Entrepreneurship incubator program director at The Foundation For Tomorrow

Program: Entrepreneurship Incubator, a program of the TFFT Community Learning Centre
Location: TFFT Community Learning Centre, Usa River, Arumeru District, Arusha Region, Tanzania
Job description date: August 2026

Role at a glance

• Job title: Entrepreneurship Incubator Program Director
• Program: Entrepreneurship Incubator, a program of the TFFT Community Learning Centre
• Location: TFFT Community Learning Centre, Usa River, Arumeru District, Arusha Region
• Work arrangement: Full-time, on-site
• Reports to: Managing Director
• Direct reports: None at appointment
• Other benefits: Health insurance, staff professional development fund and communication allowance
• Contract: Two years, renewable subject to funding and performance, with a six-month probationary period
• Cohorts: One cohort in year one and two per year thereafter, subject to review
• Cohort size: 15-20 participants
• Program relationship: Participants remain in relationship with the incubator for 18 months
• Languages: Fluent written and spoken Swahili and English
• Start date: Soon

Organizational overview

The Foundation For Tomorrow (TFFT) is an International Non-Governmental Organization (Reg. No. I-NGO/R1/0071) committed to providing quality, inclusive education and psychosocial support to orphaned and vulnerable children in Tanzania. TFFT envisions a world where all children contribute to society as active and empowered citizens free from exclusion, disadvantage and vulnerability.

For twenty years, TFFT has worked on the principle that education changes a life only when the whole person is supported: skills alongside confidence, agency and community. The TFFT Community Learning Centre in Usa River is where that work now extends beyond the classroom, housing the Lenore Madden Library, the Computer Lab, Literacy Lab, Teacher Training Program and now an incubator for the people building Tanzania’s organizations and businesses.

The opportunity

TFFT is opening an entrepreneurship incubator at the Community Learning Centre and is hiring the person who will build and lead it.

African entrepreneurship is central to the continent’s prosperity, and the barriers in the way of it are well understood: funding, support services, skills, infrastructure and administrative friction. Tanzanian innovators are the people best placed to tackle the root causes of poverty in their own communities. What they lack is not insight but access.

The incubator exists to remove those barriers for a specific group of people, one cohort at a time, and to create fair and sustainable employment in the process.

It is for founders and builders across the Arusha region, including:

• People starting nonprofits and community organizations
• People building purpose-driven companies
• People starting businesses that will employ others

They sit in one cohort together because the cross-pollination between those three groups is one of the most valuable things the program has to offer. They follow tailored tracks where the work genuinely diverges, including legal structure, financial model, and fundraising against revenue.

A cohort of fifteen to twenty participants is admitted and stays in relationship with the incubator for eighteen months. The first six are intensive and cover:

• Idea validation and cohort formation
• Organizational design and market research
• Building and validating a real pilot or first product
• Pitch and funding preparation
• A public Launch Day at the Community Learning Centre in front of TFFT’s community, local partners and the Arusha business community

The year that follows is accompanied by growth, with continued access to workspace and resources at the Centre, coaching, mentors, and the introductions that turn a launched venture into a surviving one.

After that, alumni remain in the network permanently and return to mentor the cohorts that follow.

The program is free to participants, and selection is based on merit and commitment rather than ability to pay. Most incubators in Tanzania are concentrated in Dar es Salaam and focused on technology startups. This incubator is in northern Tanzania, treats nonprofits and social enterprises as equals alongside businesses, offers depth and individual coaching rather than only co-working space and events, and is built on twenty years of TFFT’s relationships in the community. These are advantages to press, not gaps to apologize for.

The ambition is not modest. TFFT intends for the incubator to become a leading champion of entrepreneurship in Tanzania and to put Tanzanian innovators in front of the global networks, markets and investors that rarely find their way to Arusha.

What exists today is the framework, the building, the donor network and a board that wants the initiative to work. The curriculum, mentor pool, partnerships, financing routes and relationships that make it real are what this job is for.

The Program Director will also be the person best placed to identify what the design gets wrong and is expected to say so and change it.

What TFFT is committed to

The Director has real latitude over how the program works and evolves. A small number of things are settled because they are why TFFT is doing this at all:

• Open to all three: TFFT welcomes nonprofits, social enterprises and job-creating businesses alike. Every model holds equal value, as the core focus is championing locally led development.
• Access is based on merit: The program is free to participants.
• Women are served at parity: Gender equity is designed into selection, outreach, mentorship and scheduling from the first cohort, not added later. TFFT’s target is for a minimum of half of each cohort to be women. The Program Director is expected to build a program that reaches this target.
• The whole person, not just the venture: TFFT’s approach has always been that confidence, identity and community matter as much as technical skills. That belief should be visible in how the program works.
• A cohort, not a course: Participants build alongside one another and stay connected afterwards. The alumni network is the long-term point of the program.
• Grassroots solutions to real problems: The supported ventures should address problems their founders understand from the inside. The jobs they create should be fair and sustainable.
• No participant leaves worse off: The program should not leave anyone in a worse situation than when they joined. For example, participants should not end up with unnecessary debt or struggle because too many people were supported to start the same type of business in the same market. These risks can be reduced through good planning and thoughtful program design from the beginning.
• Real outcomes, honestly measured: The program will focus on ventures launched, jobs created, funding raised and organizations still operating after two years, rather than attendance. To understand the program’s true impact, participants should be compared with applicants who met the requirements but were not selected because of limited spaces. This provides a fair way to measure the difference the program made. The tracking system must be established before the first group begins because recreating the information later is very difficult.

Everything else, including the curriculum, session format, pacing and intensity of the eighteen months, selection criteria, sector emphasis and partnerships, is for the Program Director to determine and revise as evidence emerges.

Key responsibilities

Design and build the program

Take the eighteen-month cohort framework from an outline to a working program. This includes:

• Developing the curriculum for each phase
• Creating the tracks where nonprofits and businesses diverge
• Developing session content
• Establishing the coaching rhythm
• Organizing Launch Day
• Designing the accompanied year that follows the intensive phase
• Deciding what the accompanied year consists of and how intensive it should be
• Determining how live cohorts are timed against one another so the workload remains manageable
• Deciding how the Community Learning Centre’s workspace, equipment and digital resources are made available to participants
• Defining what a resident of the program is entitled to

The Program Director will run the program, observe what works and revise it between cohorts rather than defending the original design.

Recruit and select participants

Build an application process that reaches people who might not apply to a conventional incubator, including:

• People with limited formal education
• Women running informal businesses
• First-time nonprofit founders

Participants should be selected for potential and commitment rather than credentials.

Teach, facilitate and coach

• Lead group sessions
• Coach participants individually
• Recognize when someone is struggling and intervene before they disappear
• Tell people honestly and kindly when an idea is not working, early enough for that feedback to be useful

Build the network

Recruit mentors, guest experts and partners across Tanzania’s:

• Business sector
• Nonprofit sector
• Legal sector
• Financial sector
• Government sector

Connect participants to the people, capital and customers they need. Build a mentor pool deep enough for every participant to be matched with someone who has done what they are attempting.

Open real routes to capital

Access to finance is the binding constraint on Tanzanian ventures, and teaching people about it is not the same as solving it.

The Program Director is expected to build actual pathways through relationships with:

• Banks and microfinance institutions
• Savings and Credit Cooperative Societies (SACCOs)
• Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs)
• Credit guarantee mechanisms
• Angel networks
• Grant funders

The program should also leave every participant with the bookkeeping, financial records and transaction history required to make them lendable. The absence of these records excludes far more people than the absence of a good idea.

The Program Director must promote responsible financing by providing honest guidance about financing options and discouraging participants from taking loans they are unlikely to repay. It is better for someone to delay getting a loan than to take on debt that could harm their business or financial well-being.

The Program Director will also work with the cohort’s nonprofit leaders to design and execute sustainable fundraising strategies.

Get ventures legally standing

Regulatory friction keeps many Tanzanian ventures informal. Informality can prevent a venture from obtaining a bank account, contract, tender or loan.

This should be hands-on work rather than a lecture. The Program Director will walk participants through:

• Business Registrations and Licensing Agency (BRELA) processes
• Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA) requirements
• Local licensing
• NGO Board requirements

A registered entity should be treated as a program outcome.

For nonprofit founders in particular, new organizations can quietly fail because of requirements such as assembling founder members, adopting a constitution, and filing annual activity and audited financial reports to keep registration active. The Program Director must build the governance and compliance capacity that keeps these organizations standing in year three.

Connect ventures to customers and markets

A venture that cannot find its first paying customers or its first funded partnership will not survive, regardless of the quality of its plan.

The Program Director will:

• Build market linkages
• Make buyer introductions
• Develop supplier relationships
• Create procurement pathways that turn pilots into revenue
• Make the route to first revenue a condition of completing the program rather than merely a hope

Institutional buyers, including schools, hotels, hospitals, processors, government institutions, and TFFT’s own procurement where appropriate and declared, are the most reliable sources of repeat demand in the region.

Relationships with these buyers should belong to the program rather than any one cohort.

Put Tanzanian innovators on a bigger stage

Being a good local program is not the whole ambition. The Program Director will build connections that give participants exposure and access beyond the region, including connections with:

• Entrepreneurship ecosystem participants across Tanzania and East Africa
• Networks such as AfriLabs
• International funders
• Buyers
• Investors
• Platforms where African innovators are seen

The Program Director will tell participants’ stories publicly and effectively so that the people building ventures in Arusha are visible to those who decide where capital and attention go.

Sustain the alumni community

Keep graduates connected to one another and TFFT long after completing the program. Bring alumni back as mentors and examples for future cohorts.

Hold and manage the budget

Take responsibility for planning and managing the program budget in line with TFFT’s financial and procurement policies.

The Program Director will:

• Monitor spending carefully
• Prepare accurate budget forecasts
• Explain differences between planned and actual expenditure promptly
• Track important costs, including the average cost of supporting each participant and each business that remains active

This information will help TFFT assess the program’s value and plan for future growth.

Protect participants and manage conflicts of interest

Ensure that all participants are treated with respect and that their safety, well-being and privacy are protected throughout the program.

All mentors, trainers and guest speakers should understand and follow TFFT’s safeguarding policy and code of conduct before working with participants.

Participants should have a safe and confidential way to report concerns without having to report directly to the Program Director.

The Program Director must be open and transparent about conflicts of interest. For example:

• If a mentor wishes to invest in, employ, lend money to or conduct business with a participant, the interest should be declared and managed appropriately.
• Anyone involved in selecting participants should not participate in decisions involving family members, close friends, neighbours or colleagues.

Personal information collected from participants must be kept confidential and managed in line with Tanzania’s data protection requirements. It should only be shared with donors or partners when the participant has given permission.

Speaker and mentor program design

Curate and coordinate a panel of African entrepreneurs to visit TFFT, share insights and provide direct mentorship to cohort members.

Fund, measure and report

Work with TFFT’s development team on:

• Donor materials
• Grant applications
• Reporting
• TFFT’s annual report
• Donor communications

Track and report real outcomes, disaggregated by gender.

The measurement system must be established before the first cohort begins, not afterwards. It should include:

• Baseline information for every participant at intake
• Two contact numbers for each participant
• A description of each participant’s location so they can still be found
• Scored records for applicants who narrowly missed selection
• Follow-up at six, twelve and twenty-four months as a budgeted activity rather than a good intention

How performance will be assessed

During the first year, the Program Director’s performance will be assessed according to how well the program is established and managed. This includes:

• Recruiting participants according to the selection criteria
• Maintaining participant engagement throughout the program
• Supporting participants to register their businesses
• Helping participants establish basic financial records
• Connecting participants to funding opportunities
• Assisting participants to generate their first sales or income
• Recruiting and matching suitable mentors

Long-term results, such as businesses that remain active, jobs created and funding secured, are the program’s ultimate goals. However, these outcomes take time to achieve and will be assessed from the second year onwards, once participants have had enough time to grow their businesses.

This approach ensures that the Program Director is evaluated fairly according to what can realistically be achieved at each stage of the program.

Who TFFT is looking for

TFFT is looking for a builder, not an administrator. The single most important qualification is that the person has started something themselves and can speak honestly about what it took, including the parts that did not work.

Beyond that, the successful candidate should demonstrate the following:

• Real startup and entrepreneurship experience: The candidate has founded, co-founded or been involved at an early stage in a company, nonprofit or social enterprise and understands what founders need at each stage.
• The judgment to design a program from scratch: The candidate can take an open brief, make decisions using incomplete information, test those decisions and change course without losing sight of the main objective.
• A teacher and coach: The candidate is equally comfortable running a room of twenty people and sitting with one person who has lost their confidence.
• A connector: Building a network should be an instinct rather than merely a task.
• Fluency in Swahili and English: The candidate should be credible in both a village meeting and a donor conversation.
• Grounded in Tanzania: The candidate understands how registration, regulation, credit and hiring work in practice in Tanzania, not only how they are supposed to work on paper.
• Fluent in money: The candidate can read a cash flow statement, price a product, build a budget that a funder will accept, and explain to a first-time founder why a bank declined their application and what could change that answer.
• Sound judgment about people: The role involves young adults, money, mentors and confidence. It requires someone who recognizes a conflict of interest before it becomes a problem and raises it rather than managing it privately.
• Willingness to be judged on outcomes: These include ventures that are still trading, organizations that remain registered, and people who are still employed two years later, rather than the number of workshops delivered.
• Commitment to equity: Particularly for women, young people and people without access to conventional support.

Qualifications

Required qualifications

• A minimum of five years of experience in entrepreneurship, startups, business development, social enterprise or nonprofit leadership
• At least two of those years must involve hands-on operational experience carrying responsibility for money, people or delivery, rather than advisory or research work
• Direct experience founding, building or leading an organization or venture
• Experience facilitating training, workshops or programs for adults
• Demonstrated ability to mentor or coach individuals over time
• Practical command of financial management, including budgeting, cash flow, pricing and preparing accounts that a lender, funder or auditor will accept
• Direct experience registering or running a legally compliant entity in Tanzania, whether a company or nonprofit
• Strong written and verbal communication skills in Swahili and English
• Based in, or willing to relocate to, the Arusha region
• Willingness to undergo TFFT’s safeguarding checks, including a criminal record check and reference verification, as a condition of appointment

Strongly preferred qualifications

• Prior involvement in an incubator, accelerator or entrepreneurship support program in any capacity
• Prior involvement as an entrepreneur in the East African region
• Practical experience with Tanzania’s regulatory environment, including BRELA, TRA and the NGO Board
• An established network within Tanzania’s business or civil society community
• Existing relationships with banks, microfinance institutions, SACCOs, angel investors or grant funders active in Tanzania
• Experience helping ventures reach customers, buyers or institutional funders rather than only helping them plan
• Experience designing a program or organization from the ground up
• Familiarity with vulnerable youth programming or TFFT’s work

What TFFT offers

• One of TFFT’s most exciting new roles, with direct visibility to the Executive Director, the board and international donor partners
• Genuine authority over the program’s design and the trust to change it when evidence indicates that changes are needed
• TFFT’s full network of donor relationships, community trust and partner connections as a foundation to build upon
• A professional development budget for conferences, courses and peer learning
• A base at the Community Learning Centre, one of the Arusha region’s premier education and community spaces
• A clear pathway to broader organizational leadership as the incubator grows
• The rare opportunity to build something from nothing inside an organization that has already earned the trust of the community and stakeholders