Assistant Editor, BBC Swahili

Job Title: Assistant Editor - On the Day, BBC Swahili

Purpose of the Role

BBC Swahili is one of the BBC World Service's biggest and fastest growing language services, reaching millions of Swahili speakers across East Africa and beyond. Operating across radio, TV and digital platforms, the service provides independent, impartial journalism to audiences whose access to free and trusted news is often limited by political pressure, media restrictions and disinformation. BBC Swahili is transforming into a story-led model built around two complementary editorial streams: On the Day and On Demand.

Why Join the Team

Reporting to the service editor, the Assistant Editor - On the Day is the senior editorial lead for BBC Swahili’s daily news operation. You hold full editorial responsibility for all time-sensitive output across digital, visualised radio and TV, ensuring content is accurate, fast, and produced to BBC standards.

You will work in close partnership with the Assistant Editor for the On Demand stream, based in Dar es Salaam, to ensure strong editorial coherence across BBC Swahili’s offer. Together with the Senior News Editor and others, you are part of the core leadership of the service, sharing responsibility for editorial standards, digital growth and team development.

This is a role that demands both editorial authority and digital ambition. It requires someone who can make confident decisions at pace, lead a large and diverse team across complex shift structures, and drive the cross-platform integration that is central to BBC Swahili’s transformation. The role is also critical to growing the service’s reach among younger and female audiences through visualised radio, YouTube streaming and consistent social media output.

Key Responsibilities and Impact

• Lead BBC Swahili’s On the Day stream, creating a culture of editorial rigour, platform agility, personal accountability and continuous improvement.
• Oversee all breaking and daily news output across three shifts (morning, afternoon and night) 24/7, maintaining continuous digital publishing and ensuring timely, accurate delivery across radio, TV and digital platforms.
• Champion a digital-first editorial approach across the team, ensuring stories are commissioned and produced with multi-platform distribution in mind from the outset.
• Support the growth and development of BBC Swahili’s visualised audio output from the Nairobi studio, enabling live streaming on YouTube and the creation of short content assets from interviews for social media.
• Collaborate with the On Demand Assistant Editor to coordinate joint story commissioning and promotion, and to ensure the two streams work as a coherent editorial whole.
• Support the Senior News Editor in implementing BBC Swahili’s growth strategy, with a focus on expanding reach among young (16–24) and female audiences.
• Coach and develop team members, fostering an inclusive and high-performing team culture with a strong commitment to gender diversity.

Skills and Experience

Essential Criteria

• Significant editorial leadership experience in digital or broadcast news, with a strong track record of managing fast-paced, multi-platform daily output to the highest standards.
• Strong digital-first editorial experience, with a demonstrable record of commissioning and delivering content for digital, social media, TV and radio simultaneously.
• Sound, confident editorial judgement under pressure, including the ability to manage compliance and risk in a complex political and media environment.
• Deep understanding of audience analytics tools and the ability to use data to inform commissioning and editorial decision-making.
• Experience of working with visualised or streamed radio or TV output, and an understanding of how to maximise its digital potential.
• Ability to work collaboratively across editorial streams and with other teams, communicating clearly and managing competing priorities effectively.
• A commitment to improving diversity in the BBC and an understanding of how inclusive leadership strengthens output.
• Fluency in written and spoken Swahili and English, both written and verbal, with the ability to represent the BBC effectively in internal forums.

Desirable

• Proven ability to shoot, script and edit video stories using tools such as Final Cut Pro (FCPx) and QEdit, with the ability to deliver polished, engaging, audience-focused content which is optimised for digital platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.