Overview
The Pharo Foundation is a mission-driven organisation working to build a vibrant, productive, and self-reliant Africa. Founded and fully funded by Pharo Management, an emerging markets hedge fund, the Foundation applies private sector rigour and operational discipline to maximise impact.
We invest in economic development programmes and ventures to deliver sustainable impact, meaning outcomes that continue long after the initial investment, rather than gains that require constant external funding to maintain. Thus, our model links two engines together: ventures create jobs and economic activity, while their profits help fund the development programmes that strengthen the conditions for future growth.
Over the next decade, the Foundation’s ambition is to deliver lasting impact across three interdependent missions:
- Empowering the next generation through affordable, high-quality education
- Solving water scarcity through sustainable infrastructure
- Driving economic productivity by unlocking jobs, investment, and innovation through both non-profit and for-profit ventures
The Foundation operates in Ethiopia, Somaliland, Kenya, and Rwanda, employing more than 800 people across three divisions: Pharo Schools, Pharo Development, and Pharo Ventures.
Opportunity
Over the next 2-3 years, Pharo Foundation will launch new development programmes across water, education, and productivity. As Development Associate, your job is to collaborate with country teams to ideate and surface new programme concepts, then assess their feasibility before capital deployment, design how communities will be engaged, and build implementation readiness. You won’t execute programmes yourself, but help design them for success from Day 1.
You will work closely with our research team (who generate evidence) and our country heads (who execute), asking: Does this idea fit the context? Who needs to buy in? What could go wrong? How do we build real community buy-in before we start? Reporting to the Chief Impact Officer, you will work with a high degree of autonomy, owning your assessments from scoping through to launch readiness planning.
You will have direct exposure to a senior leadership team thinking rigorously about programme design and impact across some of the most complex markets on the continent. The portfolio spans water, education, and productivity, meaning no two programmes look the same. For the right person, this job will help you build a track record designing programmes that work on the ground, with genuine community buy-in. In two years, you could look back and say: I helped design and validate the concepts for $5MM+ in development capital deployment.
Your impact will be measured by multiple things: the rigor of your feasibility work, how well you surface implementation reality, the strength of community engagement you design, and how you chip in as a team player. But ultimately, success means approved programme proposals that move to implementation. If your work is solid, proposals get greenlit and launch.
Key relationships
Role: Development Associate
Location: Nairobi, Kenya
Reporting to: Chief Impact Officer (CIO)
Functional relationship: Impact Teams, Ventures Teams
Key Responsibilities
Programme design and feasibility assessment:
Collaborate with country teams to ideate and surface new programme concepts. For promising ideas, conduct rapid, structured assessments including stakeholder landscape mapping (government partners, local NGOs, community groups, etc.), institutional capacity assessment, community readiness evaluation, political economy analysis, and risk identification. Help refine programme design based on feasibility findings, adapting for local context and implementation reality, informed by your assessment. Identify sustainable revenue and cost-recovery models that would allow programmes to continue beyond Pharo’s initial investment. Produce feasibility assessment memos that make clear recommendations and flag what we need to believe for the programme to work. Speed and judgment matter as much as comprehensiveness.
Community engagement & social accountability design:
Design community engagement from programme inception. This includes pre-implementation dialogue with communities about programme rationale and design, feedback and grievance mechanisms, and social accountability frameworks. Ensure communities understand we are serious about listening. Produce community engagement plans that go to country leadership teams (and other stakeholders) before implementation begins.
Implementation readiness planning:
Before a new programme launches, produce a launch readiness plan covering partnership agreements, monitoring and feedback loops, risk mitigation strategies, maintenance arrangements (especially for infrastructure), and ESG narrative. Identify what could derail this programme and outline mitigation. Your plan will signal to all stakeholders that we’ve thought through implementation challenges and accounted for them.
Collaboration with country teams and impact team colleagues.
Work closely with country teams on contextualisation and adaptation, ensuring research insights translate into locally-grounded programme design. Partner with research associates on qualitative and quantitative feedback loops during programme execution and community learning. You represent implementation reality and community voice in programme design discussions. Surface tensions between research evidence, feasibility concerns, and implementation reality for resolution. Help articulate programme theory, implementation approach, and learning strategy to donors and partners.
Flexible contribution to urgent priorities.
As part of the Impact team, you pitch in where needed across our research, monitoring, evaluation, and investment functions. This might include supporting fieldwork on an urgent evaluation, helping with community due diligence for an investment decision, or contributing to a time-sensitive analysis. You respond quickly to evolving priorities and can maintain flexibility to handle what’s urgent as well as what’s planned.
Ideal Profile
- Bachelor’s or master’s degree in development economics, public policy, social sciences, or a related field. Strong academic record.
- 5+ years designing and managing programmes, community engagement, or implementation with an NGO, bilateral donor, or government. Experience launching new programmes and managing budgets, timelines, and teams. Experience in fragile or conflict-affected contexts.
- Conversant with development economics literature and evidence-based programme design. You understand what works in your sector (e.g., water, education, skills training, etc.). You can engage substantively with research findings and help translate them into feasible programme design.
- Creative problem-solver. You help design solutions that are both grounded in evidence and adapted to local context. You’re comfortable proposing alternatives when the standard approach won’t work. You draw from multiple sectors and contexts to inform your thinking.
- Financial literacy. You can build basic programme budgets, model simple financial projections (e.g., programme NPV, cost per beneficiary, etc.), and understand cash flow implications of programme design. You may not identify as a financial modeler, but you can plug numbers and flag when the math doesn’t work.
- East Africa experience (ideally Somaliland, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Kenya, or similar). You understand the operating environment and are not learning it from scratch.
- Culture fit. You are collaborative, not defensive. You surface problems early and directly, without documenting for cover. You take feedback as real input, not criticism to rebut. You celebrate teammates’ wins. You ask for help when you need it and offer it readily. You can build trust across different groups — government officials, community leaders, implementation partners, research teams. You can disagree without being disagreeable. People enjoy working with you, and you genuinely enjoy working with others.
- Comfortable spending extended time in Hargeisa, rural Ethiopia, Kigali, and other field locations across our country portfolio. (This is not occasional travel.)
- You write and present with clarity and economy. You can produce a crisp field memo or a polished programme briefing. You can adapt your message for different audiences.
- You operate independently. You can receive a brief, define your assessment approach, spend time in the field, and deliver a polished output without being closely managed.
- You work with urgency, moving fast with imperfect information while making defensible judgments and flagging uncertainties honestly.
- Curious and mission-aligned. You want to understand how things work and care whether our programmes create impact. You are willing to push back when evidence warrants it.
Application Process
Applicants are required to attach a detailed CV and a cover letter.
We will review applications on a rolling basis, and in the event that an exceptional candidate is identified early in the process, Pharo Foundation reserves the right to make an appointment before the advertised deadline. We therefore encourage interested applicants to apply as early as possible.
Please note that only shortlisted candidates will be contacted due to the high volume of applications received.