The Africa FOSS currently seeks a Community Empowerment Manager. The Empowerment manager will be the face of the African Free Software and Open Source organization in Africa. S/He will manage communications in both directions and empowers the multiple communities hosted by FOSSFA. This digital-savvy employee is also responsible for all communications, PR, social media, and content creation on the community portals, among other things.
Duties and Responsibility:
- Community Empowerment – work with the multiple virtual communities hosted by FOSSFA, namely the FOSSFA members community, the FOSS Business Models Training community of ict@innovation, the Linux Trainers community of ict@innovation, the general ict@innovation community and the Africa FOSS community. The manager, in close contact with the communities, shall be responsible to plan, organize and implement steps, which enable the communities to:
- further grow,
- govern themselves through established peer-to-peer self-governance mechanisms and
- add value to the members of the communities, particularly FOSSFA members.
- Community integration – The Africa FOSS Community Empowerment Manager shall also plan and implement the integration of the three ict@innovation communities (FOSS Business Models Training community (200 members) of ict@innovation, the Linux Trainers community of ict@innovation (150 members), the general ict@innovation community(800 members)) into the FOSSFA community family in order to maximize the potential of the communities for the organization and vice versa. This will include community-related integration aspects and oversight of the technical integration from the subdomain www.ict-innovation.fossfa.net to www.fossfa.net)
- Content creation and Updating – To empower the communities, write blog posts, articles, newsletters, communications materials, and material for social media channels. The Manager is solely responsible for updating the main FOSSFA site and related project pages, with input by FOSSFA members and the communities.
- Africa FOSS Directory – The Manger shall implement a live Africa FOSS Directory on http://directory.fossfa.net as one identified step of “added value” for members of the FOSSFA communities. The directory shall serve as a clearing house for African FOSS expertise in all domains, building on existing communities and directory information of FOSSFA projects such as ict@innovation1. It shall contain appropriate sections that shall match the expectations of the community that contain community-driven updating and governance structures2.
- Social media marketing – creating, managing and growing the organization’s presence through blogs, microblogs and other relevant community social media. Enable the community to contribute and co-manage the organizations presence in relevant online spaces (e.g. taking up community management roles)
- Events and event planning – attending events on behalf of the organization and plan meet-ups for the FOSS and FOSSFA community in countries and on the continent
- Public relations – support the FOSSFA secretariat in managing incoming media requests; develop and maintain and relationships with journalists and FOSSFA Liaisons to promote the activities and values of FOSSFA, and engage the FOSSFA communities to contribute to public relations through peer-to-peer processes (e.g. blogging etc.)
- Analytics – Using online analytic tools and other measurement tools to provide reports on metrics, and continually find ways to improve on those metrics through testing and new initiatives
The Community Manager shall report to both the Africa FOSS Community. This will include, among others
- FOSSFA Secretariat
- FOSSFA members
- FOSSFA partners
- At-Large Africa FOSS community
- The global FOSS community on behalf of the African FOSS constituency
Qualifications:
- Openness, creativity, leadership potentials
- A relevant University diploma or degree
- Sufficient practice and knowledge of web 2.0, particularly social media tools / community building tools
- Proven experience of working with communities and within communities, experience with establishing self-governance mechanisms of communities is a plus, ideas on it is a must.
- Intense activity on Social media
- Passion for openness, networking, and African tech development
- Understanding of the open source landscape
Required Skills:
- Capacity to adapt to any African environment
- High sense of organisation, since you will be working from your base
- Capacity to work under pressure, meet tight deadlines
- Team player, especially in virtual collaboration and co-working
- Mastery of the English language, and no fear of other African languages
How to apply:
- Send two documents:
- 1 page on how you plan to do the work and how much you want to be paid by month and include cost of Internet connection
- Your CV
- Send these two documents in .odt or .pdf by October 18, 2011 Midnight GMT
- Send these documents to:
- executive@fossfa.net
- secretariat@fossfa.net
- petra.hagemann@giz.de
Job Type:
The job will be for an initial contract of 6 months, renewable on satisfactory performance and availability of funding. Performance will be monitored against a work plan based on the “duties and responsibilities” of this document. Overall performance indicator after one year will be the achieved degree of self-governance of the core communities.
