About One Acre Fund
Founded in 2006, One Acre Fund equips 5.5 million smallholder farmers to make their farms more productive. Across nine countries that together are home to two-thirds of Africa's farmers, we provide high-quality farm supplies, tree seedlings, accessible credit, modern agronomic training, and a wide range of other agricultural services. On average, this model enables any farmer to increase their income and assets on supported land by more than 35 percent, while permanently improving their resilience. This is all made possible by our team of 9,000+ full-time staff, drawn from diverse backgrounds and professions. To learn more, please see our Why Work Here blog post.
Our Malawi program, founded in 2016, provides more than 670,000 farmers with quality farm supplies and training. Our office in Malawi is located in Zomba, in the country’s south. One Acre Fund works in Malawi’s southern region, which has the highest concentration of smallholder farmers in the country.
About the Role
Seeking a passionate professional with 5+ years of strategic and operational experience to lead Malawi's Impact team, co-define country strategy, manage R&D trials, and scale market access buybacks to directly increase smallholder farmers' resilience.
Responsibilities
Management of the HQ Impact team (~25% of bandwidth)
- Manage 3 or 4 direct reports
- Conduct weekly check-ins providing them with enough feedback to help them continuously improve their overall performance, with stretching projects to expand their professional growth and meaningful contributions to our programs’ impact
- Write semi annual thorough and well-calibrated individual PDRs and goals, as well as promotion plans or performance improvement plan when appropriate
- Continuously review and update the impact team’s org chart, roles and responsibilities, proactively restructuring and hiring as needed per programs’ evolution, ensuring clear alignment between teammates’ role and growth path with their performance and growth potential, as well as our programs’ impact priorities
- Define annual budget related to Impact activities and keep close track of Budget-vs-Actuals to keep it at a minimum level, ensuring grant-funded projects are clearly labelled and assigned to respective grants
Improvement of the core program impact through Excellent Extension(~25% of bandwidth)
Strategize, Prioritize & Plan
- Set our country impact strategy together with FOPs Lead, MEL Lead and Country Director, translating it into annual FOPs impact goals and workplan, deriving in individual goals for the Impact HQ and field team
- Collaborate with Global Impact to incorporate org-wide impact priorities, including Excellent Extension, deciding what to do but as importantly what NOT to do after realistic consideration of in-country bandwidth constraints and focus needs to ensure we remain impactful and don’t dilute our limited resources into too many different directions that would reduce our overall team’s efficiency and programs’ impact
Coordinate & Communicate
- Split responsibilities and follow-up closely with very limited need for manager support to ensure successful and timely execution of all impact initiatives
- Lead compelling communication with the field team on all impact activities, actively preparing and facilitating discussions during Field Leader and AFD meetings, highlighting key messages in talking points for Monday Meetings, sending frequent encouraging messages in WhatsApp groups to enhance momentum around impact activities; single-messaging through multi-channeling and repetitions should be considered as best practice to make a message stick
Assess & Improve
- Collaborate with MEL to evaluate our annual and long-term impact, planning and following up on impact assessment and analysis to ensure we focus our resources on the most impactful initiatives
- Systematically challenge status quo and seek how we can provide more impact more effectively, getting inspiration from other countries as well as other organizations
- Monitor impact performance by setting KPIs, dashboards etc. and use them to drive accountability and results towards our targets during weekly field meetings (FL, AFD, Monday)
- Improve the way our agricultural training are designed and delivered with a strong Excellent Extension strategy that is realistically actionable
- Sort out and schedule annual training curriculum by removing some and adding new depending on the needs identified, in line with our seasonal impact priorities
- Conduct improvement and execution of planting, top-dressing, IPM training and SBC initiatives. in the most effective way, using critical thinking and post-mortem to make iterations season after season; decision to NOT repeat an initiative because of negative results can be an effective way to focus on the most impactful activities
Innovations of practices and products via R&D trials (~25% of bandwidth)
Impactful Practices
- Co-identify key yield drivers to be tested (spacing, micro dosing etc.) and focus on crops with the biggest yield gap
- Co-define trial set up through partners or clients in a lean manner
- Supervise execution of yield improvement trials
- Co-analyze results and prescribe recommendations on way forward
Impactful Products
- Stay closely connected to farmers’ needs and preferences by regularly conducting farmer needs assessments through field visits, MEL survey data, qualitative research etc. as needed
- Research, select and trial new impactful products in line with country priorities and resources, focusing on products with the highest SROI potential
- Supervise sourcing, troubleshooting and impact measurement of all new impactful products
Impactful Services
- Set strategy, implement and analyze sustainability of new service trials (e.g.: buy-back), focusing on services with the highest SROI potential
Scale and boost adoption of the most impactful products (legumes, trees etc.)
- Collect feedback from the field team and advise on which products should be scaled to bring more impact
- Collaborate with Client Acquisition team to prepare and execute compelling marketing materials to boost adoption
- Display autonomous product ownership from identification to distribution on all agricultural products, including liaising with Global Sourcing & LOG and proactively follow up on all agricultural products procurement to ensure impactful products are delivered in a timely manner
- Supervise effective implementation of Social Behavior Change initiatives in line with the program’s new impact priorities (climate change adaptation, soil health etc.)
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
Across all roles, these are the general qualifications we look for. For this role specifically, you will have:
- Passionate, Impact-Driven, Hard-Working, Result-Oriented individual that can 100% align with OAF’s values.
- Team management: nurture high accountability on results across the HQ and field impact team, ensuring people are being celebrated and challenged as needed to maximize programs' impact, practicing radical candor with care
- Project management: be capable of designing and leading medium to large projects with a high degree of independence and ability to navigate ambiguity with little manager support
- Capacity to prioritize and push back when need be: this role is best suited for candidates who have a particularly strong capacity to “say no” gatekeeping key program priorities from internal and external solicitations requesting to do additional activities which could compromise our team capacity to achieve our main Impact goals; ability to prioritize and differentiate “must do” from “nice to have” activities to sustain and grow our programs impact is critical
- Planning /work smart: create and execute your own work plans independently
- Data analysis: moderate or high data analytical ability for decision making
- Communication and relationship management: Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to coordinate across country teams and generate enthusiasm for global projects and initiatives
Preferred Start Date
As soon as possible
Job Location
Zomba, Malawi or Lilongwe, Malawi
Benefits
Health insurance, housing, and comprehensive benefits
Eligibility
One Acre Fund can support a work permit for this role. However, nationals of (or those with an extensive professional background and work history in) our countries of operation are preferred.
Application Deadline
28 August 2026. Please note that we hire on a rolling basis which means that applications are reviewed and processed on a continuous basis until a hire is made.
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.
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI), and anti-racism are deeply connected to our organization’s mission and purpose. One Acre Fund aspires to build a culture where all staff feel consistently valued, represented, and connected – so that our team can thrive as professionals, and achieve exceptional impact for the farmers we serve.
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.
