Senior Digital Communications Officer

We are looking for someone to help us document the ‘Innovative Manufacturing in Africa’ project.

The project supports ‘makerspaces’ in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa. It continues previous work by building their capacity, sharing knowledge and trialling innovative systems to help them generate revenue. It is supported by UK Aid’s RISA Fund and the mAkE Project. This is a wonderful opportunity to work with amazing people across Africa, to learn about new technologies and to share our work around the world.

The Internet of Production is a small, international charity that brings together a global alliance dedicated to building a future of decentralized and distributed manufacturing. We seek to enable a sustainable and globally networked system of production, where products are fabricated using local capabilities and global designs; to complement mass production and global supply chains with ‘production by the masses’ and local enterprise. We work on open standards for networking, support experiments in open digital infrastructures and run projects that develop key parts of a future ‘Internet of Production’ – such as the ‘makerspaces’ in Africa.

Role & Responsibilities:

• Help expert speakers to create content to help build the capacity of makerspaces in Africa
• Publish excellent write-ups of webinar content so that it can be shared more widely
• Review content from the project developed in 2023, and prepare and publish it for sharing
• Help to publish academic-style papers from work done in 2023, ideally in a relevant journal
• Support the Project Manager in monitoring, evaluation and learning processes
• Support the team with communications for monthly project stakeholder meetings
• Contribute project content to the Internet of Production website
• Prepare communications materials for a key series of events in Cape Town in November 2024
• Identify and share relevant content on the Appropedia wiki

Person Specification:

• Experience as a writer, reporter or author of learning materials, articles or papers 
• Background in communications, particularly in non-profit, charity or education sectors
• Exceptional written English for a range of formats and a very diverse set of audiences
• Graphic design skills, including for presentations and websites
• Online publishing skills, ideally including learning platforms such as MOOCs and MediaWiki wikis
• Experience of organising events, particularly online events
• Familiarity with Creative Commons or other copy-left and open-source licenses is helpful
• Interest in makerspaces, innovation and distributed manufacturing is helpful
• Interest and perhaps experience of working in African contexts
• Commitment to working in a small organisation and in a highly diverse team
• Good organisational and team communications skills
• Experience with Microsoft 365 and Office tools, and ideally Adobe or other design software