Contractor, Scoping African Medicines Agency

1Day Sooner

📍Remote (Global) 💰$40 USD/hour
💼 Contract 🔄 Rolling Applications

1Day Sooner is seeking a contractor to support 1Day Africa in its engagement with the newly launched African Medicines Agency (AMA). 1Day Africa is the regional chapter of 1Day Sooner, an international public health nonprofit dedicated to accelerating access to vaccines and other life-saving medicines. 

The AMA is a new pan-African regulatory body created to coordinate and strengthen the approval of medicines across the continent. Its mandate is to reduce duplication, improve efficiency, and ensure timely access to safe and effective vaccines and other essential medicines. Our goal is to help the AMA build strong regulations, policies, and guidelines that enable the timely review of these life-saving products.

Specifically, the contractor will assist in a six-month scoping project to determine how 1Day Africa can most effectively support the AMA. Areas of focus will include:

• AI-assisted regulatory review: Exploring digital-first workflows that use artificial intelligence to expand reviewer capacity. These tools could help a lean AMA secretariat and resource-constrained national regulators process applications more efficiently, with fewer back-and-forth cycles and clearer, data-driven decisions.

• Guidance for human challenge trials: Developing continent-wide, harmonized guidance for controlled human infection studies (CHIMs). This would enable urgent evidence for high-priority pathogens to be generated quickly and ethically, without navigating 50 different national review processes.

Key Information

• Apply by filling out the Airtable form here. (The review of applications is underway and will continue until the position is filled.)

• Details about the role:

  • Contractor (Independent/1099)

  • Remote position (1Day has no offices, and this work can be done from anywhere)

  • The position will report to the Director of 1Day Africa.

  • Compensation: Starting at $40/hour, with upward adjustments for relevant terminal degrees or experience.

• If the contract period is successful, the contractor may have the opportunity to transition into a permanent role at 1Day Sooner.

Position Responsibilities

The contractor will support 1Day Africa in its scoping period, which will last 6 months from the date of commencement of engagement with the AMA, Africa CDC, African Union and other related stakeholders of the AMA. This will involve but will not be limited to:

• Participate in strategy discussions and relevant technical working groups.

• Conduct targeted stakeholder interviews and produce short policy/technical memos.

• Attend select in-person meetings or conferences where useful to advance the work.

• Provide light communications support (e.g., technical briefings, public updates) to build awareness and sustained political support, if requested by counterparts.

• Retain contracted in-country and technical experts for time-boxed inputs.

Planned Outputs from Scoping Period

• Two short policy memos (e.g., AI-for-review feasibility and guardrails; CHIM guidance inputs).

• A project outline (if warranted) identifying participating authorities, roles, and next steps.

What We’re Looking For

The ideal candidate will have the following traits and abilities:

• Mission-driven: You are excited about 1Day’s mission and principles. You do not have to be well-versed in things like human challenge studies, but we expect someone who is passionate about reducing the burden and threat of infectious diseases worldwide.

• Relevant experience (each desirable but not strictly necessary): 

  • Strong ability to conduct self-directed research and synthesize findings into clear recommendations.

  • Experience writing clear, well-structured policy memos for a broad audience.

  • Familiarity with African health and regulatory systems.

• Highly organized and detail-oriented: You pay close attention to detail in an organized fashion.

If this sounds like you, please apply now!