African Parks 2025 Conservation Internship

African Parks seeks to hire a full-time intern on a 12-month contract (3-month probation) to join the Conservation Development team. The intern will work with the business intelligence (BI) and unit with some work in the geospatial unit likely as well. The role will entail 5 days of work per week and the candidate will need to be office-based at the African Parks offices in Bryanston, Johannesburg. We will accept applications from candidates who can only work 4 or 3 days a week (i.e., part-time). A monthly stipend will be paid in accordance with the successful applicant’s experience and the number of days worked per week.

What you will be responsible for:

• Develop standardised dashboards & analytical reports for the African Parks portfolio based on large datasets from community surveys, security patrols and/or animal tracking. These will primarily be developed using ArcGIS, R, Python and Microsoft Power BI, and serve to support park management teams in making strategic, data-driven decisions. An example could be to develop dashboards for and unpack the interface between human-wildlife conflict and animal movement data, or patrol and poaching data;
• Ensure data integrity by auditing and cleaning key data from the protected areas. This includes managing geospatial layers and databases, cleaning up tracking data and detecting outliers or discrepancies for park teams to validate;
• Developing and managing data pipelines – for example, from surveys in Esri Survey123 to Esri Webmaps/Dashboard/StoryMaps;
• Managing user accounts in customized apps, Esri tools, and Power BI;
• Digitising and managing spatial datasets and databases across the African Parks portfolio;
• Researching and comparing open-source datasets for integration into measuring key African Parks metrics and targets; and
• Support the development and roll-out of new data collection tools and recommend improvements to existing ones. This includes writing up guidelines and technical manuals, providing training to park teams and designing surveys or other data collection tools.

What are the requirements?

• Pursuing or completed a degree in ecology, conservation, sustainability, or social sciences;
• A passion for nature conservation and keenness to apply knowledge to tangible work being done in protected areas across Africa;
• Skilled in analyzing and cleaning large data sets;
• Familiar with coding languages for analysis and/or integrations like, in order of preference: Python, R, JavaScript, SQL;
• Working knowledge of ArcGIS Pro and the Esri online environment;
• Keen attention to detail and desire to take ownership of projects and datasets;
• Good data visualization and presentation skills;
• Affinity and experience with ecological data collection; and
• Experience in designing training materials and training individuals/groups with various skill levels.

Desirable

• Clarity in spoken and written communication;
• Comfortable working in small teams but also working on tasks individually;
• Experience with designing dashboards (ideally PowerBI and ArcGIS);
• Experience in Google Earth Engine, SharePoint and QGIS.

Please note that this position is only open to South African citizens or valid work permit holders.

Location: Bryanston, Johannesburg

Start date: 1 March 2025

How to apply?

Please email your CV and Cover Letter (please include your likely availability in terms of days per week) to [email protected]