Live Show Research and Scheduling Support

International Development

timbuktoo Africa Innovation Foundation is a pan-African innovation initiative anchored in UNDP's Regional Bureau for Africa. Its mission is to support African founders to start, grow, and scale — targeting 100,000 enrolled startups and the mobilisation of USD 1 billion for African innovation. In 2026, timbuktoo launched 1 weekly live broadcast programme, the Building Africa live show and the upcoming Financing Africa and Innovating Africa, hosted by the Foundation's CEO, CIO and CINO respectively. The show runs for 30 minutes each week on LinkedIn Live and Facebook Live, featuring conversations with African startup founders on innovation and ecosystem development. Research is essential to ensuring each episode is substantive, relevant, and well-matched to the show's audience of founders, investors, and policymakers across Africa and the diaspora.

We are looking for three online volunteers to support episode research for the Building Africa live show already launched, and additional volunteers would support the Financing Africa Show and the Innovation Africa Show's once launched. For each of up to 12 weekly episodes, the online volunteers will carry out background research on the assigned episode theme and compile a structured research brief, communicate with and schedule guests for the show and carry out post-show communication (thank you emails to the guests, and a share of the created outputs such as the posted live sessions and short clips - these are produced by a separate team member. Each brief will include: A list of 3–5 potential guest candidates relevant to the episode theme, drawn from the African startup and innovation ecosystem. Where a draft 12-week schedule is present, the role will communicate with, confirm and schedule the guest candidates for the upcoming shows. A short background summary (150–200 words) on each candidate, covering their organisation, work, and relevance to the episode theme 2–3 suggested conversation angles per candidate The output of this assignment per volunteer is 12 completed episode research briefs - one per episode, submitted to timbuktoo at least 7 days before each scheduled broadcast, upto 36 guests contacted - 3 per show, confirmed and scheduled for the show episodes, upto 12 pre-session briefing calls held with confirmed guests.