Terms of Reference for the recruitment of:

Project Officer for the  Smart Africa Digital Academy and Scholarship Fund

Position

Project Support Officer (PO), Smart Africa Digital Academy and Scholarship Fund

Introduction

SMART Africa is a bold and innovative commitment from African Heads of State and Government and a wide range of stakeholders including the private sector, international non-government organizations, and academia to accelerate sustainable socio-economic development on the continent, ushering Africa into a knowledge economy through affordable access to Broadband and usage of Information and Communications Technologies.

The Smart Africa agenda is led by visionary Heads of State who believe in ICT’s power for the advancement and betterment of the African continent. This agenda will lead Africa to the 04^th industrial revolution, using the transformative power of ICTs through successful implementation and deployment of major ICT infrastructure, applications, services, and creating locally relevant content for Africa while developing a vibrant ICT industry and creating jobs.

Smart Africa aims to put ICT at the Center of the National socioeconomic development agenda of member countries, improve access to ICT, especially Broadband, improve accountability, efficiency, and openness through ICT. It promotes the introduction of advanced technologies in telecommunication while putting the Private Sector first, and leveraging  ICT to promote sustainable development.

About the Smart Africa Digital Academy

Over the past decade, Africa has made great strides in enrolling children in school, with some countries providing free primary education for the first nine years. Despite this achievement, the average Human Capital Index (HCI) falls below the average, with one of the highest being 52 on a scale of 100, education being a major determinant factor.

With a population estimated to approximately 1.3bn people who are majorly youthful, ensuring quality jobs to leverage on the continent’s demographic opportunity is set to be one of Africa’s game-changer. An estimated 15 to 20 million increasingly well-educated young people will join the African workforce every year for the next three decades.

The Smart Africa Digital Academy (SADA) is the delivery vehicle of the Smart Africa capacity building and skills development activities across the various digital skills spectrum. It is a pan-African dynamic learning ecosystem in which African citizens of all ages and social classes can gain or improve their digital skills, gain qualifications, meet the emerging talent needs of employers, industry or be self-reliant.

The birth of SADA was driven by the need to meet a genuine need for sustainable jobs driven by the fact that 15% of the world’s working-age population are expected to be from Africa by 2030. The governments of the Smart Africa Member States recognize the urgency to drive inclusion and economic growth through the development and adoption of strategies for education and skills development to build this required future workforce. Digital skills development at all levels – from basic to competency-based – is required to allow the uptake of new technologies in the economy, increase productivity, support growth while avoiding unnecessary disruptions in the labor market and society.

One of the SADA’s initiatives to contributing to the knowledge sharing and nation-building initiatives that will enhance the competitiveness of the African continent is “The Smart Africa Scholarship fund”. Established in 2015, to empower talented students from the Member States with the required critical skills in the ICT sector – the fund has raised one million six hundred thousand dollars (USD 1.6mn) from partners and Member States such as: (ITU), South Sudan, Rwanda, Burkina Faso, Mali, Gabon, Kenya, and Côte d’Ivoire. Eighty-two (82) talented African students have been trained in top universities and centers of excellence across Africa. The training addressed the shortage of advanced critical skills such as Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Machine Learning, Blockchain, Data privacy, and security at the level of Master degrees.

Duties and Responsibilities

The Smart Africa Secretariat would like to recruit a Project Officer (PO) for the SADA to manage and implement activities relating to the Smart Africa digital Academy in Rwanda and the Smart Africa Scholarship Fund 2021 in the continent.

Responsibilities include:

• Support the development of training plans and implementation of trainings within the context of SADA.
• Provide technical support in reviewing and designing training schedules for centrally held trainings.
• Coordinate the implementation of the Smart Africa Scholarship Fund project;
• Support the setup of robust governance to oversee its successful implementation;
• Define the selection criteria and recruitment of Smart Africa Centers of Excellence;
• Coordination with identified partners (Smart Africa Centers of Excellence) to ensure the timely delivery of expected outputs and reports;
• Supporting the mobilization of funds required by the Smart Africa Scholarship program;
• Coordinating required logistics from the selection process through assignments in the different institutions.
• Document routine progress, success, and the implementation process of SADA.
• Provide analytical learnings from the implementation to ease scale-up of activities
• Providing periodical reports on the progress of project activities and issues arising;

Other responsibilities will include:

• Any other assignments or projects, which will be assigned from time to time by the leadership of Smart Africa;

Key qualifications

Education:

• A Bachelor’s Degree in ICT, Information Management, Engineering, Information Technology, Business Administration, or a related field with recognized experience of at least 2 years; or
• A Masters’ Degree in Information Management, Engineering, Information Technology, Business Administration, or other related fields

General experience and skills:

• A minimum of five years of experience in ICT capacity development area at a national or regional level;
• Familiarity with digital strategy approaches, national ICT strategies, and training development standards;
• Good experience in fundraising and creative writing;
• Proven experience in project management practices with the ability to provide inputs in a team build-up, work plans development, budgets, and expenditures;
• Good interpersonal skills with experience in networking with partners at all levels;
• Experience in results-based management, project monitoring, reporting, and evaluation;
• Demonstrated written, analytical, presentation, reporting, and computing skills and familiarity with modern communication systems (internet, the world wide web, email, and related);
• Ability to work in a team;
• Strong competence in the use of standard software productivity tools (such as Microsoft Office Suite or others).

Languages:

• Excellent Knowledge and Fluency in French and English.
• Good working knowledge of another language will be an added advantage.

Duration of the assignment

The appointment will be for one (1) year renewable subject to availability of funds and performance assessment.

Reporting requirements

The Project Officer will report to the PM in Charge of ICT Skills Development and Capacity-building under the Digital Infrastructure department.

Location 

Kigali, Rwanda

Please send your Curriculum Vitae, cover letter, either French or English to the following email address:[email protected] not later than 11^th January 2021 5:00 pm Kigali time.