People & Operations Officer

The connective tissue of the platform — maintaining operational discipline, people management, and stakeholder engagement rhythm across both entities (KK Advisors Africa and Kwanza Infrastructure Group).

About the Platform

Kwanza Infrastructure Group and KK Advisors Africa are two distinct but deeply interconnected entities bound by a single purpose: making clean energy infrastructure a reality across sub-Saharan Africa.

Kwanza Infrastructure Group (www.kwanzaig.com) is a project development platform focused on conceptualising, originating, developing, and structuring bankable clean energy and electricity infrastructure projects — including Independent Power Producer (IPP) and Independent Power Transmission (IPT) projects. We convert complex early-stage or greenfield opportunities into investment-ready assets. This requires simultaneous command of technical, commercial and regulatory dimensions across markets where the development is long, multi-stakeholder and unforgiving of gaps in judgement or follow-through.

KK Advisors LLP (www.kkadvisors.africa) is our advisory arm providing commercial, technical, financial, and policy advisory services to governments, development partners, and private sector clients across the energy value chain. Our clients have included Development Partner-linked programmes, national governments, and private sector energy players. KK Advisors Africa has a deliberate expansion plan — business development is therefore not a peripheral activity. It is woven into how every team member is expected to think and operate. Building relationships, identifying mandates and contributing to the growth of the practice is an expectation of the role, not an occasional ask.

Both entities operate from Kampala, functioning through an integrated team structure, and draw upon the same institutional knowledge base and strategic vision.

This is a lean, high-performance professional platform – not a large organisation with deep benches or rigid corporate structures. The work is intellectually demanding, the mandates are high-stakes, and the learning curve is steep. Our members are expected to think independently, undertake a deep dive on every work stream, come up to speed quickly, operate with consistent professionalism and maturity and contribute meaningfully from day one.

About the Role

Role Context

The platform operates as a lean, high-performance platform where professionals carry complex, long-cycle workstreams across two entities simultaneously. As the project pipeline advances, the platform will also coordinate multiple external consulting teams running in parallel across different development stages.

In this environment, the operating rhythm of the platform — whether meetings happen, whether follow-ups are made, whether commitments to partners and stakeholders are honoured, whether the team is functioning as a coherent unit rather than a collection of individuals — does not manage itself. Someone needs to hold that rhythm together. That is this role.

The People & Operations Officer is the connective tissue of the platform. They have a pulse on everything — who is behind on a commitment, who has not received a response, which meeting has been rescheduled three times, which team member is carrying too much or too little. They do not wait to be told about these things. They notice them, they name them, and they act on them — within a framework of transparency and with the maturity to understand that enforcement and retention are not opposites.

This role carries real authority — enough to enforce accountability across the platform. That authority is not a reward. It is a responsibility. The right person for this role is not someone who enjoys having it. They are someone who is genuinely uncomfortable when the platform is not functioning at its best — and who uses every tool available to fix that, with fairness, consistency, and respect for the people involved.

Role Purpose

The People & Operations Officer is responsible for maintaining the operational discipline, people management, and stakeholder engagement rhythm of the Platform. The role sits across both entities and serves as the primary accountability mechanism for internal follow-through, meeting discipline, partner and stakeholder engagement, and HR process adherence across the platform — operating on the systems, trackers, calendars, and dashboards.

The POO works directly with leadership and has a mandate to surface, escalate, and where appropriate resolve operational and people failures before they damage projects, relationships, or the platform's reputation.

Core Responsibilities

1. Operational Rhythm and Platform Accountability

Objective: Ensure the platform operates as a disciplined, high-functioning unit — where meetings happen, commitments are honoured, follow-ups are made, and nothing of consequence slips through the gap between people.

• Use the platform's master calendar to drive prioritisation, scheduling decisions, and meeting participation across both entities, ensuring leadership has full operational visibility.
• Follow up on attendance, follow-through, and output against all scheduled meetings and committed actions — flagging patterns of non-attendance, repeated rescheduling, or unresolved action items promptly and without waiting to be asked.
• Run structured internal meetings — driving discussions, ensuring clear action items, owners, and deadlines, and holding people accountable until outstanding actions are closed. Maintain the meeting workflow — agendas, minutes circulation, action assignment, reminders, and completion tracking.
• Engage with partners, clients, government counterparties, and stakeholders to ensure responses, follow-ups, and deliverables are made within agreed timeframes — drawing on the commitment register, deadline alerts, and escalation alerts.
• Escalate persistent patterns of non-delivery, missed commitments, or disengagement to leadership — with documented evidence, context, and a recommended course of action — before they become a project or relationship risk.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):

• 100% of internal meetings driven to clear actions with named owners and deadlines, captured in the meeting and action-tracking system.
• All external partner and stakeholder follow-ups completed within agreed timeframes — with any breach documented, escalated, and resolved within 48 hours.
• Within 90 days, produce a baseline platform accountability report identifying recurring patterns of follow-through failure and recommending structural interventions to address them.

2. People Management and HR Decisions

Objective: Ensure the platform's people management frameworks are lived, not just documented — and that the team is managed with the consistency, fairness, and transparency that retains talent in a thin labour market.

• Apply the platform's HR frameworks across both entities — including employment contracts, leave approvals, performance review conversations, onboarding execution, and disciplinary procedures — ensuring these are applied consistently and transparently across all team members, supported by the HR records system.
• Own the onboarding process for all new hires — ensuring that every new team member understands the platform's expectations, culture, operating rhythm, and accountability standards from day one.
• Conduct the platform's performance review cycle — running review conversations, providing feedback, and ensuring assessments and outcomes are documented (with the review scheduling and tracking workflows).
• Monitor team wellbeing, workload distribution, and engagement — identifying early signs of burnout, disengagement, or interpersonal tension and raising these with leadership before they escalate into retention or performance problems.
• Ensure that personnel decisions, performance feedback, and disciplinary actions are accurately captured and submitted into the centralised HR records system.
• Support leadership in navigating people decisions — including performance management conversations, role adjustments, and where necessary, exits — with the judgment to distinguish between a will gap and a skill gap, and to recommend the appropriate response to each.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):

• Within 60 days, produce a complete HR systems audit identifying gaps between documented frameworks and current practice — with a prioritised remediation plan.
• 100% of new hires complete a structured onboarding process with documented sign-off within their first two weeks.
• Performance review cycle completed on schedule for 100% of team members annually — with no reviews outstanding beyond the agreed cycle without a documented reason. Probationary appraisals should be completed a week before the probation term ends. Any Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs) tracked weekly, with progress reports delivered to leadership transparently and objectively according to agreed review milestones.
• Team wellbeing and workload concerns escalated to leadership within five business days of identification.

3. Stakeholder and Partner Engagement

Objective: Ensure that the platform's external relationships — with partners, clients, government counterparties, development finance institutions, and other stakeholders — are maintained with the consistency, responsiveness, and professionalism that the platform's reputation depends on.

• Coordinate external meeting schedules, site visits, government engagements, and partner interactions — ensuring that preparation materials are ready in advance, attendance is confirmed, and follow-up actions are captured and executed after every interaction.
• Drive resolution of outstanding commitments made to external parties — including information requests, document submissions, meeting requests, and response commitments — supported by the commitment register and alerts.
• Flag relationship risks — where a pattern of delayed responses, missed meetings, or unfulfilled commitments may be damaging the platform's credibility with a specific partner or counterparty — before the damage becomes irreversible.
• Support leadership in preparing for high-stakes external engagements — coordinating briefing materials, logistics, and follow-up frameworks for government meetings, investor interactions, and partner engagements.
• Support the identification and follow-up of prospective advisory opportunities, strategic partnerships, and business development leads across both entities (opportunity tracker).

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):

• Zero external commitments outstanding beyond agreed response timeframes without a documented explanation and escalation to leadership.
• All external meeting follow-up actions agreed and assigned within 24 hours of the engagement.
• Relationship risk flags raised with leadership within five business days of identifying a pattern of concern.

4. Operations, Administrative and Platform Effectiveness

Objective: Maintain a well-functioning, professionally managed office environment that supports the platform's operational needs and projects the standards of a high-performance professional organisation.

• Oversee the day-to-day administrative operations of the office across both entities — including facilities management, procurement of office supplies and equipment, vendor relationships, and general office functionality.
• Manage the platform's administrative procedures — including office protocols, correspondence handling, and procurement coordination — ensuring these are consistent and accessible across the team.
• Coordinate travel, accommodation, and logistics for team members and visiting counterparties — ensuring arrangements are made efficiently, cost-effectively, and in line with platform standards.
• Support leadership with scheduling, correspondence, and administrative requirements as needed — acting as a professional and reliable operational backbone for the platform.
• Identify operational inefficiencies and proactively recommend and implement improvements — without waiting to be asked.

(Note: document management, institutional knowledge repository, and operational records storage.)

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):

• Within 60 days, produce a simple office operations manual covering all core administrative procedures across both entities.
• All travel and logistics arrangements confirmed at least 48 hours in advance of requirement — with zero last-minute failures due to administrative oversight.
• Vendor and supplier relationships managed proactively — with contracts, invoices, and service records maintained and accessible.

Person Specification

Education & Qualifications

• Open to applicants aged between 24 – 30 years of age
• A Bachelor's degree in Human Resources, Business Administration, Management, Public Administration, or a related field.
• A postgraduate qualification or professional certification in HR, operations management, or project management is an advantage.
• Formal training or certification in HR practice — CIPD, IHRM Uganda, or equivalent — is an advantage.

Attributes

We are not primarily screening for years of experience or a specific professional background. We are looking for a particular kind of person — one who is recognisable not by what they have done but by who they are and how they operate.

The right candidate for this role:

• Notices things. You are the person in a room who registers that someone has not shown up, that a commitment was made two weeks ago and nothing has happened since, that a partner has sent three unanswered emails. You do not need to be told to notice. You already have.
• Has the courage to name what they see — directly, calmly, and without making it personal. You can tell a colleague that they have missed three consecutive meetings in a way that gets compliance without creating an enemy. That is a skill, not an accident.
• Understands that authority and wisdom are not the same thing. You carry this role's accountability mandate with seriousness — and with the maturity to know that how you use authority determines whether the platform retains its talent or loses it. You are not looking for power. You are looking for a platform that functions.
• Is genuinely organised — not as a personality trait but as a professional discipline. Your follow-ups happen before you are asked. You find disorder genuinely uncomfortable.
• Builds trust across a team by being consistent, fair, and transparent. Everyone knows what the standards are because you apply them the same way to everyone — including when it is uncomfortable.
• Understands the difference between a will gap and a skill gap — and knows that the response to each is different. You do not manage a disengaged team member the same way you manage a struggling one.
• Keeps leadership informed without creating noise. You know the difference between an escalation that needs to happen now and a pattern that needs to be documented before it is raised. You bring both — at the right time and with the right evidence.
• Finds genuine satisfaction in a platform that runs well. When meetings happen, when follow-ups are made, when the team is functioning as a unit — that is the outcome you are working toward. Not recognition. Not authority. A platform that delivers.

Application Closing Date : Thursday 9 July 2026.

To apply, visit: www.kkadvisors.africa/careers?slug=people-operations-officer OR https://kwanzaig.com/job?slug=people-operations-officer

Application Task

Applications close 2026-07-09.