News Editor at Code for Africa

About the Role

• Your daily responsibilities will include managing the iLAB diary and deadlines for investigative reports, insights, and online content for our online platforms and partners, ensuring that it is delivered on time, is well-written and meets rigorous editorial standards.

Responsibilities

• Managing the editorial production process and content diaries for the iLAB, producing analytic and investigative reports.
• Scheduling and running the weekly ‘insights diary’ used to shape iLAB reports and investigative outputs.
• Ensuring that analytical and investigative outputs are aligned with organisational goals and lead to meaningful outcomes.
• Selecting and prioritising editorial leads for iLAB journalists based on the trends and insights of analysts and forensic investigators, as well as algorithmic ‘listening’ or media monitoring tools, to help ensure we focus our attention on the most harmful misinformation/conspiracies.
• Facilitating editorial planning meetings at which editorial leads/assignments are brainstormed and allocated to in-country journalists/researchers, with clear editorial briefs and submission deadlines.

Qualifications

• Minimum 10 years of editorial management experience, ideally in high-pressure, investigative, or data-intensive newsrooms (business, finance, or politics are a plus).
• Investigative reporting or editing background, with clear experience handling sensitive topics, disinformation, organised crime, or illicit financial flows.
• OSINT or disinformation monitoring experience — familiarity with foreign information manipulation tactics and narrative tracking is a major advantage.
• Strong editorial judgment, with the ability to turn messy research into sharp, structured stories.
• Excellent editing and writing skills, especially for fast-paced, high-clarity content.
• Proficiency in collaborative editorial tools like Google Docs, Trello, Slack, etc.
• Confidence managing remote, multilingual teams and multiple story formats.
• Meticulous attention to detail, with the ability to work collaboratively in a deadline-driven environment.
• Demonstrable ability to self-manage, creating your own and wider team timelines and milestones with clear systems/processes.

Required Skills

• Proven experience in investigative journalism or editing investigative content, with a deep understanding of OSINT techniques like social media mapping, metadata analysis, digital footprinting, and source verification.
• Demonstrated ability to extract story angles from dense, data-rich, or politically complex material and translate it into compelling, well-structured editorial products.
• Comfort managing and delivering a variety of outputs, from long-form investigations to radar briefs, donor reports, and newsletters, in a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment.
• Sharp understanding of African media and political ecosystems, particularly around influence operations, narrative manipulation, hate speech, and the foreign actors shaping online discourse.

Preferred Skills

• Experience in managing remote teams and working in a multilingual environment.
• Ability to engage diplomatically and collaborate effectively with colleagues under tight deadlines.