About The Afara Initiative

The Afara Initiative is a nonprofit organization that aims to set approximately 1 million unserved and underserved post-secondary and university graduates on a path to economic independence and support them as emerging entrepreneurs, industry leaders, and public leaders of the new Nigeria. Our mission is to provide African youth with the mindset, skillsets, resources, and global networks to thrive and become industry and nation builders and leaders.

Since 2021, we have reached more than 1,000 students, with students in all 36 states and alumni working across more than 10 countries. We scale impact through two flagship interventions:

• The Bridge Fellowship - a hyper-selective leadership accelerator for high-potential university students committed to systemic change.
• The Pathway Career Accelerator - university-partnered career development and transition programming.

Our alumni now work at some of the world's most respected organizations, including Google, Goldman Sachs, Meta, Microsoft, Bank of America, Unilever, and ARM.

Afara was selected as the first nominating partner in Africa for the prestigious Morehead-Cain Global Fellowship, is supported by anchor funder The Blavatnik Family Foundation, and is the lead implementing partner for the Federal Ministry of Education's NGN 2.5 billion Student Venture Capital Grant programme, which provides up to NGN 50 million in equity-free funding to student ventures.

We are targeting more than 7,000 students in 2026, more than 55,000 by 2029, and more than 1 million by 2035.

The Opportunity

Afara is building a new model of higher education and workforce development in Africa - one that links learning directly to economic mobility, leadership, and national development.

We are at an inflection point: scaling to more than 7,000 students annually, expanding across more than 10 universities, and building pathways into employment, entrepreneurship, policy, and global fellowships.

What we have today works. What we need now is a learning system that can hold ten times the volume without losing the quality that makes an Afara graduate recognizable in a room.

We are looking for a builder to design that system. The hard question the role exists to answer is: how do we reliably produce the leaders and builders Africa needs?

The Mandate

Design, build, and own Afara's learning architecture, ensuring our programmes produce globally competitive talent and measurable outcomes as we scale.

In year one, that means designing the system and building the first version of it yourself. Beyond that, it means owning the learning function - its quality, its evolution, and the team that delivers it - through the growth from 7,000 students to 55,000.

This is a hands-on role at every stage. We are looking for a leader who builds as well as designs.

What You Will Own

1. Define Afara's learning system

• Build a coherent architecture across two domains: leadership (entrepreneurship, policy, research, and global pathways) and career readiness and transition.
• Translate vision into concrete competencies, curriculum, and delivery models.
• Set learning objectives and outcomes for every course, with formative and summative assessments that discriminate between levels of mastery.
• Test and refine within existing programmes rather than building in isolation.

2. Align learning to the future of work

• Ensure the curriculum reflects AI and digital economy shifts, global talent flows, and Africa's structural gaps in industrialisation, governance, and innovation.
• Engage employers, universities, funders, and alumni to assess live skills gaps; let that gap analysis drive design.
• Track industry and technological developments and translate them into curriculum decisions on a defined cycle.

3. Pilot new learning models

• Explore and test modern approaches - social and collaborative learning, adaptive and personalised pathways, simulation, interactive live-session design, and blended synchronous and asynchronous delivery - and recommend what fits each distinct student market.
• Apply evidence on how people learn, particularly around cognitive load, engagement, and retention, and make delivery-team recommendations accordingly.
• Partner with technology stakeholders on the tools and platforms that support this, including our LMS and the wider learning-technology stack.

4. Build a flagship venture support programme with government

• Design an accelerator for student entrepreneurs.
• Bias the design toward execution over theory and revenue over ideas.
• Build it to stand as a national proof point.

5. Connect learning to outcomes

• Build a clear system linking curriculum to skills, outputs, and opportunities.
• Work with M&E to define success metrics and track them, including post-delivery feedback loops from students and instructors that feed back into module design.
• Build and maintain the evaluation framework and the data analysis behind it.

6. Enable delivery at scale

• Produce the instructional materials, facilitator guides, and training resources that let others deliver Afara quality without you in the room.
• Organise resources and training for course instructors and facilitators.
• Track curriculum development and delivery costs against programme budgets.
• Build and lead the learning design function as it grows, including curriculum staff, facilitators, and external design partners.

What Success Looks Like

• A clear, differentiated Afara curriculum across all leadership tracks.
• Pilot programmes demonstrating measurably stronger placement outcomes and venture success.
• A replicable model that can be handed to universities and government partners.
• Afara positioned as a thought leader in learning innovation in Africa.

Who This Is For

You are a systems thinker and a builder, deeply motivated by real-world impact.

Experience we expect

• A substantial track record (typically more than seven years) in learning design, curriculum development, or education innovation, including time at organizations pushing the frontier - Minerva, ALU, Stanford d.school, or comparable learning-innovation environments.
• Demonstrated ownership of a portfolio of courses or curricula delivered through online and blended modes.
• Hands-on experience with an interactive LMS and the wider digital learning stack.
• Current knowledge of educational research and pedagogical development in higher education.
• Experience building and leading a team, or clear readiness to do so.

Valuable, but not required

• Curriculum work on 21st-century skillsets, entrepreneurial and innovative thinking, venture-building, or career upskilling.
• Youth development, training, or education research in an emerging market.
• Experience designing for government or multi-university partnerships.

Attributes

• Excellent written communication; able to make complex ideas land simply.
• Ownership mentality - hands-on, independent, and comfortable in a fast-moving environment.
• Creative and analytical in equal measure, with a structured and logical approach.
• Strong stakeholder management across institutional levels, from students to ministries.
• A desire to think well beyond traditional training.
• Genuine conviction about Africa's path to economic independence.

Education

A degree in instructional design, education, educational psychology, learning sciences, or a related field. An advanced degree in learning, design, and technology is an advantage. We care more about what you have built than where you studied.

How to Apply

Email your CV and a short note to [email protected]. In your note, answer one question: What is the most effective learning experience you have designed, and how did you know it worked?