Positions in: Anywhere in Africa
Are you a creative visionary who wants to make an impact in citizen-focussed projects in Africa?
Code for Africa (CfA) has an immediate vacancy for a full-time Brand Designer to join our Engagement team and turbocharge the visual identity of our digital democracy and civic technology projects.
CfA’s Engagement team is responsible for managing CfA’s audience, by managing our platforms, communications and brand. The team actively works to grow CfA’s reputation and amplify our thought leadership and accomplishments through compelling multimedia storytelling.
The successful candidate will help CfA foster and grow its brand identity, as well as helping create, shape and grow brand identities for existing projects and programmes such as the African Digital Democracy Observatory (ADDO), africanDRONE, the Africa Fact Checking Alliance (AFCA), sensors.AFRICA, and WanaData. Key to the role will be creating distinct visual identities for specific programmes and projects that still remain cohesively linked to CfA’s identity.
To establish and promote these brands, you will work with the design to create brand guidelines and collateral such as logos, brand guidelines, banners, t-shirts, and stickers, for both digital and print projects.
Your suitability for this position will be based on your portfolio, which should demonstrate expertise in the development of brand identities (including logo, font and colour palette design) and brand implementation/execution through collateral design (such as stickers, t-shirt designs, website iconography). Portfolios that show an ability to work in a variety of formats (traditional/digital media, still/animation etc) will have an advantage.
The successful candidate will work as part of a multinational and multilingual team, creating content for a global audience and international media partners using digital collaboration tools.
Required: minimum requirements include:
Proven experience working in a similar role or field, preferably for at least 3 years
Ability to articulate a brand or project’s story through design assets, effectively capturing its vision and tone.
A strong grasp of design principles, such as emphasis, alignment and balance, contrast, repetition, proportion, movement, and white space.
Mastery of design software, such as the Adobe Creative Suite (e.g., Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign), and other relevant design tools.
A creative flair and a keen eye for keeping pace with emerging design trends globally and within Africa
Strong communication skills to effectively collaborate with multinational team members and partners, interpreting and conveying brand concepts through design.
Preferred: candidates who are able to demonstrate the following will have an advantage:
Ability to transform brand identities into visually appealing marketing assets, including web and social media designs,, email campaigns, roll up banners, stickers, t-shirts, and leaflets.
Ability to work in both traditional and digital mediums, combing them to create powerful visual identities that stand out from the crowd
Ability to create a variety of formats, from stills to gif to longer animations
Understanding of what works best for different platforms such as Facebook vs Twitter vs TikTok vs WhatsApp
Capable of working independently and managing multiple projects simultaneously.
Familiarity with digital collaboration tools like Slack, Google Drive, Trello and Airtable.
Language and Location Requirements:
Location: Anywhere in Africa
Primary languages: English
Preferred but not required: Amharic, Arabic, Hausa, French, Kiswahili or any other major language spoken in Africa
About the Role:
The successful candidate will join us on CfA’s Engagement team. The team is responsible for telling CfA’s story, and keeping it accessible and engaging. We amplify the work of our experts and external project partners across Africa to drive a more open, connected and technologically empowered continent.
As a brand designer, you will play a crucial role in developing innovative visual strategies for CfA as a whole alongside individual identities for our flagship products and projects. Once established, you will create and maintain design playbooks for each identity, ensuring all visual assets created for each brand comply with the established identities. You will continuously stay up to date with international trends in graphic design, ensuring CfA and its associated brands remain fresh, sharp and visually unique.
You will work with the rest of the design and engagement team to create brand collateral as needed and to ensure that brand guidelines and identities are being adhered to, wherever they appear.
Responsibilities: Your daily responsibilities will include
Developing a distinctive and world-class visual style to position CfA as a leader among global partners
Designing and establishing brand identities for CfA’s projects and products as needed
Producing brand assets and designs to complement CfA and partner content, as well as social media promotions and campaigns.
Crafting, adapting and maintaining brand guidelines for CfA and CfA’s products and projects.
You’ve worked with globally recognised brands or projects, or are able to create world class branding (such as Google, The Economist, and Vox.com, and Rest of the world)
Enforcing these brand guidelines to ensure consistent, high visual standards across CfA’s platforms.
Contributing designs for digital properties such as websites, social media videos and marketing merchandise.
Contributing to designs for printed collateral such as stickers, t-shirts and banners
Maintaining a reference list/database of competitors and benchmarks of quality.
What We Offer:
A competitive salary, subject to experience, with opportunities for performance-based growth, both in terms of career path and public stature.
Medical insurance cover, underwritten by a remote-first provider to ensure cover wherever you are.
A dynamic workplace, with a transnational team, occasional international travel, and generous vacation benefits.
Ongoing opportunities to learn new cutting-edge skills and techniques/technologies to future-proof yourself in a rapidly evolving industry.
A chance to shine on a global stage, designing for international audiences and interacting with colleagues around the world.
How to apply:
Please fill in this form by 05 January 2024
About Us:
Code for Africa (CfA) is the continent’s largest network of indigenous African civic technology and investigative data journalism laboratories, with over 100 staff in 21 countries, who build digital democracy solutions that are intended to give citizens unfettered access to actionable information that empowers them to make informed decisions and that strengthen civic engagement for improved public governance and accountability.
This includes building infrastructure such as the continent’s largest open data portal, open.AFRICA, and largest open source civic software portal, commons.AFRICA, as well as the largest repository of investigative document-based evidence, source.AFRICA, as well as incubating initiatives as diverse as the africanDRONE network that gives citizens their own ‘eyes in the sky’, the PesaCheck fact-checking initiative in 12 African countries, and the sensors.AFRICA remote-sensing citizen science initiative to combat air/water pollution.
CfA also incubates the African Network of Centres for Investigative Reporting (ANCIR), as an association of the continent’s best investigative newsrooms, ranging from large traditional mainstream media to smaller specialist units. ANCIR member newsrooms investigate crooked politicians, organised crime and big business. The iLAB is ANCIR’s in-house digital forensic unit, with teams in east, south and west Africa. ANCIR uses its resources to strengthen newsrooms’ own internal capacity, by providing access to the world’s best whistleblower encryption and investigative semantic analysis technologies, as well as skills development, and seed grants for cross-border collaboration.
At CfA, we don’t just accept differences – we celebrate it, we support it, and we thrive on it for the benefit of our employees, our products and our community. CfA is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.
To all recruitment agencies: CfA does not accept agency resumes. Please do not forward resumes to our employment application line, CfA employees or any other CfA contact. CfA is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes.