Job Title:
Director of Education & Research
Team Leader/Reports to:
Chief Product Officer
Department:
Education & Research
Location:
Dar, Tanzania/Nairobi, Kenya/Johannesburg, South Africa
Work Remotely:
maximum 3 days a week
Travel Required:
Periodic
Position:
Senior
Contract Type:
Full Time
Organisation/entity:
Ubongo Learning
Benefits:
Full-time employee benefits
Number of Posts:
1
Organisation Summary:
UBONGO is Africa's leading producer of kids' edutainment. As a non-profit social enterprise, we create fun, localized, and multi-platform educational content that helps kids learn, and leverage their learning to change their lives. Ubongo reaches over 42 million kids across Africa through accessible technologies like TV, radio, and mobile phones. Our show’s Ubongo Kids and Akili and Me currently air in 23 countries across Africa, in Swahili, English, French, Kinyarwanda, Kikuyu, Luo, Yoruba, Hausa, Chichewa, and Juba Arabic. We are also reaching families within and beyond Africa through digital products such as apps, ebooks, music albums, and our 8 YouTube channels.
Job Position:
Provide strategic leadership of Ubongo’s education, research, and MEL function to drive the design of innovative, evidence-based learning experiences across all product ecosystems. Ensure Ubongo’s content and products—across shows, apps, decodable books, and digital platforms—are grounded in strong pedagogy, child development principles, and measurable learning impact. Lead the integration of curriculum design, user testing, and learning evaluation systems to continuously improve educational effectiveness and scale learning outcomes for children across Africa in alignment with Ubongo’s strategic priorities.
RESPONSIBILITIES:
- Education, research and monitoring evaluation and learning strategy
Main Activities:
- Lead and set long and short term strategy for education, research and monitoring, evaluation and learning across Ubongo
- Work with different team leads to set and implement sub strategies
2. Education value of Ubongo products and content
Main Activities:
- Own and evolve Ubongo’s Child Learning Journey Curriculum, ensuring pedagogical coherence across all learning products and platforms
- Translate learning science and curriculum insights into strategic direction for all teams and product ecosystems
- Ensure educational quality and integrity across all content, distribution channels, and product ecosystems, including shows, decodable books, apps, digital tools, marketing, and social media
- Define and align clear, age-appropriate learning objectives across pre-production, creative, publishing, and digital product teams
- Implement user testing principles in prototyping of new educational content and product and testing this content with users (children and caregivers), coordinating with implementation partners to conduct assessments across priority markets.
- Lead or support development and adaptation of assessments to measure learning outcomes and translate insights into product improvements
- Engage a network of teachers, curriculum experts, and specialists to strengthen pedagogy, content validation, and product quality across all ecosystems
3. Monitoring and evaluation for education in Ubongo
Main Activities:
- Work with Ubongo’s team to ensure our products’ impact on the African child, achieving 25% increase in learning outcomes
- Lead Ubongo’s research and MEL agenda in partnership with internal teams and external research partners
- Establish, review, and guide implementation of the Ubongo research agenda,
- Set education metrics and learning objectives across Ubongo and ensure they are met
- Translate research findings into actionable product, content, and curriculum improvements
- Communicate learning impact insights to internal leadership, funders, and external stakeholders
- Continuous monitoring of Ubongo content with audience, including children, caregivers and teachers, through qualitative research
4. Leading mindset of value of education across Ubongo
Main Activities:
- Lead both education team and monitoring and evaluation (M&E) team in presenting educational testing and evaluation results to the rest of Ubongo
- Continuously find innovative and simple ways to make education and research processes more efficient, scalable, sustainable, and fun
- Keeping up with the latest research and best practices in education, cognitive neuroscience and developmental science, incorporating new advances into our approach
- Work closely with Ubongo’s executive team and Board to refine long-term education strategy for the company. Work to ensure the overall company strategy points toward long-term educational impact for kids in Africa.
- Representing Ubongo with different education groups/reference groups in different countries
- Champion a culture of experimentation, curiosity, and evidence-driven creativity across Ubongo
5. Company wide leadership responsibilities
Main Activities:
- Strategize with senior leadership team towards solutions regarding issues or conflicts across the company
- Set an example of team members and organization as a whole of commitment, work ethics and habits and personal character
- Adhere to confidentiality in any matters discussed at the leadership level unless otherwise stated
- Responsible for ensuring compliance with legal requirements within the scope of work.
- Exemplifies Ubongoer’s principles and Ubongo norms
- Supervisory Responsibilities
Direct Reports
- Education Outreach Manager
- User Research Manager
- Education and Curriculum Manager
- Monitoring and Evaluation Manager
- Disability and Inclusion Specialist
Indirect Reports
- Education and Research Officer, Kenya
- Research and Outreach Officer
- MEL Officer
- Curriculum Development Officer
- Inclusive Learning Through Play Curriculum Officer
- Education and Research Officer, Nigeria
- User Research Officer
- Education Outreach Officer, Nigeria
KNOWLEDGE, EXPERIENCE & OTHER REQUIREMENTS.
Physical
Educational
- Minimum of a Bachelor’s degree in education, psychology or related field
- Masters’ degree in education, psychology or related field will be an added advantage
Experience
- At least 7 years proven experience in teaching, innovative curriculum development, or educational product development
- Minimum 5+ years of experience in managing teams, timelines, strategy setting and working understanding of budgets
- Experience working in Sub-Saharan Africa
Skills
- Passionate about research and learning
- Fluent in written and spoken English. Kiswahili proficiency is preferred but not essential.
- Knowledge in Monitoring Evaluation & Learning or results based management.
- Strong verbal and written communication skills, including effectively communicating research findings to internal and external stakeholders
- Strong research and analytical skills, including but not limited to human centered design, prototyping and research design
- Ability to put educational theory and curriculum into practice with educational media development across a wide range of subjects and topics
- Ability to coordinate and leverage research (MEL, user testing, market research) into product development and education strategy, bringing together a comprehensive picture
- Experience in installing and managing workflow processes including but not limited to time tracking, task delegation, budget and payment, etc.
- Strong team management and leadership skills
- Strong strategic thinking capabilities
- Have a can-do attitude and readiness to learn on the job as we create an innovative new educational service
- Good at dealing with ambiguity and be able to figure things out for yourself
- Self-motivation and a high level of responsibility to complete tasks in a timely manner and make significant progress without direct supervision
- Collaborative worker, good at working in a diverse team with technical team members to ensure educational quality of the content and products that they create
- Open-minded and flexible thinker, willing to test new methods and approaches, then analytically assess their effectiveness
- Comfort dealing with and understanding digital products (apps, video etc)
- Passion for Ubongo’s vision of bringing localized edutainment to learners across Africa
- A love for kids
DEADLINE:
The last day to receive applications for this position will be
1st May, 2026
Please note that only online applications will be considered. Those who come directly to the office with a CV or who email their CV to us will simply be directed to apply online
EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY
UBONGO provides equal employment opportunities to all its employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, sexual orientation or any other characteristic protected by the laws of the country we are operating in.
*Please indicate any reasonable accommodations you may need should you be selected for an interview and note that you can share requested documents in different formats including text, video and/audio.
JOB SCAM WARNING
Our organization upholds a strict commitment to a fair, unbiased hiring process through BambooHR or very qualified recruitment agencies and shortlisting decisions are based solely on candidates' qualifications, skills and experience relevant to the position.
Beware of any individuals claiming to have influence over our hiring decisions or requesting favors in exchange for guaranteed shortlisting or employment opportunities. Such actions are against our policies and do not reflect our organization's values.
*Ubongo is committed to ensure Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in our recruitment process.
Please indicate any reasonable accommodations you may need should you be selected for an interview and note that you can share requested documents in different formats including text, video and/audio.
ADDITIONAL NOTES:
Kindly note that only online applications will be considered. Those who come directly to the office with a CV or who email their CV to us will simply be directed to apply online.
Please save yourself time and effort by simply sticking to online applications. THANK YOU.
