Market Engagement Manager

Department: Mobile for Development

Team: Accelerator, M4D

Location: Nairobi

Position type: Fixed Term Contract until March 2028

What the hiring manager says

“Working across Africa, this role is a great opportunity for someone with a strong commercial background who is also passionate about driving digital inclusion for underserved groups, especially women. As Market Engagement Manager, you will collaborate closely with partners to drive strategic interventions focused on increasing internet adoption and use. You’ll help create scalable and impactful solutions that can drive long-term change for women and underserved populations.” Akansha Kasera – Senior Market Engagement Manager, M4D

About the Team

GSMA Mobile for Development (M4D) is a dedicated global team within the GSMA, which brings together our mobile operator members, tech innovators, the development community and governments, to realise the impact of mobile in low- and middle-income countries: https://www.gsma.com/mobilefordevelopment/

This role is part of an initiative which aims to accelerate meaningful digital adoption and use of the internet for women and girls while influencing digital ecosystems through evidence and learning.

About the Role

You will work as part of the team to support the scale up of approaches to increase women’s adoption and use of the internet, reducing the gender gap.

Key responsibilities include working as part of a team to:

• Support a portfolio of partners across Africa interested in accelerating women’s adoption and use of the internet, with a particular focus on increasing smartphone ownership and use. This will include managing and delivering technical assistance and advisory support to organisations being supported by the initiative to help drive and scale impactful in-country actions. This includes:
  • Ensuring effective contracting and management of packages of technical assistance and provisioning strategic advisory support.
  • Providing thought leadership, analysing market opportunities, inputting to the design and delivery of propositions, creating and delivering strategy workshops for partners, and tracking both commercial and social outcomes.
• Generate and share key insights which drive increased awareness and action among stakeholders as well as supporting knowledge exchange between partners. This includes documenting insights and learnings and sharing your findings with the industry ecosystem through presentations, case studies, toolkits, blogs, events and meetings with relevant stakeholders.

About You

• You will have a strong commercial experience, gained through working as a management consultant or within corporate strategy, business planning or marketing functions, ideally within or for the digital sector.

• You have familiarity with strategies that drive inclusion for underserved communities, including women. This will ideally include knowledge and understanding of approaches to improving handset affordability and adoption.

• You can quickly understand new data and business models to identify commercial opportunities that can also have a substantial social impact when successfully scaled.

• You will be confident and comfortable presenting to and engaging with senior leadership in the private sector, quick to identify insights and summarise key points.

• You are compelling and persuasive and can draw on GSMA and other insights to add value to partners and provide evidence to drive sustainable action.

• You have strong verbal and written communication skills and can document insights and learnings to share your findings with the industry ecosystem

• You are a strong team player, self-aware and able to work collaboratively by default, supporting others and knowing when to reach out for support yourself.

• You have strong project management skills and organised to deliver high impact outputs.

• You will be passionate about the transformative potential of the internet and digital services to improve women’s livelihoods, economic security and resilience.

About your Skills

• Communication – Critical for influence, credibility, and impact. This role requires the ability to distil market insights, data, and partner learnings into clear, compelling narratives that resonate with senior decision-makers across the private sector, governments, donors, and the broader digital inclusion ecosystem. Strong written and verbal communication and thought leadership that shape industry discourse and drive action.

• Delivery – Essential for translating strategy into execution. The role demands strong project and delivery management skills to oversee multiple workstreams simultaneously, ensure effective contracting and management of technical assistance, and deliver high-impact outputs on time and to quality. Delivery capability ensures that partner engagements result in tangible commercial and social outcomes.

• Influence – Central to driving behaviour change and sustainable action among diverse stakeholders. This skill enables the role to persuade and align senior leaders within mobile operators, ecosystem partners, and GSMA internal teams around evidence-based recommendations. Influence is critical to positioning insights as actionable, building momentum for scale, and embedding strategies to advance women's digital inclusion.

• Stakeholder Management – Fundamental to the success of the program. This role requires the ability to build, manage, and maintain trusted relationships with senior executives, mobile operators, enabling organisations, donors, and internal teams. Effective stakeholder management supports collaboration across geographies and sectors, balances differing incentives, and ensures alignment between commercial objectives and inclusion goals.

• Commercial Awareness – Strong commercial acumen enables the identification of market opportunities that can drive both business value and social impact, particularly in areas such as smartphone affordability, adoption, and usage. This skill ensures that recommendations are grounded in realistic business models, market dynamics, and partner priorities, strengthening the credibility and long-term sustainability of digital interventions.

We strive to offer a meaningful and inclusive application experience for all candidates. Should you require any accommodations or adjustments due to a disability or for any other reason during the hiring process, please contact talent@gsma.com with your request.

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What We Offer

Working at the GSMA offers you unparalleled access to the mobile industry. We offer a chance to truly shape the direction of mobile, whatever your role. By joining the GSMA, you will be exposed to a fast-paced rapidly evolving environment, working on global solutions, genuinely fascinating and industry-changing projects and a stimulating and dynamic environment designed to enable you to flourish.

In addition to architect-designed offices and competitive compensation, our benefits include fantastic learning & development opportunities, generous holiday allowances, four additional days off for professional development and many others.

To learn more about the GSMA, visit our career site, our LinkedIn page and our Twitter page.

Being You at the GSMA

We care deeply about diversity, equity and inclusivity and aspire to be the best at it. Your well-being and work/life balance is important, so flexi-time and remote working is available to all staff. We're keen to ensure everyone is equal, represented and connected so we particularly encourage applications from all demographics. The sucess of the GSMA year on year will continue to be contributed by people from all walks of life.

GSMA Values

Our values not only drive our culture – they shape how we work and interact inside and outside our global organisation.

Passionately driven

We approach everything we do with unparalleled capability, tenacity and commitment, knowing that the challenging scale, pace and complexity of our work is what leads to its world-changing impact.

Insightful leaders

We continually develop and engage our expertise, insight and creativity so that we’re always ready to respond to the changing landscape with authority, agility and nuance.

Stronger together

We lean on each other so the industry can lean on us, embracing our diversity by actively seeking out perspectives and skill sets beyond our own, fuelling each other’s successes and constantly asking how we can help.

Underpinning our values is our collective mindset to show up purposefully as good human beings every day, in every situation. When we’re at our best – we are collaborative, considerate and compassionate to others, and we create a safe space for one another to thrive, assuming positive intent in our colleagues. And if we aren’t at our best and the pressure is on – we feel free to be ourselves but still remain curious, lean into the tough stuff and we are always respectful to others and accountable for the part we play.