How to Apply
Please send a CV and a one-page cover letter outlining relevant advocacy, coalition, and budget-influence achievements, plus two samples of advocacy products (briefs, decks, or op-eds), to talent@speakupafrica.org and copied (codou.sy@speakupafrica.org) with with the subject “FLN Hub Advocacy Officer in Kenya” before May 24, 2026. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis until the position is filled.
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Speak Up Africa (SUA) is an Advocacy Action Tank dedicated to catalyzing leadership, enabling policy change, and increasing awareness for sustainable development in Africa Through our platforms and relationships and with the help of our partners, we ensure that policy makers meet implementers; that solutions are showcased and that every sector – from individual citizens and civil society groups to global donors and business leaders – contributes critically to the dialogue and strives to form the blueprints for concrete action for public health and sustainable development.
Education is the key to unlocking opportunity for anyone anywhere – from getting a job and raising healthy families, to creating conditions for sustainable economic growth and independence for entire nations. By 2050, 1 in 3 youth globally will be African – a major demographic opportunity for inclusive growth, opportunity and development. Unlocking Africa’s demographic advantage and realizing this potential depends on whether children learn to read and do math early – essential foundational building blocks of every child’s future. Strong foundational skills need to be acquired for strong learning outcomes and future opportunities.
Foundational learning is now recognized by the African Union as a non-negotiable building block for human capital and inclusive growth. In a rapidly changing world, where economies are strained and global aid budgets have shrunk, a high-impact solution lies in the simplest of places: a classroom where a young child learns to read, write, and do math – because when kids achieve these essential foundational skills by age 10, everything else becomes possible. But the current reality is foundational learning outcomes in reading and math across Africa remain far too low – up to an estimated 90% lack these essential basic skills. The key takes are how to turn these numbers around and expand and scale in more countries the 10% that do acquire these skills. The evidence base for what works at scale that has the greatest impacts on learning outcomes is structured pedagogy and targeted instruction. More countries are deciding to scale these evidence-based interventions, but not yet enough – this requires more and better advocacy to raise the demand and prioritization of foundational learning for better learning outcomes
The remaining gap is at the level of political prioritization – foundational learning becoming a source of political credit, funding what matters from domestic budgets, and accountability
To help drive more and better advocacy is the FLN Advocacy Hub. It is transitioning to African leadership under Speak Up Africa to provide the continent’s infrastructure of influence: a shared banner, common cadence, and country coalitions that translate evidence into policy and financed outcomes, including more and better investment in evidence-based approaches and uptake (including structured pedagogy, targeted instruction) and to follow the science of reading and emerging on math, close gaps between evidence, policy, and implementation practice, encourage use of data and cultivate the political, funding and civic constituencies needed for better learning outcomes and spending. The Hub will:
Kenya is a priority country for the Hub as a Gates foundation focus country. Its legacy of Tusome the first large scale literacy program in Africa under USAID support, showed three things matter – i) Evidence-based programs, including materials; ii) Leadership & political will; and iii) Instructional time doing the right things. Although Tusome showed important learning gains from 2015-2022, in 2022 Kenya’s government chose to stop the program and shifted focus to competency-based curriculum (CBC) reforms, which deprioritized literacy and numeracy – instead focusing on a larger set of more aspirational skills (such as STEM, arts, project-based learning – linked to the Presidential agenda which focuses on the economy and TVET). This is reinforced by evidence from the National Assessment System for Monitoring Learner Achievement (NASMLA, 2019) that shows that only about 3 in 10 Grade 3 learners demonstrate proficiency in basic numeracy skills, highlighting a pressing crisis. More recent analysis from the Foundational Literacy and Numeracy Assessment by Usawa Agenda (FLANA 2023) echoes these concerns, reporting that large proportions of children in upper primary grades continue to struggle with simple arithmetic operations such as addition and subtraction, despite being in school for several years. Low outcomes in numeracy are also attributed to low levels of literacy comprehension. A key part of the success of this role will be enabling government leaders to shift back to prioritizing literacy and numeracy, particularly considering the political landscape currently.
A major component of work involves supporting the implementation of two Presidential Task Force recommendations from the Presidential Working Party on Education Reform on foundational learning, catalyzing coordinated civil society action, and ensuring that Kenya’s experience feeds into regional and continental advocacy. The priority areas for the Kenyan Government in improving foundational learning is articulated in the report of the Presidential Working Party on Education Reform (PWPER) and the National Education Sector Strategic Plan (NESSP). PWPER recommends development of guidelines to enhance foundational learning in Early Years Education; recommends targeted interventions to address the low levels of literacy and numeracy outcomes and the need to leverage technology to improve digital literacy among teachers, parents, and stakeholders. The President assented to the recommendations in the report – a show of commitment to ensure the recommendations are fully implemented. As an entry point to improve foundational learning in Kenya, Gates Foundation programmatic investments focus on numeracy building on the government’s desire to invest in teacher capacities for numeracy teaching, as a foundation for the CBC STEM ambition. Sustained advocacy for county and national governments to continue investing in foundational learning is essential for 3 main reasons: economic transformation, social cohesion, and demographic dividend.
The Advocacy Officer role is designed to maximize Hub leverage in Kenya by pairing strong grantee leadership with focused liaison, intelligence, and communications integration. They support the formation and ongoing orchestration of a coherent group of civil society partners, ensure alignment among Kenya-based advocates, and strengthen the country’s ability to translate evidence into government-backed, budgeted, and implemented actions.
They work closely with the specialist sub-grantees (e.g., public financial management organizations, evidence intermediaries, youth groups, media partners) and help ensure that country-level advocacy is tightly synchronized with regional and continental priorities. The work will complement existing Gates Foundation programmatic investments in Kenya including the Lighthouse Coalition which has focused on working with local actors to build government partnerships between local implementation experts and government agencies and the Ministry of Education for inside advocacy by non-state actors. It has resulted in a government led numeracy coalition and finalized a national 10-year roadmap that will inform strategic priorities the Government and ecosystem players should prioritize to improve numeracy outcomes for all children. This roadmap is in the process of validation with the various agencies for adoption of key institutional commitments to improve numeracy teaching in the coming year.