Regional Director, East and Southern Africa

About The Humanitarian OpenStreet Map Team (HOT)

Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) is an NGO which supports a global community of over 750,000 volunteers who use maps and open data for humanitarian response and the Sustainable Development Goals. When a major disaster strikes, the HOT community mobilizes to create the maps that data responders need. HOT collaborates with partners such as the Red Cross, Médecins Sans Frontières, the World Bank, UN OCHA, and hundreds more to make sure these maps are used to make decisions which reduce human suffering. Over the past five years, the HOT community has been working on an ambitious goal: to map an area home to one billion people affected by disasters or multidimensional poverty. On this journey, they have mapped an area home to more than 900 million people and provided critical data for nearly 100 disaster responses. HOT’s model is open source, participatory, and community-led; HOT’s 70+ staff provide the tools, platforms, knowledge, and space for communities and individuals to map and solve local challenges.

About the Role

The Regional Director is HOT’s most senior representative in East and Southern Africa and is a member of HOT’s leadership team. The Regional Director must execute and iterate our strategy to expand the use of free, open, and accessible geospatial data across ESA. This involves leading our virtual hub team of 10 staff across four countries, delivering on our projects in the region, establishing and growing partnerships across government, NGOs, donors, and communities, and ensuring the team continues to innovate the art of the possible with community mapping, and overseeing our physical hub location.

Duties and Responsibilities

• Develop HOT’s regional presence with partners (donor, NGO, government) and communities.
• Provide day-to-day management and direction for the regional team.
• Adapt HOT’s global strategy to the local context, ensuring regional and global teams fully understand the ESA strategy.
• Manage and develop partnerships with disaster management agencies, national statistical and mapping authorities, ministries of health, INGOs, and other stakeholders.
• Represent HOT at regional and international levels to intentionally grow our reputation and partnerships, leading or supervising meetings, workshops, and partnership engagements and presenting at conferences.
• Directly support and grow OpenStreetMap and open mapping communities across the region, including management of small grants, training, technical assistance, and sustainability planning, in collaboration with the Hub community team.
• Manage and build donor & customer relationships, coordinating new business development in the region.
• Oversee finances, HR, and administration for the regional hub.
• As a global leadership team member, steward our Living Strategy, Operating Model, and organisational culture. You will lead in defining and enacting one global strategic objective each quarter.
• Clearly communicate strategic updates (both from the hub and leadership team) and key messages with all staff on a regular basis.

Key Attributes

We are looking for candidates with a mix of the following:

• Experience in senior-level humanitarian data (information management or similar) or digital development/ICT4D roles.
• Proven track record at director or senior management level, with experience managing teams and budgets of diverse sizes.
• Business development experience: able to confidently define compelling and impactful projects, communicate them effectively, and establish and steward donor relationships to fund them. Proven track record of securing funding of at least USD 200K/ year.
• Entrepreneurial mindset: thrives in a start-up environment and enjoys building teams and shaping strategy. Major plus: experience in business modelling and strategy shifts.
• Strong regional network: established relationships with NGO leaders and, ideally, a history of government data projects.
• Excellent communication skills, able to take on high-profile public speaking and stakeholder engagement and convert these into opportunities.
• Demonstrated fluency in open source or open data projects; GIS and OpenStreetMap experience desirable but not essential.
• National of a country in Eastern or Southern Africa, with professional experience in multiple countries within the region.
• Experience as a global leadership team member
• Fluent written and spoken English; additional regional languages are a plus.

More details:

Reference: HOT-RD-ESA

Contract: Full-time, 1-year contract with opportunity for extension

Salary: USD 107,000.00

Piqued your interest?

To apply for this role, please prepare your CV (in English) and a motivation letter (one page) that summarises how your profile aligns with the key requirements, skills and abilities of this role. Both files should be submitted in .doc(x) or .rtf format via this form: mis.tl/cv .

If you require reasonable accommodation in completing this application, interviewing, completing any pre-employment testing, or otherwise participating in the selection process, please contact us.

After submitting your application, you will receive an automated confirmation. If you do not receive this or have general questions about submitting your application, please write to us.