Senior Partnerships Officer (Africa)

Partnerships Senior Officer/Director (Africa)

Prevail partners with ambitious organizations in Africa and South Asia to help them scale solutions that transform millions of lives. As a Partnerships Officer/Senior Officer, you’ll work closely with 5-8 organizations to identify barriers to scale and unlock growth opportunities. You’ll connect them to technical support, funding, and a global network of experts, ensuring they have what they need to deliver impact at scale.

This is a very hands-on role for someone who loves to scale impact-driven operations, builds strong relationships, moves fast, and gets things done.

Please note; this is a remote role, based anywhere within Sub Saharan Africa, with up to 30% travel.

About Prevail

Prevail is a new foundation dedicated to catalyzing large-scale social change by supporting private philanthropists and field implementers to pursue more ambitious and impactful goals. We work with private philanthropists to fund specific initiatives for 10-12 years. Rather than diversifying across multiple causes, we prioritize deep, strategic investments in proven solutions with the potential to reshape global norms. For example, our first fund aims to improve foundational education for over 27.5 million children across 11 national governments in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Prevail provides patient capital to implementers – primarily in the form of grants that grow over time as our partner organizations scale. In addition to funding, Prevail also offers a suite of systems and talent development services designed to address common growth barriers and prepare partner organizations for accelerated scale.

Our roots are in building organizations from the ground up that deliver impact at scale. Our Co-Founding Board members have a track record of scaling social enterprises that together employ more than 12,000 staff and manage annual budgets exceeding $500M. To achieve our goals, we're assembling a team of results-oriented individuals with strong implementation experience and a passion for delivering impact at scale through strategic philanthropy.

In our first three years, we've:

• Made significant progress against our ambitious fundraising targets

• Partnered with 30+ organizations across Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia

• Hired 35+ mission-driven team members globally

• Run dozens of execution projects to strengthen key functions for our partners

You can find a bit more information about Prevail Fund and what to expect from our recruitment process here. 


About this role

You will manage a portfolio of 5–8 partner organizations, building deep relationships and working closely with their leadership teams to help them achieve verifiable impact at scale. Your role is to ensure these organizations are on a trajectory to reach millions of children, and that Prevail is providing the right support at the right moments to unlock that impact.

Most of your time will be spent working directly with partner leadership teams: reviewing performance data, surfacing constraints, and identifying solutions that strengthen execution and enable scale.

• Ecosystem engagement: Maintain a strong pulse on key developments in target markets, including government reforms, funder priorities, and programs that may influence portfolio companies’ ability to scale. Proactively help remove roadblocks and strengthen the enabling environment through coordination, partner capacity support, and targeted ecosystem investments.

• Funding and investment decisions: You will manage the funding decisions for your portfolio.

  • Review live performance data and track progress against agreed milestones to ensure partners remain on course to scale

  • Gather and analyze data, field insights, and stakeholder perspectives

  • Assess partner progress and trajectory against Prevail’s goals

  • Develop clear recommendations for renewals, scale-ups, or exits

• Actively support partners to scale: You will help partners identify and solve the constraints that limit impact.

  • Hold regular operational and strategic meetings with partner teams to surface risks early and work jointly on solutions

  • Scope targeted projects to address key constraints

  • Coordinate support from Prevail’s technical team or external providers

  • Track progress and ensure projects translate into improved performance

  • Surface risks and challenges early and work jointly on solutions

  • Conduct field visits to understand delivery on the ground and identify support needs

• Broader team contribution: You will contribute to learning and collaboration across the Prevail team.

  • Partner with other partnerships officers at Prevail on initiatives that go beyond individual countries - for example, bringing together leaders from different partners to co-design a shared project.

  • Feed learnings back into our broader fund strategy, including what it takes to scale effectively, where bottlenecks emerge, and which models are working best.

About you

We’re looking for someone who has helped organizations grow - whether as an operator, social entrepreneur, consultant, or a mix of all three. You’ve solved complex problems, delivered results, and worked closely with leaders to drive scale.

• Operational experience: You have at least 10 years of experience working in or alongside companies or organizations that have grown significantly. Experience in the education sector and/or with government systems can be helpful, but it’s not essential.

• Problem solving: You’ve worked directly with leadership teams to identify and solve problems that unlock growth - e.g. in strategy, people, or execution. You know how to diagnose and solve complex problems.

• Advising and influencing: You have experience influencing decisions from the outside - either as an external advisor or internal partner - helping leaders translate insight into practical action.

• Stakeholder coordination: In this role you’ll be working with partners, funders and policy makers on shared goals. You can bring stakeholders together, align them around shared goals, and deliver results. Experience bringing multiple partners together to design and execute complex collaborations or agreements is a plus.

• Consistent track record of results: You have a strong track record of directly achieving big goals. You’re comfortable leading projects independently, making decisions, and moving quickly.

• Relationships and networking: You naturally build strong, lasting relationships and ideally have an established network within the impact ecosystem.

• Hands on: This role involves travel and on-the-ground support. You are drawn to the heart of the action and motivated by working alongside our partners to achieve shared goals.

About our team

We work in a fast-paced, results-driven environment. Our culture is built on the following values and competencies:

• Ownership and Outcomes: We have a bias for informed action. When something goes wrong, we reflect inward, and take responsibility for outcomes. When we see an opportunity to improve, we proactively take the lead and rally others to find a solution.

• Humility: We prioritize collective success over personal accolades, welcome constructive criticism, and have a strong ethos of continuous feedback.

• Data: We look for the right data and metrics to understand the context, draw conclusions and make informed recommendations.

• Motivated by Scale: We are energized by ambitious targets and moving fast to achieve them.

• Team Oriented: We are quick to ask for help, and we are quick to help others before being asked.

• High Adaptability: We thrive in rapidly changing, low-context environments and can quickly pivot based on new information, adjusting priorities as needed.

Why you’ll love working at Prevail

• Drive real impact: Your work will directly enable large-scale social change.

• Build something meaningful: Help mobilize philanthropic capital that will impact millions of lives.

• Join a supportive, world class team: We’re a team of professionals who have successfully scaled operations across the world, and value humility, ownership, and collaboration.

• Professional growth: We invest in your development through regular feedback, career progression frameworks, and a learning budget.

• Flexibility: Work remotely from anywhere in a timezone between -5 UTC (EST) and +5.30 UTC (IST), with opportunities to travel and connect in person.

What we offer

• Fully remote position, with opportunity to travel 2-4 times per year.

• Full time, permanent contract.

• Competitive salary based on experience, skills and location. We share salary bands with candidates; final offers are based on interview performance.

• Meaningful benefits. Health insurance and wellness benefits, home workspace or co-working stipend, plus a generous learning and development budget.

• Growth opportunities. We deeply care about investing in our team’s professional development. You’ll receive strong manager support, targeted feedback, performance support, clear pay progression, upwards or lateral mobility.

• Flexible leave policy. Including 25 days PTO, plus public holidays.

Location: This position is fully remote within Africa with up to 25% travel.

Career growth & development: We care about investing in our team’s professional development. You will have regular check-ins with your manager and career feedback sessions. You will also have regular access to senior leadership, both internally and with partner organizations, through your work.

Start date: As soon as possible – applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.

Application process: Our hiring process is thorough but efficient. Successful candidates will go through;

• Initial conversation with the people team (30-45 minutes)

• Live exercise with a Partnerships Officer (90 minutes)

• Paid take-home exercise (~5hrs)

• Hiring Manager interview (45-60 minutes)

• Panel interview (90 minutes) and 1:1 conversations with others in the team

Through the process, we’ll share feedback on the assessments and invite candidates to incorporate it. This mirrors how we work day to day: collaboratively, with openness to feedback and iteration.

Ready to join us? If you’re excited to help us scale, apply using the link below. We review every application and aim to invite successful candidates for an informational call within 3 weeks.

For more information, feel free to check out the job FAQ. We encourage you to read this in advance of the first informational call! You can find a bit more information about Prevail Fund and what to expect from our recruitment process here. 


*Note: If you currently work for one of Prevail’s partner organizations, we’d love to consider you for this role as long as you speak with them first, to note your intention to explore new opportunities. Thank you!