Job Title: Marketing & Communications Lead

Reports to: Executive Director

Terms: Full-time, 24 months (Renewable Contract)

Location: Lusaka (Primary); Hybrid/Remote

Start Date: ASAP

Deadline for applications: Midnight, 18 September 2022

About BongoHive

BongoHive supports entrepreneurs of any background, by enhancing skills, accelerating growth, strengthening networks of collaboration, and helping them navigate the barriers to growth. BongoHive delivers its support to enterprises through custom incubation and accelerator programmes.

Utilising this knowledge of the level and type of support required to build strong cohorts of startups and scale-up enterprises, BongoHive also provides custom interventions to SMEs and corporations through its Consult arm. The Consult team delivers tailored structured innovation and digital transformation consultancy that allows clients to grow their market through new ideas, products, approaches and technology.

BongoHive also offers flexible coworking offices for startups and entrepreneurs under the Hive Coworking brand.

Job role

To increase the reach and impact of the BongoHive Group’s profile and visibility through the delivery of high-value and influential marketing, communications and PR in Zambia and internationally, thereby significantly contributing to the development of new partnerships and business opportunities.

To achieve this you will work with the Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Technology, and Coworking teams, developing and implementing a marketing and communications strategy across a range of reactive and strategically planned opportunities in print, media, events and online.

You will manage a small communications team motivating and supporting staff to deliver high-quality work and will have an active role in implementing marketing and communication activities for the entire organisation.

In this role, you will work closely with our Project Lead, Innovation Lead, Consult Tech Lead, Community Liaison, and Director of Entrepreneurship and Innovation to support our clients in building products and services their customers love.

Key Responsibilities 

• Develop and deliver creative marketing and communication strategies, plans and approaches to help market and position BongoHive to attract partners and new business.
• Plan the marketing and communications strategies for specific areas of BongoHive’s work and for different audiences. Work with the communication, programme and senior management teams to put the strategy into practice. This will include:
• Design and develop creative communication and marketing products – presentations, briefings, etc. that will maximise BongoHive’s message, support business objectives and contribute to the entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem.
• Plan and implement direct marketing approaches including targeting, personalisation of messages and measurability; data analysis, customer profiling and segmentation
• Review and implement a digital strategy.
• Ensure the brand meets expectations through monitoring marketing trends and partner and customer feedback.
• Manage the Marketing & Communications budget and ensure milestones related to marketing & communications are achieved on time and within budget.
• Contribute to and strengthen proposals and project reports to ensure robust and creative marketing and communication considerations are adopted.
• Represent BongoHive at external meetings and conferences.
• Organise and manage internal and external events.

Staff Management

• Performance and operational management of a small team working across multiple business units. Inspiring, motivating and supporting staff so that they are thinking and acting at their best, delivering high-quality work, working as an effective team and meeting organisational and individual objectives.
• Support the professional development of the team to continuously develop skills and expertise and support career development aspirations.
• Coordinate (and in some cases manage) the work of external communication consultants and identify new consultants with additional expertise

General

• Contribute to the overall development of BongoHive’s strategies and plans.
• Ensure the values of participation, partnership, sustainability, social responsibility, cost-effectiveness, transparency and accountability are reflected in your work.
• Any other responsibilities as may reasonably be required from time to time.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree qualification (preferably in Marketing, Media, Communications or Journalism or relevant field)
• A relevant Master’s Degree qualification is not required but is preferred.
• 3+ years of relevant marketing and communications experience

Knowledge

• Have an excellent understanding of how to use marketing tools and techniques to increase the visibility, profile and reputation of an organisation.
• Have a good understanding of social media and the impact technology is having on communications and collaboration.

Skills & Experience

• A strategic and creative thinker with proven experience in working on diverse and wide-ranging communication strategies including all forms of media
• Strong management and leadership skills demonstrated by evidence of leading high-performing teams that contribute to organisational objectives and show resilience in the face of changing priorities
• Experience in developing and managing strong and complex relationships across programmes as part of a centralised function and externally with multiple stakeholders.
• Experience in working in international development is an added advantage.
• Experience in managing websites.
• Experience in measuring the impact of communications products and changing strategies as a result of the findings.
• Excellent project management skills.
• Proficient in the use of online tools such as Microsoft Office, Google Workspace, Slack, ClickUp, HubSpot, Google Analytics, WordPress, etc
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills and an ability to communicate clearly with a range of people from diverse backgrounds and cultures.
• Experience in representing an organisation at external events

Attributes

• The ability to multi-task in a complex and demanding environment.
• The ability to build and maintain highly effective working relationships with a range of people (both internally and externally).
• Strong attention to detail, and excellent time management skills.
• A commitment to teamwork and working in a collegiate manner.
• Enthusiastic, diplomatic and calm under pressure.
• Ability to develop creative ideas and transform them into practical reality.

Other

• There is an expectation that there will be occasional out-of-hours travel and external/internal events.

Job Title: Entrepreneurship Lead

Reports to: Director – Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Terms: Full-time, 24 months (Renewable Contract)

Location: Lusaka (Primary); Hybrid/Remote

Start Date: ASAP

 

About BongoHive

BongoHive supports entrepreneurs of any background, by enhancing skills, accelerating growth, strengthening networks of collaboration, and helping them navigate the barriers to growth. BongoHive delivers its support to enterprises through custom incubation and accelerator programmes.

Utilising this knowledge of the level and type of support required to build strong cohorts of startups and scale-up enterprises, BongoHive also provides custom interventions to SMEs and corporations through its Consult arm. The Consult team delivers tailored structured innovation and digital transformation consultancy that allows clients to grow their market through new ideas, products, approaches and technology.

BongoHive also offers flexible coworking offices for startups and entrepreneurs under the Hive Coworking brand.

Job role

The Entrepreneurship Lead manages the organisation’s entrepreneurial programmes. You will work with a variety of entrepreneurs across sectors and stages. This role ensures that we have the entrepreneurs’ interests at the core of the programme we design. The goal is to support entrepreneurs through the programmes to provide them with the best possibility of success.

In this role, you will work closely with our Project Lead, Innovation Lead, Community Liaison and Director of Entrepreneurship and Innovation to support our clients in building products and services their customers love.

Duties and Responsibilities

Internal Entrepreneurship Management

• Manage the organisation’s entrepreneurship programmes, which include programme design, participant recruitment, facilitator and mentor management.
• Coordinate cross-department resources —finance, marketing, monitoring and evaluation.
• Prepare and manage programme budgets ensuring that programmes are run within the budget.
• Design and develop entrepreneurial programmes to meet clients’ needs.
• Train entrepreneurs at various levels.
• Support and coach junior staff to achieve their deliverables.

External Entrepreneurship Management

• Maintain existing partnership relations with government entities, private sector and non-governmental organisations as well as build new partnerships.
• Support business development efforts by proposal writing and looking for business opportunities.
• Represent BongoHive at various functions and events.
• Develop strategies to ensure that BongoHive is a leader in the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Zambia and the continent.

Key Accountabilities:

• Recognize and stimulate unusual ideas with high potential impact.
• Use personal networks to link ideas and people that might not otherwise interact.
• Apply unique skills and interests to develop new opportunity domains.
• Ask tough and insightful questions.
• Provide constructive coaching and advice to entrepreneurs at various levels—early-stage to investor readiness .
• Drive entrepreneurship programmes through to completion.
• Ensure to exercise decision-making and independent judgement while being aligned with customers and management.

Expectations

• Ability to navigate through an area for which there is not yet a map (requires curiosity to pursue the interesting without getting distracted by the unimportant).
• Capable of fostering individual and collective creativity.
• Able to create processes and procedures for ideation, prototyping, and production.
• Able to balance risks against the potential rewards of the teams’ work, based on organisational tolerance for risk and organisational objectives, as well as other factors.
• Comfortable with ambiguity and thrive on change.
• High Emotional Intelligence. Specifically, empathy and active listening, the capacity to understand what others are feeling and thinking and engage them the right way.
• Active online presence and familiarity with social media (Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.)
• This position requires flexible hours of work which might include working long hours and weekends.
• Have a willingness to learn. Share feedback, get feedback, and operate in a culture of being open-minded to grow.
• Ability to overcome critique.

Requirements:

• Proven experience in helping other people turn their entrepreneurial ideas into reality; work with multiple fluid team structures that require trust and integrity.
• Candidates must have previously held a leadership position(s).
• Candidates must have proven project management experience.
• Proven experience in the ability to understand wide-ranging, out-of-the-ordinary, technical, and business proposals in depth.
• Experience in organising and facilitating brainstorming workshops to bring new ideas to fruition.
• Experience in showing commercial sense, contract structuring and negotiation, and business strategy development.
• A proven understanding of lean methodology.
• A deep insight into business and technology in different industries and disciplines
• Positive, enthusiastic, and able to adapt to fast-changing situations.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, and interpersonal skills.
• Social media proficiency – overall engagement.
• Assertive and have a strong drive to develop those around you.

Experience

• Master’s degree or equivalent in business, computer science, innovation, entrepreneurship, strategy, or related fields.
• 3+ years of relevant project management, business, or, product development, digital transformation experience.
• Passion for and understanding of entrepreneurial communities.
• Experience working in a dynamic environment.
• Experience using varied problem-solving methodologies (preferred).
• Knowledgeable of EPIC communication techniques (nice to have).
• Finance professional qualification (ZICA, ACCA, CIMA) added advantage