Founded in 2006, One Acre Fund supplies smallholder farmers with the agricultural services they need to make their farms vastly more productive. We provide quality farm supplies on credit, delivered within walking distance of farmers’ homes, and agricultural trainings to improve harvests. We measure our success by our ability to make farmers more prosperous: On average, farmers harvest 50 percent more food after working with One Acre Fund.
Job Description
One Acre Fund’s Impact Ventures Department aims to build ultra-scalable new channels and business models that can grow to serve more than half a million farmers in just a few years. We have a diverse portfolio of investments, from large government partnerships to short-term behaviour change campaigns, to rural retail shops, to tree seedling nurseries. What they share is a commitment to impact millions of farm families while maintaining operations that are cost-neutral or highly financially efficient, in order to reach as many people as possible.
We are seeking an exceptional individual with a proven track record to help scale-up early-stage ventures and work in partnership with country + global teams to dream up new opportunities across One Acre Fund operations.
The role responsibilities will be adjusted to fit the candidate’s experience and interests, but in general, will include the following:
- Develop strategies and tactics to rapidly scale investments in your portfolio to reach hundreds of thousands of clients.
- For each project in your portfolio, you will be managing 1-2 on the ground leaders who oversee the day to day operations. Each of these leaders will likely lead a rapidly growing team. For early-stage investments, teams will likely include 10-30 people. Within a few years, many programs could have 100+ staff.
- Building 5-year strategies that improve our ability to hit aggressive scale targets, deliver stronger impact per farmer, and maintains program cost controls
- Working with program leads to maintain strong field execution through building systems/tools to track and assess key field performance indicators and flexibly collaborating with various departments to tackle unexpected operational challenges
- Supporting recruiting of senior program leaders
- Dream big and operationalize new ideas, whether enhancing existing pilots or contributing to country/organizational strategy in identifying new opportunities to pursue.
- Collaborating with country leadership teams to build a strong business case including strategic rationale, financial projections, and connecting the case to farmer needs identified in the field.
- Co-developing the trial design with country teams including what to trial, how to trial, and at what scale.
- Hiring and managing a pilot team directly to effectively trial new ideas or acting as a strategic advisor to country teams if they take on ownership of trialing
- Leading org-wide communications that share pilot learnings
- Building and maintaining a global pipeline of Impact Ventures opportunities
- Develop relationships and coordinate with internal and external partners who are relevant to our work. Partners could include One Acre Fund Country Directors, executives at social enterprises, key officials in government ministries, etc.
The role is multi-faceted and suited to those who enjoy working under pressure with high levels of responsibility and independence.
Career Growth and Development
We have a strong culture of constant learning and we invest in developing our people. You’ll have weekly check-ins with your manager, access to mentorship and training programs, and regular feedback on your performance. We hold career reviews every six months, and set aside time to discuss your aspirations and career goals. You’ll have the opportunity to shape a growing organization and build a rewarding long-term career.
Qualifications
Specific qualifications include, but are not limited to:
- 5 to 7+ years of professional work experience with experience in leadership of teams and project management; entrepreneurial experience preferred (e.g. starting a new program or business unit, launching new initiatives across a large field team, etc.)
- Top-performing academic background
- Functional flexibility – an entrepreneurial mindset and the ability to hit the ground running and start adding value quickly. Proven ability of creative problem-solving, successful implementation and execution of strategy based on field data and programmatic evidence.
- Fact-based analytical decision-maker – an ability to gather and synthesize different types of qualitative (e.g. farmer interviews) and quantitative (e.g. financial/impact modelling) information to guide major strategic and operational decisions
- Willingness to travel 35% of the time to rural areas – One Acre Fund operations are predominantly based in rural areas, close to our customers.
- Fluency in English required, knowledge of other languages spoken in One Acre Fund countries strongly preferred
- Friendly personality, professional and proactive work attitude
- Humility; a willingness to get your shoes muddy and work productively with people from all walks of life; ability to tackle any task, large or small, with professionalism and enthusiasm
Preferred Start Date
Due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, start dates can vary significantly by role. We are adapting rapidly to Covid-19 and most of our team is now working remotely. Given the changing environment, we will appreciate your flexibility in confirming a start date.
Job Location
Kigali, Rwanda
Compensation
Commensurate with experience
Duration
Full-time job
Benefits
Health insurance, paid time off
Sponsor International Candidates
Yes; African nationals strongly encouraged to apply.
One Acre Fund never asks candidates to pay any money or pay for tests at any stage of the interview process. Official One Acre Fund emails will always arrive from an @oneacrefund.org address. Please report any suspicious communication here (globalhotline@oneacrefund.org), but do not send applications or application materials to this email address.
We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender, gender identity or expression. We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace.
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