Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Seeks a Head of Community Engagement (MSF Ubuntu) – Great opportunity | Apply by 6 March 2026

If you are a senior humanitarian professional passionate about placing communities at the centre of decision-making, this is your moment. MSF Ubuntu is recruiting a Head of Community Engagement, a senior management role based in Johannesburg or Nairobi, with regional and project travel.

This is not just another leadership role. It is an opportunity to shape how one of the world’s most respected medical humanitarian organisations works alongside communities across complex and crisis-affected environments.

About MSF Ubuntu

MSF Ubuntu is the newest Operational Directorate of MSF, grounded in the philosophy of Ubuntu — “I am because we are.” It operates across Southern and Eastern Africa and seeks to transform humanitarian delivery by embedding interdependence, equity, and solidarity into medical action.

MSF provides medical assistance to people affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters, and exclusion from healthcare — without discrimination and irrespective of political or religious affiliation.

Ubuntu’s vision is clear: place communities at the heart of operational strategy and decision-making.

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The Role: A Strategic Leadership Position

The Head of Community Engagement reports directly to the Director of Operations and is a member of the Executive Management Team.

The primary mandate is to institutionalise Community Engagement (CE) strategically and operationally across all departments — including Operations, Medical, Advocacy, Communications, and HR — while ensuring accountability to affected populations (AAP), protection, empowerment, and equity.

This is a high-impact leadership role that influences both policy and field-level practice.

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What You’ll Be Responsible For

1. Strategic Leadership

You will lead the development and implementation of the Ubuntu Community Engagement Framework and ensure it is embedded across departments.

This includes integrating Information, Education, Communication, and Health Promotion strategies so that communities receive timely, accurate, and culturally relevant health information.

You will also promote coherence between CE, safeguarding, inclusion, protection, and accountability systems.

2. Context Analysis & Access Support

Community engagement is critical to humanitarian access. In this role, you will:

• Provide community-level analysis to inform security and risk assessments
• Support acceptance-based security approaches
• Strengthen dialogue with local leaders and networks
• Contribute to negotiated access strategies in contested environments

This dimension of the role makes it particularly strategic in fragile or high-risk contexts.

3. Technical Guidance & Field Support

You will support projects and country programmes to integrate community engagement into:

• Assessments
• Project design
• Implementation
• Evaluation

This includes strengthening participatory mechanisms such as community committees and dialogue platforms, and ensuring CE is treated as a transversal, cross-cutting priority.

You will also ensure learnings inform advocacy, protection strategies, and adaptive programming.

4. Safeguarding & Inclusion

MSF maintains strong safeguarding commitments. Community engagement approaches must be ethical, culturally appropriate, and protection-sensitive.

You will collaborate closely with safeguarding, DEI, and medical teams to ensure engagement with historically marginalised groups is meaningful and safe.

This role also involves building partnerships with humanitarian protection networks and specialists to strengthen outreach competencies.

5. Knowledge Management & Capacity Building

A key part of the role involves building leadership pipelines and institutional knowledge. You will:

• Develop a Community Engagement Learning & Knowledge Strategy
• Oversee CE training materials and toolkits
• Mentor focal points and programme leaders
• Document and disseminate operational innovations

This ensures sustainability and continuous learning across the Ubuntu Operational Directorate.

6. Representation & Partnerships

You will represent MSF Ubuntu in international Community Engagement technical working groups and build partnerships with:

• Civil society organisations
• Community-based organisations
• Academic institutions
• Health systems
• Advocacy coalitions

This external-facing component makes the role influential beyond internal operations.

Who Should Apply?

MSF is seeking a highly experienced professional with:

• An advanced university degree in Social Sciences, Anthropology, Public Health, Development Studies, International Relations, or equivalent experience
• Minimum 7 years’ professional experience working with communities, preferably in humanitarian or public health settings
• At least 2 years in senior project leadership roles in Community Engagement
• Strong experience developing CE or AAP frameworks in complex humanitarian contexts
• Proficiency in English (additional MSF languages are desirable)

MSF emphasises leadership competencies such as strategic vision, people management, results orientation, cultural competency, and conflict resolution.

Contract Details

• Location: Johannesburg or Nairobi
• Contract Type: Full-time
• Grade: Senior Management
• Travel: 20%–50% annually

The position is open to both local and international applicants.

Why This Role Stands Out

Community engagement is increasingly recognised as critical in humanitarian effectiveness. Strong coordination, security awareness, relationship-building, and community trust are essential in complex environments.

This role sits at that intersection — combining strategic leadership, operational insight, protection, inclusion, and access negotiation into one influential position.

It is ideal for someone ready to move from strong programme leadership into movement-level institutional impact.

Final Thoughts

If you believe humanitarian action must be shaped with communities — not just delivered to them — this role offers a platform to embed that philosophy across an entire operational directorate.

With Ubuntu as its foundation and Executive Management influence at its core, this is a rare opportunity to redefine how community engagement drives medical humanitarian response across Africa and beyond.

If you are ready to lead, influence, and build systems that prioritise dignity, accountability, and meaningful participation — this could be the defining next step in your humanitarian career.