Program Associate at One Acre Fund

One Acre Fund is a nonprofit organization that supplies smallholder farmers in East Africa with asset-based financing and agriculture training services to reduce hunger and poverty. Headquartered in Bungoma, Kenya, the organization works with farmers in rural villages throughout Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania and recently Malawi.

We currently seek to employ suitably qualified candidate to fill the position below:

Job Title: Program Associate

Location: Nationwide
Preferred Start Date: Early 2018
Duration: Minimum 2-year commitment, full-time job

Job Description

• As an organization, we constantly seek to impact more farmers, and we are currently launching our Nigeria program. This role is part of a small team based in rural Western Nigeria that strives to put an end to poverty by transforming the lives of Nigerian farmers. The team's purpose is to launch One Acre Fund's model in Nigeria, starting small but scaling up rapidly within the next few years.
• The Nigeria Program Associate will report to the New Country Expansion Trial Lead. The will support the launch of our model in Nigeria. More specifically, the Nigeria Program Associate will support all aspects of the launch of our field operations, provide constant insights for revisions of the products and services offered, and build and manage the local field teams. If successful, the program will scale to thousands of households and the Program Associate will play a key role in the scale-up process.

On a day-to-day basis, the Nigeria Program Associate will cover a mix of activities:

• Launching the program: supporting all aspects of the initial launch stages such as procuring inputs, ensruing quality and timely delivery of inputs to farmers, coordinating customer service, training staff, and more.
• Executing and Managing the program: One the program is launched, the Associate will set and ensure compliance with team KPIs, create project calendars, design workflows, create field tools and talking points, design incentive systems, monitor project execution in the field, and more.
• Providing insights: Once data is collected, the Associate will clean and analyze the data to generate insights on how to tweak the model to adapt it to the Nigeria context and make recommendations about future program expansion.
• Building and Managing Teams: The Associate will hire staff using One Acre Fund's unique 'experiential hiring' system. S/he will mentor key deputies and manage parts of the team.
• Engage with stakeholders: The Associate will communicate with internal and external stakeholders with support from OAF's global teams, engaging with public (national and local Government entities) and private stakeholders when needed.
• One Acre Fund has deep operational experience running rural field programs at a scale of 1,000+ full-time staff per country. Program Associates benefit from this past experience, quickly building their skill-set through immersion in our operating environment. At the same time, the main role of Program Associates is to accelerate growth and to constantly stretch and improve our operations. This presents an excellent career opportunity to both learn from One Acre Fund’s accumulated experience and constantly improve and enable 40%+ program growth per year.

Career Growth and Development:

• One Acre Fund invests in building management and leadership skills. Your manager and a global support team will commit significant time in your career development.
• We provide constant, actionable feedback delivered through mentorship and through regular management consulting-style career reviews.
• We also have regular one-on-one meetings, where we listen to and discuss career goals, and work collaboratively to craft roles that each person can be passionate about.
• Because of our rapid growth, we constantly have new high-level roles opening up and opportunities in many functions.

Qualifications
We are seeking an exceptional professional with 2 years of work experience and ideally a demonstrated passion for international development. Candidates who fit the following criteria are strongly encouraged to apply:

• Leadership experience at work, or outside of work.
• Strong work experiences. Examples include a demanding professional work experience, or successful entrepreneurial experience, e.g. starting a field program in a developing country, leading a conference, starting a business, solid Volunteer Service Organization accomplishments (VSO, Peace Corps, JICA, etc).
• Trial execution and management including operational skills, field and desktop research skills, and some data analysis.
• Team management including hiring and building a field team as well as coaching and motivating others to succeed.
• Strong communication skills and previous experience building relationships with key stakeholders particularly in the private or public sector in Nigeria.
• A willingness to commit to living in rural areas of Nigeria for at least two years.
• Language: English required in all locations.

Compensation

• We offer a modest starting salary that affords a high quality of life in our areas of operation.
• This is a career-track role with performance-based raises and the ability to expand responsibilities over time.
• We offer a modest starting salary that affords a high quality of life in our areas of operation. This is a career-track role with performance-based raises and the ability to expand responsibilities over time.

Benefits
Health insurance, immunizations, flight, room and board.

Application Closing Date
Not Specificed.

How to Apply
Interested and qualified candidates should:
Click here to apply online