Code for Africa (CfA) is the continent’s largest network of
civic technology and data journalism labs, with teams in 21 countries. CfA
builds digital democracy solutions that give citizens unfettered access to
actionable information that empowers them to make informed decisions, and that
strengthens civic engagement for improved public governance and accountability.
This includes building infrastructure like the continent’s largest open data
portals at openAFRICA and sourceAFRICA, as well as incubating initiatives as
diverse as the africanDRONE network, the PesaCheck fact-checking initiative and
the sensors.AFRICA air quality sensor network.
CfA also manages the African Network of Centres for
Investigative Reporting (ANCIR), which gives the continent’s best muckraking
newsrooms the best possible forensic data tools, digital security and
whistleblower encryption to help improve their ability to tackle crooked
politicians, organised crime and predatory big business. CfA also runs one of
Africa’s largest skills development initiatives for digital journalists, and
seed funds cross-border collaboration
CfA is a non-profit organisation, registered as a public benefit organisation in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa.
Instructional Designer at Code for Africa (CfA)
Job Description
Positions in: Remote. Open to candidates based anywhere
in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Europe.
Do you want to help design engaging and impactful
learning experiences for our e-learning programmes and MOOCs?
Code for Africa (CfA) has an immediate vacancy for a
mid-level Instructional Designer with strong pedagogical
expertise and proven experience designing curricula using e-learning
technologies and AI-enabled tools.
Required: minimum requirements include:
- Relevant
qualifications or significant demonstrated expertise in learning sciences,
particularly MOOC design, instructional design, learning technologies,
information architecture, evidence-based education, or a related field.
- Experience
developing multimedia and web-based instructional materials for Learning
Management Systems, preferably WordPress LearnDash or a similar platform.
- Ability
to write clear, engaging, inclusive, and conversational learning content.
- Experience
conducting training needs assessments, writing measurable learning
objectives, and storyboarding course outlines and learning journeys.
- Working
knowledge of generative AI tools for learning design and content
development, including the ability to write effective prompts, fact-check
outputs, protect sensitive information, and use AI responsibly.
- Ability
to apply creativity while maintaining excellent attention to detail and
consistency.
- Ability
to work independently, manage multiple priorities, and organise work
effectively across competing timelines and schedules.
Preferred: candidates who are able to demonstrate the
following will have an advantage:
- Proven
experience in instructional design for large-scale e-learning programmes
or MOOCs delivered through platforms such as Coursera, edX, Udemy, or
similar.
- Experience
developing courseware for emerging communication channels, including
mobile platforms such as WhatsApp or equivalent social messaging
platforms.
- Experience
using generative AI tools to support instructional design, content
development, multimedia production, localisation, assessment creation, and
workflow automation, with the ability to fact-check outputs and apply AI
responsibly.
- Ability
to communicate and collaborate effectively with curriculum or domain
experts and project team members working remotely across different time
zones.
- Skills
in multimedia production, including infographics, video scripting,
animation, and audio production.
- Experience
using design and content-development tools such as Canva, InDesign,
VideoScribe, and audio or narration editing tools.
- Proven
ability to repurpose learning content for multiple delivery formats,
including self-paced, tutor-led, and blended learning.
- Experience
using remote collaboration tools, including Slack, Google Drive, and
Trello, to manage workflows.
- Bilingual
proficiency in French or Arabic is an advantage.
Language and Location Requirements:
- Location:
Remote. Open to candidates based anywhere in Africa, Asia, the Middle East
and Europe.
- Languages:
English
- Preferred
but not required: French and/or Arabic
AI Engineer Fellowship (Remote – Africa Preferred) at Code for Africa (CfA)
Code for Africa (CfA), through the InclusionAI
Research Network, with the A+
Alliance, is offering a 6 month fellowship for an AI
Engineer, anywhere in the world, to join our TechLab in implementing
an AI Innovation Sandbox.
The AI Innovation Sandbox is funded by the International Development Research
Centre (IDRC) and the Foreign,
Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) designed to support
women-led and women-focused organisations across Sub-Saharan Africa to build
meaningful, ethical AI tools for their communities.
Through the fellowship, you will architect AI strategy and
implementation. You will own how we adopt, adapt, and deploy AI across multiple
products and those of our partner organisations. The core of this role is building
with AI: designing agent systems that do real work, engineering the context
that makes models useful, evaluating whether what you’ve built actually holds
up in the real world, and iterating until it does.
This is an AI Engineer role, not an ML Engineer role. We’re
looking for someone who builds systems and products using AI — with enough
understanding of how models work to make good decisions, not necessarily to
train them from scratch.
The successful candidates will work as part of a
multinational and multilingual team using digital collaboration tools to create
content for a global audience and international media partners.
Required: minimum requirements include:
- 4+
years building and shipping software, with meaningful hands-on experience
building AI-powered products or systems
- Fluency
in Python and TypeScript
- Demonstrated
experience designing and building agentic AI systems: multi-step task
execution, tool use, memory, planning, and error recovery
- Strong
context engineering instincts: you think about the full information
architecture a model needs to be useful, not just how to phrase a prompt
- A
systematic approach to evals: you design for measurability, not just
intuition, and you know how to tell whether an AI feature is actually
working
- Familiarity
with the broader AI ecosystem: open-source tooling alongside commercial
APIs and nonprofit access programmes from leading labs
- Strong
system design instincts around AI: you think about latency, fallbacks,
cost, and reliability, not just model quality
- Sound
judgement on responsible AI: bias, fairness, transparency, and the limits
of what a model should be asked to do
- The
ability to communicate clearly across the room: to an engineer debugging a
pipeline and to a journalist or funder asking what it all means
- Fluency
in English
- A
degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field — or
equivalent experience you can point to through your work and portfolio
Preferred: candidates who are able to
demonstrate the following will have an advantage:
- Experience
deploying open-source LLMs in production environments
- Existing
relationships or experience working with AI lab programmes: Anthropic for
Startups/Nonprofits, OpenAI for Nonprofits, Google.org AI access, or
similar
- Familiarity
with vector databases, embedding models, and knowledge graph approaches
- Experience
with multimodal AI systems
- Background
in containerisation and cloud infrastructure (Docker, Kubernetes,
cloud-hosted model deployment)
- Experience
in civic technology, investigative journalism, international development,
or human rights contexts
- Experience
with multilingual NLP, particularly for low-resource or African languages
- Fluency
in French, Arabic, KiSwahili, or another major African language
- Experience
working across international, cross-cultural technical teams
Language and Location Requirements:
- Location:
Fully remote — open to candidates anywhere in the world, with a preference
for those based in Africa
- Languages:
English required; French, Arabic, KiSwahili, or any other major African
language is a significant advantage