East Africa People Operations Associate

Early-career professionals with 2 – 5+ years work experience to serve in a position that combines both field and management experience in Africa.

Job Location

Rural Rwanda or Burundi (French required); Rural Kenya, Ethiopia, or Malawi (English required); Tanzania Regional Capital (English Required).

Duration
Minimum 2 years commitment, full-time job.

Organization Description

Most of the world's poor are farmers, representing the largest and most uniform group of poor people in the world. One Acre Fund is a growing social enterprise in Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanzania that is innovating a new way of helping farm families to achieve their full potential. Instead of giving handouts, One Acre Fund invests in farmers to generate a permanent gain in farm income. We provide farmers with a "service bundle" that includes education, finance, seed and fertilizer, and market facilitation. Our program is proven impactful – every year, we weigh thousands of harvests and measure 50-100% average gain in farm income per acre. We have laser-like focus on generating better lives for the people that we serve.

Job Description

Rapid organization growth translates into great career opportunities for our staff. We invest heavily in careers – we want to develop our next group of country directors, R&D directors, and partnership leaders. In their first year, our program associates lead 3-5 internal consulting projects, such as:

• District partner:  Most program associates are initially partnered with a local field director.  Program associates are immersed in One Acre’s operations and learn from their local counterpart how to grow an operation of 20+ staff, serving 5,000-20,000 farmers. They in turn also transfer management and computer skills to their counterpart. By working hand-in-hand with country national staff in a regular field operation, our program associates get a feel for operations in the field.
• New operation creation: A program associate in Kenya created and manages the One Acre Fund Customer Engagement team, which is tasked with fielding error claims from farmers, investigating claims, and solving them fairly. Started in 2012 with one part-time employee, the Customer Engagement team has grown rapidly to seven full-time staff members. The team investigated and resolved more than 3,000 cases in 2013.
• Impact innovation: A program associate designed several configurations of a harvest storage product and farmer training, and tried it with a few hundred farmers. The most successful trial demonstrated an increase in harvest profits by more than 10%. The following year, the product was sold to 40,000 farmers.
• Growth innovation: A staffer designed a new viral marketing initiative. She identified our best and most enthusiastic farmers, and turned them into volunteer "replication agents" who are empowered to recruit new groups of farmers. Our staff person designed the trial protocols, trained 10 field staff to test the idea, and observed the trial in-field, resulting in 25% higher client enrollment. This program was subsequently rolled out to 200 field sites and became the foundation of our current farmer recruitment model.

As staff grow into a program manager role, our strongest performers take leadership over a relatively independent pilot, country, or department within the One Acre Fund network, while earning a significant and sustainable salary increase. Examples includes:

• Government partnerships development: One Acre Fund receives frequent requests from African governments to jointly implement nationwide agricultural training, fertilizer distribution programs, and credit programs.  A program manager took the lead in setting up our newest government partnership operation, initially to pilot one project. Within a year, this operation had 50 staff and is likely to at least quadruple in the coming two years, to hopefully 2-3 nationwide partnerships.
• Department leadership opportunities: In their second year of service, top performing program staffers are often given the responsibility of running an internal One Acre Fund department like “Scale Innovations.” This department runs dozens of test-and-control trials with 10,000+ farmers that radically tweak our program model, with the goal of significantly increasing our scalability.
• New markets: One Acre Fund has ambitious plans to launch one new country per year. In 2011, a program manager moved to Burundi to direct field operations for an initial 400-farmer pilot. Three years later, One Acre Fund’s Burundi operation serves 21,000 farmers with 110 staff.

Career Growth and Development

One Acre Fund invests in building management and leadership skills. Your manager will invest 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. This results in fast career growth for our staff.

Qualifications

We are seeking exceptional professionals with 2 to 5+ years of work experience, and a demonstrated long-term passion for international development. Candidates who fit the following criteria are strongly encouraged to apply:

• 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 Peace Corps accomplishments).
• Leadership experience at work, or outside of work.
• Top-performing undergraduate background (include GPA and test scores on your resume).
• Humility. We are looking for passionate professionals who combine strong leadership skills with good humor, patience, and a humble approach to service to join our growing family of leaders.
• A willingness to commit to living in rural areas of East Africa for at least two years - this is a long-term, career-track role. The ideal candidate will have at least one year demonstrated experience working in the developing world, although this is not a strict requirement.
• Ability to cook / laugh – desirable.
• Language: English required in Kenya, Ethiopia, Malawi, and Tanzania, and French required in Rwanda and Burundi. French and Swahili-speakers are particularly encouraged to apply.

Preferred Start Date

Flexible

Compensation
Starts modest. However, this is a career-track role with fast raises for performance, paying a meaningful salary for long-term placement in developing nations.

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

Sponsor International Candidates

Yes

To Apply

Complete this form. You will be prompted to submit your CV and cover letter. You may also be asked to submit work samples for some positions. Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs), please submit a copy of your Description of Service (DOS) in the appropriate section.

East Africans are strongly encouraged to apply.