Senior Partnerships Officer (Education Sector, Africa)

Job description

**Senior Partnerships Officer (Education Sector, Africa)** Prevail partners with ambitious organizations and governments in Africa and South Asia to help catalyze reforms that can transform millions of lives. As an Ecosystems Partnerships Officer, you will lead a portfolio of 2 to 4 government-facing foundational learning reform opportunities in Africa. Your job is to identify where Prevail can play a catalytic role, build the relationships needed to move opportunities forward, shape strong funding proposals, and support partners and governments to deliver results at scale. This is a hands-on role for someone who can turn promising reform opportunities into real progress. You build strong relationships, work well across governments, partners and funders, and know how to get things done. **About Prevail** Prevail is a new foundation dedicated to catalyzing large-scale social change by supporting private philanthropists and field implementers to pursue more ambitious and impactful goals. We work with private philanthropists to fund specific initiatives for 10-12 years. Rather than diversifying across multiple causes, we prioritize deep, strategic investments in proven solutions with the potential to reshape global norms. For example, our first fund aims to improve foundational education for over 27.5 million children across 11 national governments in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Prevail provides patient capital to implementers – primarily in the form of grants that grow over time as our partner organizations scale. In addition to funding, Prevail also offers a suite of systems and talent development services designed to address common growth barriers and prepare partner organizations for accelerated scale. In our first three years, we've: - Made significant progress against our ambitious fundraising targets - Partnered with 30+ organizations across Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia - Hired 35+ mission-driven team members globally - Run dozens of execution projects to strengthen key functions for our partners You can find a bit more information about Prevail Fund and what to expect from our recruitment process [here](https://www.canva.com/design/DAGetQfrr9U/JDu6A0CR7Y_-xZ9CvYAnww/view?utm_content=DAGetQfrr9U&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=uniquelinks&utlId=h57b65ef349). **About this role** In this role, you will work across governments and the broader education ecosystem to understand where large-scale foundational learning reforms are gaining momentum, where they are getting stuck, and what support could help them succeed. Most of your work will focus on reforms involving structured pedagogy, targeted instruction, and/or personalized, adaptive learning. You will assess political and implementation realities, identify bottlenecks and opportunities, coordinate funding and technical support, and help partners move from promising ideas to sustained impact at scale. - Ecosystem engagement: You will identify and develop promising government-facing reform support opportunities. - Proactively develop promising funding opportunities by building relationships, spotting openings, shaping early ideas, and aligning with government and other ecosystem actors. This may be in support to other Partnership Officers leading engagement in key geographies. - Identify potential partners who could support government-led reforms, including groups of partners with complementary roles such as goal-setting, design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation. - Stay closely connected to key actors such as the Global Partnership for Education, the World Bank, bilateral funding agencies, other foundations, and support organizations where their priorities, financing, or influence could materially affect funding opportunities and/or the cost-effective impact and scale of supported reforms. - Funding and investment decisions: You will manage the funding decisions for your portfolio. - Develop clear funding proposals for government-led reforms. This includes defining the support needed, any phased funding milestones, partner roles, and opportunities to coordinate financing with other donors or initiatives - As needed, secure government approvals – including memoranda of understanding when required – and other funder sign-off for Prevail funding - Facilitate and integrate Prevail team review of funding proposals to strengthen plans and in preparation for Investment Committee approval - Develop clear recommendations for funding continuation, scale-ups, or exits - Identify any ecosystem enabling investments that could meaningfully increase the likelihood of reform success. - Actively support funded reform efforts: You will support partners to solve problems, act on opportunities, and improve the chances of sustained cost-effective impact at scale. - Track performance data of reform efforts and progress against agreed milestones to see whether the work is on course. - Where needed, manage in-country colleagues, consultants, or advisors so Prevail has the local context, relationships, and follow-through needed to support reform efforts well. - Hold regular meetings with funded partner teams – and, where needed, directly with government and other ecosystem actors – to surface risks and opportunities early, and work jointly on solutions and pivots - Conduct field visits to understand delivery on the ground and identify any support needs to boost achievement of key milestones - Scope and deliver targeted support projects to address specific problems or opportunities that come up during implementation, and coordinate support from Prevail’s technical team or external experts when useful. - Broader team contribution: You will contribute to learning and collaboration across the Prevail team. - Support Prevail’s learning about ecosystem engagement and government-facing funding approaches, helping to identify key learning questions and efficient ways of answering and sharing learning internally and potentially externally - Partner with other partnerships officers at Prevail on initiatives that go beyond individual countries - for example, bringing together ecosystem actors or partner leaders to share learning or co-design a shared project. - Feed learnings back into our broader fund strategy, including what it takes to effectively support government-led reform efforts to achieve cost-effective impact and sustainability at scale, where bottlenecks and opportunities emerge, and which models are working best. **About you** We’re looking for someone who has successfully moved complex reforms or large scale initiatives forward, and can point to concrete results. This could be inside the government, a delivery organization, a funder, an advisory role, or a mix of these. What’s most important is that you demonstrably changed outcomes: policies implemented, systems shifted, children reached. You’ve worked across institutions, solved difficult implementation problems, and helped turn ambitious goals into practical action. - Government and ecosystem experience: You have at least 10 years of experience working in roles that required you to engage governments, funders, implementing organizations, or other system actors to drive progress on complex initiatives, and you can point to initiatives that actually moved as a result. Experience in education and working in or with government systems is strongly preferred. - Consistent track record of results: You have a strong track record of directly achieving big goals. You’re comfortable leading projects independently, making decisions, and moving quickly. - Problem solving: You know how to diagnose where progress is getting stuck and help shape practical solutions. You are comfortable working across strategy, implementation, stakeholder dynamics, and execution. You follow through until the problem is actually solved. - Advising and influencing: You have experience influencing senior decision makers without formal authority. You can bring clarity to ambiguous situations, exercise strong judgment, and help leaders translate ideas into action. - Coordination and relationship building: You are strong at building trusted relationships and bringing together actors with different priorities to move toward shared goals. Experience working across governments, funders, multilaterals, and implementing organizations, along with an established network in the impact ecosystem, is a strong plus. - Hands on: This role involves travel and on-the-ground support. You are drawn to the heart of the action and motivated by working alongside our partners to achieve shared goals. - Fluency in French: Nice to have! ## **What we offer** - Full time, permanent contract. - Flexibility: Fully remote position within Africa, with opportunity to travel 4-6 times per year. - Competitive salary based on experience, skills and location. We share salary bands with candidates during the informational call; final offers are based on interview performance. - Meaningful benefits. Health insurance and wellness benefits, home workspace or co-working stipend, plus a generous learning and development budget. - Growth opportunities. We deeply care about investing in our team’s professional development. You’ll receive strong manager support, targeted feedback, performance support, clear pay progression, upwards or lateral mobility. - Flexible leave policy. Including 25 days PTO, plus public holidays. **Location:** This position is fully remote with approximately 30% travel, and a preference for someone based in Africa. We are not normally able to sponsor visas. **Career growth & development:** We care about investing in our team’s professional development. You will have regular check-ins with your manager and career feedback sessions. You will also have regular access to senior leadership, both internally and with partner organizations, through your work. **Start date**: As soon as possible – applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. **Application process** Our hiring process is thorough but efficient. Successful candidates will go through: - Initial conversation with the people team (30-45 minutes) - Hiring Manager interview (45-60 minutes) - Live exercise with a Partnerships Officer (90 minutes) - Paid take-home exercise (~5hrs) - Panel interview (90 minutes) and 1:1 conversations with others in the team Through the process, we’ll share feedback on the assessments, and invite candidates to incorporate it. This mirrors how we work day to day: collaboratively, with openness to feedback and iteration. **Ready to join us?** If you’re excited to help us scale, apply using the link below. We review every application and aim to invite successful candidates for an informational call within 3 weeks. **For more information**, feel free to check out the job [FAQ](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xwnTU_czoRhzRgA6SGpzUishkAgpMn9E16g73qeuhE8/edit?tab=t.0). We encourage you to read this in advance of the first informational call! You can find a bit more information about Prevail Fund and what to expect from our recruitment process [here](https://www.canva.com/design/DAGetQfrr9U/JDu6A0CR7Y_-xZ9CvYAnww/view?utm_content=DAGetQfrr9U&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=uniquelinks&utlId=h57b65ef349). *\*Note: If you currently work for one of Prevail’s partner organizations, we’d love to consider you for this role as long as you speak with them first, to note your intention to explore new opportunities. Thank you!*