Senior Hub Manager, FLN Advocacy Hub

Provide visionary and disciplined leadership to the FLN Advocacy Hub (a mix of direct Speak Up Africa grantees and direct Gates Foundation grantees) so that, by 2028, foundational learning is treated as a policy and financing priority across regional fora, global and domestic contexts, Kenya has adopted and funded foundational learning specific Presidential Task Force recommendations, accountability is institutionalized at AU level, and partners operate under one recognizable African-led campaign.

Strategy and Planning

• Lead the co-creation and annual refresh of the Hub Strategy and Coordination Compact with partners.
• Finalize and own delivery against the Results Framework and annual workplans, with clear continental and country tracks.
• Maintain the action plan for AU/SADC/ADEA/CONFEMEN decision and advocacy windows and align partner efforts to it.

Coalition Building and Partner Management

• Convene bi-annual in-person grantee meetings and bi-monthly virtual exchanges (alternating months); design each interaction with decision-focused agendas, clear pre-reads, well-defined action points, and identified owners.
• Broker structured collaboration with UNICEF, ADEA, CONFEMEN-PASEC, PAL Network, the Global Coalition for Foundational Learning, and media partners, ensuring coherence on messaging, timing, evidence use, and political moments. Maintain a proactive posture that reduces duplication, strengthens complementarity, and drives collective wins.
• Set up and maintain a practical knowledge-management backbone:
  • a central repository on the FLN Hub microsite (documents, tools, evidence, communication assets),
  • a shared action calendar, and
  • monthly “at-a-glance” coalition updates sharing upcoming activities, key opportunities, responsible leads, and available assets. This ensures all partners have visibility into one another’s workstreams and can coordinate seamlessly.
• Identify capacity constraints across partners early (e.g., strategic communications, PFM/budget tracking, MEL, safeguarding, grant management, media content development) and arrange tailored solutions, including: targeted technical assistance, rapid short sprints, peer-learning formats, or onboarding vetted external specialists when needed.
• Maintain a regular coordination cadence with the Gates Foundation senior program officers to ensure strategic coherence and timely updates. The Hub Manager will stay across emerging developments in the Foundation’s innovation and research portfolios (aid/edtech, math, gender, language-of-instruction transitions), as well as its systems and scale work (donor coalitions, funder collaboratives). The goal is to anticipate potential implications for advocacy and integrate these insights into partner workstreams and coalition messaging.

Country Delivery: Kenya Coalition

• Oversee a competitively selected anchor grantee and 3–5 specialist sub-grantees.
• Chair monthly policy rooms that sequence outputs to the budget calendar and troubleshoot potential risks.
• Ensure two Task Force recommendations move from proposal to adoption, appropriation, and in-year disbursement by 2028.

Ensure complementarity and coordination with ongoing work on political coalition-building side of movement-building – Lighthouse Coalition.

Regional Work and Learning Engine

• In close collaboration with Speak Up Africa’s MOHEBS Advocacy Manager, steer the Senegal MOHEBS learning loop to codify practical tactics that influence Finance and Education decision-makers. At the same time, stay regularly across the work in South Africa (a priority country for the Gates Foundation’s PST portfolio) to ensure both country experiences are aligned, mutually reinforcing, and strategically integrated into regional and global advocacy moments.
• Lead the development and delivery of a structured learning agenda for Hub partners, spanning:evidence use and translation, political economy analysis, budget influence and tracking, accountability mechanisms, and strategic communications for education reform.
  Ensure insights from Senegal and South Africa feed directly into shared learning cycles.
• Oversee the Hub’s webinar and skills series, and ensure that lessons are captured as concise “what worked” notes, toolkits, checklists, and micro-briefs hosted on the microsite for partner use and external dissemination.
• Manage and support targeted regional partners (e.g., ADEA, PAL Network), subject to due diligence and compliance, and oversee deliverables such as FLEX/assessment alignment insights, cross-country learning notes, and contributions to the Hub’s shared evidence library.
• Ensure that these regional products reinforce and elevate the combined narrative and create coherence across countries.

Sub-granting, Compliance, and Risk

• With Grants & Compliance, design and enforce flow-down provisions that reflect Foundation terms, including the prohibition on lobbying, safeguarding, anti-corruption, and Open Access obligations.
• Approve statements of work with quarterly milestones; manage tranche-based disbursements, corrective actions, and reallocation if needed.
• Maintain a light pre-clearance for government-facing materials; log audiences, purpose, and approvals; escalate any ambiguity to SUA’s compliance lead and the Foundation program officer.

Advocacy, Communications, and Brand

• Direct the white-label campaign and messaging framework; ensure every major moment has a moment card with audience, assets, and success signals.
• Oversee the management, planning, and content production for the Hub’s communications channels and assets, including the podcast, social media pages, and the microsite; set editorial standards and an approvals workflow.
• Supervise the Advocacy & Communications Officer to run the microsite, editorial calendar, and bilingual spotlight series with African outlets and Devex.
• Curate a diverse champion pool and place voices on priority stages; ensure evidence and human stories translate into finance-ready asks.

MEL and Evaluation

• Work with the MEL Lead and an independent evaluator to implement mixed-methods learning: contribution analysis, outcome harvesting, policy and budget text analytics, media analytics.
• Run quarterly learning sprints that feed course corrections; publish an annual learning brief.

Finance and Operations

• Manage the Hub budget, forecasts, and re-grants; ensure timely and accurate donor reporting.
• Oversee the subcontract to Africa Practice during transition and any other vendor agreements.

People Leadership

• Recruit, coach, and performance-manage the Hub team; establish clear norms for bilingual collaboration, structured workflows, and the production of high-quality, ready-to-use outputs that partners can deploy immediately.
• Embody SUA’s values and safeguarding standards. Foster a culture of trust-building, psychological safety, and close, respectful engagement with partners, ensuring the Hub is seen as a reliable, collaborative, and catalytic ally.
• Strengthen internal cohesion and external credibility. Create rhythms for team reflection, learning, and mutual accountability; ensure staff are consistently aligned on priorities, decision-making approaches, and expectations for partner-facing work.

• Results Framework completed within six months with clear targets and data sources.
• Kenya coalition fully operational with signed sub-grants, quarterly milestones met, and at least one priority recommendation with a documented budget path.
• White-label campaign and microsite live, with asset uptake by partners.
• AU accountability mechanism co-designed and used by Q3 2026.
• Documented reduction in duplication through the run-of-show and partner sequencing; positive partner satisfaction.
• Clean compliance record and timely donor reports.

• Advanced degree in public policy, education, economics, public administration, or related field.
• 10+ years of demonstrable and progressively senior experience in advocacy or driving education/public-sector reform in Africa, including coalition building and leadership and government engagement.
• Demonstrable budget and PFM literacy and a track record of linking advocacy to budget allocations and execution.
• Strong grants management experience, including sub-granting to CSOs and compliance with major donor policies.
• Proven ability to translate evidence into compelling advocacy products and to manage media and strategic communications.
• Excellent relationship management with regional bodies (AU, ADEA, CONFEMEN) and multilaterals; experience with philanthropic partners is an asset.
• Bilingual English/French required.
• Willingness to travel up to 30%.

• Strategic systems thinking and political judgment
• Partnership brokering and facilitation
• Results orientation with disciplined follow-through
• Clear, persuasive writer and speaker in EN/FR
• Commitment to SUA’s values: Inclusion, Diligence, Excellence, Accountability and Sustainability
• Team leadership and coaching
• Risk management and compliance