Senior Partnerships Officer (Africa)

About this role

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 https://www.canva.com/design/DAGetQfrr9U/JDu6A0CR7Y_-xZ9CvYAnww/view?utm_content=DAGetQfrr9U&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=uniquelinks&utlId=h57b65ef349.

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…