About us
The Africa Centre for Health Systems and Gender Justice is a Pan-African social impact organisation advancing gender justice in health systems through inclusive financing, community-led care, and feminist leadership. Our mission is to reimagine economic systems as catalysts for health equity. Our vision is an Africa where women, girls, and structurally marginalised communities build economic power, leadership, and voice to shape equitable and just health systems.
FemDigiNomics is a women-centred data and intelligence platform being developed by the Africa Centre for Health Systems and Gender Justice. Building on HerEconomics, the platform seeks to use community-generated data, Swahili natural language processing (NLP), responsible Al, and participatory research to strengthen women’s financial inclusion, livelihood resilience, and health-informed economic empowerment. FemDigiNomics aims to translate women’s lived experiences of savings, debt, enterprise growth, care responsibilities, health-related financial pressures, and digital access into practical tools, including a Women’s Financial Inclusion and Lending Readiness Scorecard, community insights, and decision-support systems that improve economic opportunities and wellbeing for low-income women.
Call for Interns: FemDigiNomics Project
Location: Nairobi, with possible community engagement in informal settlements and partner sites
Duration: 3 to 6 months
Type: Internship
Reports to: Fem DigiNomics Project Lead
We are seeking interns across the following areas:
1. Data and Research Intern
The Data and Research Intern will support the collection, cleaning, organisation, and analysis of HerEconomics and FemDigiNomics data.
Key responsibilities
- Support data collection from women participants, community partners, and savings groups.
- Clean and organise quantitative and qualitative data from surveys, interviews, focus groups, and partner reports.
- Assist in building the 5,000-woman status and insights base.
- Support analysis of women’s income patterns, savings behaviour, enterprise barriers, digital access, care responsibilities, and health-related financial pressures.
- Assist in preparing research summaries, dashboards, learning briefs, and internal reports.
- Support ethical data handling, consent documentation, anonymisation, and secure data storage.
Ideal candidate
- Background in statistics, economics, public health, gender studies, data science, development studies, or a related field.
- Comfortable working with Excel, Google Sheets, Kobo, ODK, STATA, R, Python, Power BI, or similar tools.
- Strong attention to detail and interest in women’s economic opportunity and health equity.
2. NLP and Al Intern
The NLP and Al Intern will support the development of English and Swahili language resources and early AI/NLP workflows for FemDigiNomics.
Key responsibilities
- Support the collection, cleaning, translation, and annotation of Swahili and mixed-language narratives.
- Help develop language categories around savings, debt, chama obligations, business risk, care work, health shocks, and lending readiness.
- Assist in testing simple NLP workflows for classifying women’s needs, barriers, and support pathways.
- Support documentation of language resources, annotation protocols, and model/testing outputs.
- Contribute to responsible Al discussions, including bias, explainability, privacy, and ethical use of women’s data.
- Work with community and research teams to ensure language tools reflect how women actually describe their economic realities.
Ideal candidate
- Background in computer science, data science, computational linguistics, AI, NLP, information systems, or related fields.
- Interest in African languages, especially Swahili and Sheng.
- Basic knowledge of Python, NLP libraries, machine learning, data annotation, or language data processing is an advantage.
- Strong commitment to ethical, community-grounded Al.
3. Responsible Al and Data Governance Intern
The Responsible Al and Data Governance Intern will support the development of ethical, safe, and community-centred data systems for FemDigiNomics. The role will ensure that women’s data is collected, stored, analysed, and used in ways that protect privacy, dignity, agency, and trust.
Key Responsibilities
- Support the development of informed consent processes for data collection and participation.
- Assist in creating protocols for data privacy, security, anonymisation, and responsible data use.
- Review project activities through a gender, ethics, and safeguarding lens.
- Support documentation of data governance policies and standard operating procedures.
- Assist in identifying and mitigating risks related to bias, exclusion, discrimination, and misuse of Al systems.
- Contribute to discussions on responsible Al, explainability, transparency, and accountability.
- Support compliance with applicable data protection and privacy frameworks.
- Assist in community engagement processes related to ethical use of data.
Ideal Candidate
- Background in law, public policy, ethics, data governance, information management, public health, gender studies, or related fields.
- Strong interest in responsible Al, digital rights, privacy, and data protection.
- Understanding research ethics and safeguarding principles is an advantage.
- Excellent analytical, writing, and documentation skills.
- Commitment to community-centered and rights-based approaches.
4. Financial Inclusion and Partnerships Intern
The Financial Inclusion and Partnerships Intern will support the development of pathways that connect women participating in HerConomics and FemDigiNomics to financial services, enterprise support, savings opportunities, and livelihood strengthening initiatives.
Key Responsibilities
- Map financial inclusion of actors including SACCOS, microfinance institutions, fintechs, women’s funds, banks, and savings groups.
- Conduct landscape assessments on women’s financial inclusion of ecosystems.
- Support development of referral pathways linked to the Women’s Financial Inclusion and Lending Readiness Scorecard.
- Assist in documenting barriers women face when accessing formal and informal financial services.
- Support partnership development with financial institutions, investors, women’s enterprise programmes, and livelihood initiatives.
- Assist in preparing partnership briefs, concept notes, and engagement materials.
- Support monitoring of women’s access to financial inclusion opportunities arising from the project.
Ideal Candidate
- Background in economics, finance, business, development studies, public policy, or related fields.
- Strong interest in women’s economic empowerment and financial inclusion.
- Understanding microfinance, community savings models, digital finance, or entrepreneurship ecosystems is an advantage.
- Strong research and stakeholder engagement skills.
- Excellent communication and report writing abilities.
5. Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Intern
The Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Intern will support the design and implementation of systems that track outcomes, generate learning, and measure the impact of HerConomics and FemDigiNomics on women’s financial inclusion, livelihoods, wellbeing, and digital participation.
Key Responsibilities
- Support development of monitoring and evaluation frameworks.
- Assist in tracking programme outputs, outcomes, and impact indicators.
- Support baseline, follow-up, and learning assessments.
- Assist in maintaining programme databases and performance dashboards.
- Support analysis of programme trends and participant outcomes.
- Contribute to learning briefs, case studies, impact reports, and donor reporting.
- Support documentation of lessons learned and adaptive management processes.
- Assist in measuring uptake and usefulness of FemDigiNomics tools and scorecards.
Ideal Candidate
- Background in monitoring and evaluation, statistics, economics, public health, development studies, social sciences, or related fields.
- Experience working with data collection and reporting tools is an advantage.
- Familiarity with Excel, Kobo, ODK, Power BI, SPSS, STATA, R, or similar tools.
- Strong analytical and organisational skills.
- Interest in evidence generation, learning, and impact measurement.
6. Community Engagement and Programme Intern
The Community Engagement and Programme Intern will support implementation with HerEconomics partners, women’s groups, chamas, and community networks.
Key responsibilities:
- Support coordination with grassroots partners, peer leaders, and community mobilisers.
- Assist with participant mobilisation, training logistics, community conversations, and feedback sessions.
- Support documentation of women’s experiences, needs, and priorities.
- Help organise user testing sessions for the FemDigiNomics scorecard and related tools.
- Support partner reporting, meeting notes, attendance tracking, and follow-up.
- Ensure community feedback is captured and shared with the programme and technical teams.
Ideal candidate
- Background in community development, gender studies, public health, social work, psychology, sociology, development studies, or related fields.
- Experience working with women’s groups, informal settlements, youth, GBV survivors, or grassroots organisations is an advantage.
- Fluency in Swahili is required. Sheng or local community language skills are an added advantage.
- Strong interpersonal skills, empathy, and respect for community knowledge.
7. Product, Communications and Learning Intern
The Product, Communications and Learning Intern will support documentation, storytelling, product feedback, and communication of FemDigiNomics learning.
Key responsibilities:
- Support development of user-friendly financial literacy and livelihood content.
- Assist in documenting stories, case studies, learning notes, and programme insights.
- Help translate technical concepts into accessible language for women, partners, donors, and community audiences.
- Support user feedback on the lending readiness scorecard and FemDigiNomics platform.
- Assist in preparing presentations, briefs, social media content, partner updates, and donor-facing materials.
- Support documentation of reusable learning resources emerging from the project.
Ideal candidate:
- Background in communications, journalism, design, development studies, gender studies, public policy, or related fields.
- Strong writing, editing, and storytelling skills.
- Interest in women’s economic opportunity, digital inclusion, African language technology, and social impact.
- Ability to communicate complex ideas simply and respectfully.
Cross-Cutting Requirements for All Interns
All applicants should demonstrate:
- Strong interest in women’s economic opportunity, gender justice, financial inclusion, and health equity.
- Respect for community knowledge, lived experience, and ethical data practices.
- Ability to work with low-income women and grassroots partners with dignity and sensitivity.
- Good writing, documentation, and communication skills.
- Fluency in English and Swahili.
- Ability to work independently and as part of a multidisciplinary team.
- Willingness to learn and work across research, programme implementation, technology, and community engagement.
What Interns Will Gain
Interns will gain practical experience in:
- Community-rooted Al and NLP for African languages.
- Women’s financial inclusion and lending readiness.
- Participatory research and data collection.
- Responsible Al, data governance, and ethical use of community data.
- Programme implementation with grassroots women’s organisations.
- Translating research and data into practical tools for low-income women.
- Working at the intersection of gender justice, economic opportunity, health, and technology.
