Malawi Market Access Lead

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

The Market Access Lead will have a unique opportunity to own one of the key pillars of One Acre Fund’s vision by owning the development of high-value cash crop chains in Malawi. If successful, this role will enable a scalable number of smallholder farmers to consistently grow more cash crops, getting higher profit in their pockets, while building export channels bringing sustainable USD revenue critical to our programs’ growth.

Responsibilities

Market Access Strategy and Execution

• Lead Malawi Market Access (MKT) Strategy, including long-term vision, seasonal target setting, work planning and delivery from start to end.
• Steer the MKT team's rapid development, including structuring and hiring of additional HQ and field staff to successfully support ambitious buyback expansion.
• Own all critical buyback activities from timely planning to timely execution, without fearing getting your boots muddy. As part of FOPs, this role will be assessed by execution success, not just strategy setting, with full ownership of the implementation, from farmers’ crop adoption and production to aggregation and commercialization.

Expansion and iteration of existing value chains

• Strengthen chili buyback to expand both its impact and scale, with an ambitious yet achievable 3-year strategy for chili to become a “value chain winner” in 2030, in line with Global Market Access (MKT) criteria and international market demand.
• Revamp soya buyback, challenging and improving the current set up where OAF aggregates and sells to a local buyer with no margin.

Develop new high value chains and transformation services

• Start new buyback value chains from scratch subject to thorough analysis of impact potential for smallholder farmers and market needs.
• Contribute to setting up processing services (eg: solar dryers to dry fruits) to enable smallholder farmers to get higher value from their harvest while contributing to building more crop transformation capacity in Malawi, leveraging dedicated funding for “big bet” investments.

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 who can 100% align with OAF’s values:
  • “Farmers first”
  • “Work hard”
  • “Own your results”
  • “Grow through feedback”
• Entrepreneurial profile: This role requires a high level of innovation and ambition, with ad hoc risk assessment and mitigation, clear bias towards action and strong capacity to keep moving despite complexities, ambiguities and uncertainties.
• Team & project management:
• Analytical decision-making: ability to collect and analyze KPIs autonomously and critically, leading to data-based and impact-driven decisions.

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

09 September 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.