet deadlines
- Highly flexible in a fast-paced, changing environment with the ability to quickly resolve issues and prioritize a large workload
- You love content creation and have some knowledge of the entertainment landscape and media trends
- Passionate about childrens’ education and enhancing their learning experiences
- Persistent and a go-getter! We have a big goal and have to get things done with limited resources.
- Be willing to wear many hats!