Partnerships Specialist

About ALX Africa

ALX Africa, a non-profit organisation under the ALX Foundation, is dedicated to unlocking the potential of Africa's digital future. Formerly part of Sand Tech Holdings, we've embarked on an independent journey to provide world-class tech skills training and career acceleration programmes. Our mission is to bridge the digital divide, upskill and re-skill talent, and create a generation of innovative leaders. By 2030, we aim to empower 2 million Africans to secure sustainable tech careers.

With hubs in 8 cities across Africa and counting, we provide safe access to quality learning and a dedicated network of expert instructors. Our innovative programmes equip learners with the practical skills and knowledge needed to succeed in today's rapidly evolving tech industry. Through a combination of rigorous coursework, industry partnerships, and hands-on projects, we prepare our students for in-demand roles in software engineering, data science, and cybersecurity.

We achieve this by:

• Providing young professionals with access to the most in-demand tech skills that will power the future.
• Empowering the next generation of technology innovators, entrepreneurs, and business leaders through challenging, real-world coursework.
• Building a lifelong, impactful community of tech professionals that support them at all stages of their career journey. 

Our impact thus far:

• 347k+ graduates since 2020
• 257k youth in work
• 31k youth starting own ventures
• 60k youth in jobs created by entrepreneurs

 Visit our website www.alxafrica.com to learn more about our digital revolution.

Role Summary

The Partnerships Specialist will be responsible for leading our external partnership initiatives and serving as the critical bridge between ALX and our ecosystem of institutional partners. This role requires a dynamic professional who can balance strategic relationship management with operational excellence, ensuring that partnerships deliver maximum value for learners, partners, and the organization. The Partnerships Specialist will also own the end-to-end partnerships lifecycle, from proposal evaluation to implementation coordination and ongoing assessment.

The position reports to the VP of Learning. The individual will work closely with cross-functional teams, including Fundraising, Operations, Learning, Regional Teams/Cities, Product, Engineering, Data, Brand, Finance, SAMA, and Impact.

Specific Responsibilities

Strategic Relationship Management

• Build and nurture relationships with key partners to deepen engagement, unlock new opportunities, and position ALX as a strategic partner of choice.
• Conduct regular business reviews with existing partners to assess partnership health, measure impact against agreed KPIs, identify optimization opportunities, and explore expansion possibilities.
• Manage partner expectations proactively, providing transparent communication about timelines, capabilities, constraints, and outcomes.
• Develop partner success plans that outline mutual objectives, success metrics, communication cadence, escalation protocols, and value realization milestones.

Partnership Business Development

• Develop compelling partnership proposals for pilot programs and for Reward opportunities with high-potential partners (e.g. Google, IBM, Meta, Canva, and other strategic technology companies).
• Craft customised value propositions that articulate mutual benefits, learner impact, brand positioning, and business outcomes tailored to each partner's strategic objectives.
• Lead partnership negotiation discussions on scope, terms, deliverables, timelines, and success metrics, ensuring win-win outcomes that protect ALX's interests and capabilities.
• Design innovative partnership models (e.g., content licensing, co-branded programs, certification pathways, talent pipelines, sponsored learning, technology access, etc) that create differentiated value.
• Prepare executive-level presentation materials, including partnership decks, business cases, ROI analyses, and impact projections for senior leadership and partner review.
• Coordinate due diligence processes including legal review, technical feasibility assessment, financial modeling, and operational capacity validation.
• Create pilot program frameworks with clear success metrics, evaluation criteria, learning capture mechanisms, and scale-up pathways.

Partnership Pipeline Development & Strategy

• Build and maintain a robust long-term partnership pipeline spanning at least 6-12 months, working collaboratively with partnership owners, including the CEO’s office, the Fundraising team, GMs, the Brand team, and program leads.
• Conduct market research and ecosystem mapping to identify high-potential partnership opportunities aligned with ALX's strategic priorities, emerging technology trends, and learner needs.
• Develop partnership opportunity briefs (in coordination with partnership owners) for each pipeline prospect, including company background, strategic rationale, potential partnership models, estimated value, resource requirements, and recommended approach.
• Create comprehensive dashboards that provide all stakeholders (Fundraising, Learning, Product, Tech, Finance, Operations, Cities, etc) with clear visibility into upcoming partnerships, anticipated resource needs, and timeline dependencies.
• Facilitate cross-functional pipeline review sessions to gather input, build alignment, prioritize opportunities, and ensure organizational readiness for upcoming partnerships.
• Track partnership conversion metrics from pipeline to activation, analyzing success patterns and barriers to inform targeting and engagement strategies.
• Establish partnership forecasting models that help leadership anticipate resource allocation needs, revenue opportunities, and strategic positioning requirements.

Partnership Reporting 

• Create executive-level partnership reports that showcase impact, learner outcomes, brand visibility, and strategic value delivered to partners.
• Own partnership reporting needs in coordination with the Impact team, for major partners and donors (such as the Mastercard Foundation). 
• Compile key data and craft impactful story-telling/narratives to create compelling reports for key partners. 

Partnerships Governance & Proposal Management

• Lead the Weekly Partnerships Proposal Forum, serving as the primary facilitator and decision-support lead for evaluating incoming partnership opportunities against strategic priorities and resource capacity.
• Establish and maintain rigorous evaluation criteria for partnership proposals, ensuring alignment with ALX's mission, learner outcomes, operational feasibility, and financial sustainability.
• Manage the complete proposal review process from initial intake through stakeholder consultation, due diligence, recommendation development, and final decision communication.
• Create comprehensive evaluation summaries for each proposal, including strategic fit analysis, resource requirements, risk assessment, timeline implications, and expected ROI.
• Maintain a centralized partnerships proposal tracking system that provides real-time visibility into proposal status, decision rationale, and historical patterns to inform future strategy.

Cross-Functional Partnership Implementation

• Serve as the internal champion for partner needs, ensuring partner commitments are understood and delivered upon across all ALX departments and geographies.
• Serve as the orchestration lead for bringing approved partnerships from concept to launch, coordinating across Product, Tech, Learning Delivery, Cities, Finance, Legal, SAMA, and Brand.
• Develop detailed partnership implementation plans, including project timelines, workstream owners, dependencies, milestone gates, risk mitigation strategies, and success criteria.
• Facilitate partnership kickoff sessions with internal teams and external partners to align on objectives, roles, deliverables, timelines, and communication protocols.
• Monitor partnership implementation progress, identifying and resolving blockers, managing scope changes, and ensuring on-time, on-quality delivery of partnership commitments.
• Coordinate with the Learning team to ensure partnership-driven content and experiences meet pedagogical standards and align with curriculum objectives.
• Work with Tech teams to integrate partner platforms, tools, and resources into the ALX learning ecosystem with appropriate security, scalability, and user experience considerations.
• Partner with Cities teams to ensure partnership benefits and activations are effectively deployed across ALX's geographic footprint.
• Establish feedback loops from implementation teams back to partnership strategy to continuously improve execution capability and partnership design.

Partnerships Framework & Operations Excellence

• Improve the standardized partnership decision framework/template and process, establishing clear criteria, evaluation processes, and governance structures for partnership decisions at all organizational levels.
• Develop a partnership's financial model in collaboration with Finance that assigns dollar values and unit costs per learner for different partnership types (e.g., content partnerships, platform access, certification programs, sponsored cohorts).
• Establish minimum acceptable value thresholds and pricing guidelines for various partnership categories to ensure financial sustainability and appropriate value exchange.
• Create standardised partnership templates and playbooks covering common partnership types, contractual terms, implementation checklists, and success metrics.
• Design and implement a partnership CRM system that captures complete partnership lifecycle data, interaction history, value tracking, and relationship health indicators.
• Develop partnership performance dashboards and analytics that measure partnership ROI, learner impact, operational efficiency, and strategic value across the entire portfolio.
• Establish quality assurance processes for partnership execution, including post-mortem reviews, lessons learned documentation, and continuous improvement initiatives.

Skill Requirements - Essential

• Strategic thinking: Ability to see beyond operational needs to build coherent long-term strategies aligned with organisational objectives.
• Relationship management excellence: Demonstrated ability to build trust, manage complex stakeholder relationships, and maintain long-term partnerships through challenges.
• Cross-functional leadership: Proven ability to influence and coordinate across multiple teams without direct authority to achieve shared objectives.
• Business acumen: Strong understanding of operational and partnership economics, financial modelling, value proposition development, and commercial negotiations.
• Project management: Excellent organizational skills with ability to manage multiple complex programs and partnerships simultaneously with competing priorities and timelines.
• Communication excellence: Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to craft compelling documents and present confidently to senior executives.

Essential Traits for Success

• You have a high level of accuracy and a strong attention to detail. You pay close attention to all of the small particulars when working on a task or project.
• Experience with delivering on large cross-functional complex projects/programs, coupled with a detailed understanding of the risks and milestones to cross.
• A demonstrated ability to problem-solve and rapidly follow through on deliverables.
• Strong collaborative capabilities: You are a team player and can influence your peers to drive results.
• Humility and openness to feedback: you proactively seek feedback for improvement and have an insatiable curiosity and hunger to grow.
• You have a self-starter mindset and are comfortable with ambiguous, ever-changing situations
• You are comfortable executing in a fast-paced working environment with tight precision.

Person Specification/Attributes

• Courage: Willingness to speak up, challenge the status quo, and embrace new challenges.
• Humility: Openness to learning, seeking help when needed, and a focus on serving others.
• Adventure: A passion for setting ambitious goals, tackling difficult tasks, and finding joy in the journey.
• Initiative: Proactive problem-solving, a sense of ownership, and a willingness to go above and beyond.
• Resilience: The ability to bounce back from setbacks, persevere through challenges, and emerge stronger.

Employment Type

This role is a full-time position.