FAWE: Entrepreneurship Officer
About FAWE
The Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE) is a pan-African non-governmental organization working through a network of 34 National Chapters across the continent. FAWE is dedicated to advancing gender equity and equality in education by influencing policies, fostering positive societal attitudes, and promoting inclusive practices that support girls’ and women’s education throughout Africa.
Position Summary:
FAWE is seeking to recruit a qualified and dynamic Entrepreneurship Officer to lead the full spectrum of the entrepreneurship pathway from opportunity identification, training, incubation start-up funding, to business development support or venture growth for young women and marginalized youth across 10 African countries. The Officer will work with entrepreneurship partners, financial institutions, mentors, and alumni networks to ensure young entrepreneurs build sustainable, job creating businesses.
This is a cross-cutting role that will provide technical support on Entrepreneurship issues across all programmes and departments. The successful candidate will also lead and manage the entrepreneurship and business development component, ensuring that youth especially young women receive high-quality entrepreneurship support, competitive startup capital, mentorship, and linkages to markets and financial institutions up capital, mentorship and linkages to markets and financial institutions.
Contract Type: This position is on a fixed contract for three years with the possibility of extension based on the availability of funding and individual’s performance.
Location: The Programme Officer – Entrepreneurship will be based in the Regional Office in Nairobi with regular travel to FAWE National Chapters
Reporting to: Senior Programme Officer
Functional Relationships: All Units within FAWE, FAWE’s 34 National Chapters, Civil Society Organizations, and regional and sub-regional policy bodies, among others.
Direct Reportees: None
Key Roles and Responsibilities
1. Programme Management – Entrepreneurship Programming (60%)
- Lead the design, planning, implementation and evaluation of entrepreneurship and business development interventions across 10 African countries.
- Coordinate delivery of entrepreneurship and business skills training with implementing partners, ensuring quality, relevance and inclusion in FAWE programmes.
- Manage the entire competitive start-up grant process—from advertisement, selection, due diligence to disbursement—to ensure transparent and efficient support to young entrepreneurs.
- Support participants to develop viable business proposals, particularly in priority economic sectors, with attention to marginalized groups, especially young women, youth with disabilities and refugees
- Strengthen and foster innovative entrepreneurship approaches that build sustainable, job-creating enterprises grounded in gender equity and inclusive economic empowerment.
- Monitor quality assurance processes, business performance indicators, risks & mitigation factors, and job creation outcomes, ensuring accurate reporting and documentation. creation outcomes, ensuring accurate reporting and documentation.
2. Capacity Building and Programme Development (20%)
- Provide technical support in assessing entrepreneurship capacity gaps within FAWE national chapters and recommend capacity-strengthening interventions aligned with programme objectives.
- Strengthen alliances and develop partnerships with entrepreneurship hubs, financial institutions, private sector actors, and organisations supporting youth, PWDs and refugees.
- Support National Chapters in localized co-creating, designing and implementing entrepreneurship curricula (i.e., business planning, pricing, record management, compliance, marketing, performance tracking etc.) ensuring harmonized approaches and adoption of best practice across countries.
- Support and ensure inclusivity and accessibility in the content delivery.
3. Building and Strengthening Partnerships – Global, Regional & National (10%)
- Build and maintain partnerships between FAWE Chapters, entrepreneurship partners, financial institutions, inclusion experts and other strategic actors to enhance business support pathways for young entrepreneurs.
- Coordinate entrepreneurship mentorship programmes, including mentor–mentee linkages, tracking, and reporting structures.
- Collaborate closely with other FAWE team’s advocacy, partnerships, communications to amplify the voices and achievements of young entrepreneurs and enhance programme visibility.
4. Resource Mobilisation (10%)
- Lead and contribute to resource mobilisation efforts aimed at expanding entrepreneurship support initiatives, including pitching new ideas to development partners and supporting proposal development mobilisation efforts aimed at expanding entrepreneurship support initiatives, including pitching new ideas to development partners and supporting proposal development.
- Provide technical input to funding proposals, concept notes and partner engagement processes related to entrepreneurship, business development and youth economic empowerment.
Expected Deliverables
- Annual entrepreneurship training & support plan.
- Database of applicants and supported entrepreneurs.
- Quarterly business performance & job creation reports. . creation reports.
- Documented success stories and key learnings.
- Updated partnership & mentorship tracking reports.
- Entrepreneurship manual/guidebook
Qualifications & Experience
- Bachelor’s degree in business related studies, Education, Social Sciences, Entrepreneurship, Development Studies, Economics or related field.
- A Masters’ degree will be an added advantage.
- Minimum of 7 years’ working experience in Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) support, youth entrepreneurship, incubators/accelerators.
- Experience in education sector and interlinkage with entrepreneurship.
- Experience in training delivery & business-plan assessment.
- Strong partnership development skills.
- Experience working with marginalized groups, especially young women, PWDs, and refugees.
Key Competencies
- Demonstrated strong leadership skills, with the ability to guide and influence others effectively.
- Excellent written, oral, and editorial communication skills in English. Proficiency in French is a strong asset.
- Exceptional interpersonal skills, with the ability to engage and collaborate with a wide range of internal and external stakeholders.
- Proven ability to work effectively in team-oriented environments.
- High level of resilience and adaptability, with a flexible approach to changing priorities.
- Ability to work independently, managing tasks systematically and with minimal supervision.
- Skilled in crisis management, maintaining composure and effectiveness under pressure.
- Adheres to the highest ethical standards, particularly in the handling of sensitive and confidential matters.
- Champions inclusive leadership with a strong commitment to gender responsiveness and disability-inclusive programming.
Application Procedure
Review of applications will begin as soon as they are received, and only complete applications will be reviewed. If an outstanding applicant is identified early in the search process, we reserve the right to appoint before the deadline. For this reason, we encourage interested candidates to apply at the earliest possible opportunity. Please submit your application through this form; https://forms.office.com/r/aUcSq0v3kt by the latest Friday, 10th April 2026 at 5:00pm EAT.