Programme Assistant

Title: Programme Assistant

Salary: Local terms and conditions apply

Location: Dakar, Senegal

Contract: 24-month Fixed Term Contract - with possible extension

Hours: Full time, 35 hours per week

Anticipated start date – 1 February 2027

About the programme

Sightsavers and Mastercard Foundation have partnered to deliver Digital Futures, a bold initiative under the Foundation’s Young Africa Works strategy and Sightsavers’ mission to promote inclusive development. The programme is focused on improving access to dignified and fulfilling work for young people with disabilities across Africa, with a strong emphasis on young women.

Digital Futures will contribute to Mastercard Foundation’s target of enabling 30 million young Africans, particularly women and people with disabilities, to access dignified and fulfilling work. Over five years the program will enrol 12,200 young people with disabilities, with at least 70% being women, and more than 14,700 people benefiting indirectly through community engagement.

About the role

As the Programme Assistant you will provide administrative, coordination, and operational support to ensure smooth and effective implementation of the Digital Futures Programme in Senegal. The role supports communication, logistics, partner coordination, reporting, and learning processes—enabling the Programme Officer and partners to deliver high-quality, timely results across programme domains.

The principal accountabilities include:

• Supporting consistent communication across the programme; coordinate information flow between the Programme Officer, implementing partners, and internal teams; track workplans, deliverables and deadlines.
• Supporting preparation, editing and formatting of programme reports and partner submissions; collect, organise and file documentation and evidence and maintain accurate records.
• Support the planning and delivery of workshops, training sessions, field activities and stakeholder engagements; prepare agendas/materials/participant lists and evaluations; coordinate venues, catering, materials and equipment; ensure accessibility and effective participant engagement.
• Provide basic support to partners with budgeting, expenditure tracking, compliance documentation, and preparation of budgets and forecasts, and support procurement processes in-line with organisational policies.
• Support collection of stories and visibility content, ensuring ethical standards, safeguarding and informed consent; assist with drafting communication content for internal/external use.
• Identify and escalate operational and contextual risks; support implementation of safeguarding policy, data protection and do-no-harm principles across activities.

Skills and Experience

As the successful candidate you will possess relevant experience, or studies in a relevant field (social sciences, development studies, human rights, gender studies, information systems, public policy, or similar), have a background in supporting programme/project delivery, and have experience with core project management practices (planning, scheduling, budgeting, reporting).

The successful candidate will be able to travel internationally and locally for up to 8-10 weeks per year.

Further requirements include:

• Strong organisational and coordination skills with ability to manage multiple priorities and deadlines.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills and ability to engage diverse stakeholders.
• Competence with standard office tools (including Excel) and confidence using digital platforms (online meetings, messaging, online forms, social media).
• Commitment to inclusion, equality, human rights and ethical standards, including safeguarding, data protection and do-no-harm.
• Experience supporting inclusion, advocacy, livelihoods, and/or digital/ICT-related initiatives (through work, volunteering, or community programmes).
• Familiarity with disability inclusion in Senegal.
• An understanding of working in donor-funded and/or multi-partner programmes.
• Experience using assistive technology.
• Written and spoken English skills.

As an equal opportunity employer, we actively encourage applications from all sections of the community. Sightsavers is a Disability Confident Leader and qualified people living with a disability are particularly encouraged to apply.

This is a highly varied and involved position, and the above is not an exhaustive list of deliverables or required professional skills. Please see the Job Description for full details.

Candidates are welcome to demonstrate their ability to match the person specification by expanding on how their experience, training and/or qualifications might have provided them with the knowledge or skills required for the role. Successful candidates will be appointed on merit.

Next Steps

To apply for this exciting new opportunity, please submit your CV via our recruitment portal and answer the application questions. We are particularly interested in learning of your motivations for applying.

Please ensure that your CV and answers to the application questions are in English.

We anticipate that interviews will take place during the week of 7 December 2026 and the evaluation process will include a a written task and oral interview, to be completed by shortlisted candidates.

Closing date: 15 November 2026

Sightsavers is committed to safeguarding and takes the protection of everyone we work with seriously. Appointment to this role will be subject to satisfactory pre-employment checks, which include references, verification of relevant qualifications or certifications and, where appropriate, we may also ask for police or criminal record checks. Candidates will be asked to confirm their willingness to undertake these checks as part of the recruitment process.

As a global equal opportunities employer, Sightsavers is committed to embracing diversity throughout our workforce by creating an inclusive environment that reflects the many cultures and locations where we work. Our workforce will be truly representative of all sections of society and we will actively promote the inclusion of individuals with a disability. Sightsavers is a Disability Confident Leader and qualified people with a disability are particularly encouraged to apply.

Sightsavers is an employer that does not tolerate any form of harassment and has zero tolerance for sexual exploitation and abuse. All potential candidates will be subjected to rigorous background checks and controls.

How to apply

Please apply here