Role Purpose
Lead the Africa Operating Unit's (AOU) long-term growth agenda by shaping, driving, and governing the Long-Range Plan (LRP), the Africa 2035 Strategy, and high-impact strategic and transformational initiatives across the OU. This role partners closely with the Strategic Growth Lead for Africa Operating Unit to identify next-generation growth opportunities and works cross-functionally to translate strategy into execution, ensuring alignment with AOU priorities and enterprise ambitions. The role acts as the custodian of Africa 2035, safeguarding long-term strategic bets, governance, communication, and continuous evolution of the strategy to keep the AOU future-ready and growth-focused, while providing compelling strategic storytelling that elevates Africa's role, visibility, and contribution within the global enterprise.
Key Responsibilities
Shape and Steer Africa's Long Term Growth Agenda
- Partner with the AOU Strategic Growth Lead, to lead the development of the AOU Long-Range Plan (LRP) with the Strategic Growth & Insights Lead.
- Working with the Strategic Insights and Competitive Strategy team to Assess macroeconomic, competitive, and consumer trends to inform long-term strategic choices and enterprise-level bets
- Identify future growth opportunities across markets, categories, consumers, and business models.
- Monitor and analyze market, consumer, and competitive trends to identify opportunities for innovation.
- Work closely with the Strategic Growth Lead to surface emerging growth spaces, disruptive opportunities, and category expansion pathways.
Orchestrate Strategic Planning - Establish and manage robust governance routines for long-term planning, ensuring cross-functional input, executive alignment, and disciplined decision-making.
- Ensure the LRP and Africa 2035 priorities cascade effectively into annual business plans, investment decisions, and execution priorities
- Translate strategy into clear execution roadmaps, KPIs, milestones, and risk management plans.
- Facilitate collaboration across Commercial, Marketing, Finance, TISC, PACS, and Franchise teams to ensure consistent execution of long-term priorities.
Lead Strategic and Transformational Initiatives- Identify, prioritize, and oversee execution of enterprise-critical transformation programs across markets and functions.
- Lead high-priority strategic and transformational programs from design to execution e.g. AOU Recruitment Playbook, Acceleration of per cap in select markets, Scenario Planning Playbook, Bottler Footprint, Optimization of System Economics.
Custodian of the Africa 2035 Strategy- Serve as the custodian of the Africa 2035 Strategy, ensuring it remains actionable.
- Safeguard the long-term strategic direction of the AOU by ensuring continuity, clarity, and coherence of strategic bets.
- Maintain and evolve Africa 2035 narrative, communication materials, engagement forums, and leadership updates.
- Regularly stress-test strategic choices to ensure resilience and future readiness.
Performance metrics, tracking and monitoring- Develop and monitor measurement frameworks and dashboards to track progress of long-term plans and transformation initiatives.
- Ensure insights from performance tracking feed back into prioritization and strategy refresh cycles.
- Drive continuous improvement and course correction through performance tracking and insights.
Experience Required- 10+ years in Strategy, Transformation, Management Consulting, Business Planning, or Corporate Development.
- Experience leading strategic programs across markets or functions.
- Proven track record delivering large-scale transformation initiatives from strategy through execution.
- Strong experience analyzing macro trends, competition, consumer insights, and category dynamics.
- Experience influencing senior leadership within complex matrix organizations.
- Operating Unit or regional/global experience preferred.
- Strong strategic thinking and ability to translate insights into long-term strategic choices.
Skills & Competencies- Expertise in scenario planning and structured problem-solving.
- Strategic foresight and growth opportunity mapping
- Stakeholder management, influencing, strategic narrative and storytelling.
- P&L literacy and value creation
- Enterprise System Thinking
- Exceptional leadership and collaboration skills across multi-functional teams.
- Strong analytical capability and comfort working with diverse data sources.
- Excellent program and project leadership skills with governance and milestone management.
- Exceptional communication and storytelling skills for senior leadership audiences.
- High agility, resilience, and ability to manage ambiguity.
Key Deliverables- Africa 2035 Strategy stewardship and periodic updates.
- AOU Long-Range Plan (LRP) with clear growth pathways and priorities.
- Strategic initiative roadmaps, governance frameworks, and dashboards.
- Portfolio of transformation programs with KPIs and accountability.
- OULT communication materials (presentations, narratives, briefs).
- Growth opportunity analyses across consumers, shoppers, competition, and categories.
Analytics Software, Communication, Competitor Analysis, Customer Insights, Data Mining, Financial Analysis, Financial Modeling, Influencing, Key Performance Indicators (KPI), Long Term Planning, Microsoft Office, Professional Presentation, Relationship Building, Risk Mitigation Strategies, Stakeholder Management, Storytelling, Strategic Thinking, Syndicated Research, Tactical Planning, Waterfall Model
Location(s):South Africa
City/Cities:Johannesburg
Travel Required:00% - 25%
Relocation Provided:No
Job Posting End Date:July 10, 2026
Our Purpose and Growth Culture:We are taking deliberate action to nurture an inclusive culture that is grounded in our company purpose, to refresh the world and make a difference. We act with a growth mindset, take an expansive approach to what's possible and believe in continuous learning to improve our business and ourselves. We focus on four key behaviors - curious, empowered, inclusive and agile - and value how we work as much as what we achieve. We believe that our culture is one of the reasons our company continues to thrive after 130+ years. Visit Our Purpose and Vision to learn more about these behaviors and how you can bring them to life in your next role at Coca-Cola.
Annual Incentive Reference Value Percentage:30
Annual Incentive reference value is a market-based competitive value for your role. It falls in the middle of the range for your role, indicating performance at target.
