Market Engagement Manager, Digital Inclusion

FTC until March 2027

Department: M4D

Team: Connected Society and Connected Women

Location: London or Nairobi based

Position type: Fixed term contract

What the hiring manager says

"This role offers a unique opportunity to support the mobile industry and its partners in expanding mobile connectivity to underserved communities in a way that is both commercially viable and socially transformative. Based in either London or Nairobi, it is well suited to someone with a strong commercial background who is also deeply committed to international development and digital inclusion—particularly for women and underserved populations.

At the GSMA, our position within the mobile ecosystem enables us to drive large-scale impact by working directly with industry partners delivering high-impact initiatives on the ground. This role is especially focused on addressing one of the key barriers to digital inclusion across Africa and Asia—namely, digital skills. Our dynamic and passionate team has already achieved tangible results and is ambitious to go further—especially in accelerating digital skills. This role provides a broad and varied platform to drive meaningful, sustainable progress for the underserved."

Kim Viljoen – Market Engagement Director, Digital Inclusion

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 prove the power of mobile in emerging markets.

The GSMA’s Connected Society Programme works with the mobile industry and key stakeholders to increase access to and adoption of the mobile internet, focusing on underserved population groups in developing markets. For more information, please visit the GSMA Connected Society website at: www.gsma.com/connectedsociety

GSMA Connected Women works with mobile operators and their partners to address the barriers to women accessing and using mobile internet and mobile money services. For more information, please visit the GSMA Connected Women website at: www.gsma.com/connectedwomen.

About the Role

You will work as part of the Connected Society and Connected Women Market Engagement teams to help cultivate and support a portfolio of mobile operators and partners interested in accelerating digital inclusion for the underserved. This role is focused on addressing one of the key barriers to digital inclusion across Africa and Asia—namely, digital skills. You will leverage GSMA assets, including our relevant insights and toolkits, such as the GSMA Mobile Internet Skills Training Toolkit.

You will be confident and informed in making recommendations for the team’s strategy and increasing the impact of our work, as well as providing strategic advisory support to the mobile industry and their partners. You will use your close relationships and clear understanding of the evolving business needs of mobile operators to inform the strategic direction of the team. You will stay up to speed with key advancements and opportunities for mobile industry stakeholders to drive digital inclusion for underserved communities, specifically understanding the impact of current initiatives to improve digital skills.

You will provide thought leadership by analysing market opportunities and contributing to the design of digital skills propositions alongside other interventions like handset affordability initiatives. You will create and deliver strategy workshops for operators, implement train-the-trainer sessions, and collaborate to guide the launch and scale of initiatives. Additionally, you will refine and develop helpful tools and resources, including technical support resources and digital skills training content, to support these efforts. You will also track and report on both the commercial and social outcomes of interventions.

We actively support cross-sector partnerships as a means to reach women and underserved population groups at scale. You will be responsible for stakeholder engagement, facilitating collaboration, and helping to drive our digital skills agenda. You will engage cross-functionally within mobile operator teams, helping to drive action.

You will have strong written, communication, and presentation skills in the English language, and preferably in French as well. You will apply your informed understanding of the initiatives underway to drive digital inclusion. You will collect and analyse trend data, document insights and learnings, and share your findings with the industry ecosystem through blog posts, case studies, and presentations.

About You

We welcome applications from professionals with the following demonstrated qualifications and experience or attributes:

• You have a strong interest—and ideally hands-on experience—in strategies that drive inclusion for underserved communities, particularly through digital skills or customer education campaigns. If you’ve been involved in digital skills interventions aimed at underserved populations, that’s a big plus.
• You're familiar with how to effectively reach underserved groups—such as women, rural populations, low-income users, or persons with disabilities—in low- and middle-income countries. Ideally, you’ve gained this experience through roles in the mobile for development sector or through working with mobile operators in emerging markets.
• You bring solid commercial experience, possibly from working in management consulting, corporate strategy, sales, or marketing—ideally within the telecoms industry.
• You’re an organised and proactive project manager with excellent written and verbal communication skills in English and ideally also French. You know how to distil complex insights into compelling PowerPoint presentations and reports. You’re conscientious, solutions-oriented, and confident handling complex projects—even when unexpected challenges arise.
• You thrive in multicultural environments and have experience working with globally dispersed teams.
• You’re self-motivated and entrepreneurial, with the ability to work independently and deliver high-impact outputs without close supervision.
• Your interpersonal and relationship-building skills are a real strength, and you're confident speaking in public and engaging with a wide range of stakeholders—especially mobile network operators. Experience interacting with C-suite executives is a strong asset.
• You have a professional working knowledge of French—or you're keen to develop it further.
• You're excited by the opportunity to travel as part of your role.

Contract type

Worker type

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.