Rwanda Agricultural Products Scaling Lead

About One Acre Fund

Founded in 2006, One Acre Fund supplies 1 million smallholder farmers with the agricultural services they need to make their farms vastly more productive. Our 8,000+ team is drawn from diverse backgrounds and professions. With operations across six core countries in Africa, we make farmers more prosperous by providing quality farm supplies on credit, delivered within walking distance of farmers’ homes, and agricultural training to improve harvests. On average, the farmers we serve harvest 50 per cent more food after working with One Acre Fund. 

To learn more about our work, take a look at our Why Work Here blog for more information.

About the Role

The Products Scaling Innovation Lead is an important technical, strategic and managerial position within the Research and Development (R&D) Division responsible for leading the Scaling Innovation department. One Acre Fund relies on this innovation department to identify and research the most impactful agricultural and non-agricultural products and services for farmers. Every season the department runs farmer surveys and trials to inform our product offering and farmer service decisions. Great innovation comes from excellent background research, a true understanding of our client base, excellent pilot implementation, and implementing a scaling process that allows us to translate product pilot results into our full program.

Responsibilities

• Lead product and service scaling to our different channels for serving farmers.
• Work with our field teams, logistics, business operations and MEL to grow the most promising new products, services, or training into our field programs.
• Develop trials for potentially impactful products following related impact models.
• Conduct pilot design, analysis and reporting.
• Implement periodic product impact evaluations for non-agricultural products.
• Lead the Scale Innovations team in behaviour change research to develop solutions that enable farmers to adopt best agricultural practices.
• Infer patterns and trends in data collected from the field and report findings through distribution postmortem reports and full trial reports.
• Support external departments on newly scaled products.
• Develop and contribute to team/division strategy memos.
• Engage and build external partner relationships.
• Initiate and manage collaborative projects with external partners, which includes drafting MoUs, periodic reporting and ensuring OAF policies are followed in all communication and results sharing
• Lead team administration.
• Formulate the annual departmental budget.
• Monitor expenditure and implement efficiency strategies.
• Conduct team performance management.
• Support capacity development of direct reports and the entire product scaling team in general.

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:

• A bachelor's degree is required, either in agricultural economics or agricultural statistics coupled with a project management and project evaluation background.
• Background coupled with experience designing surveys and running impact evaluations.
• Product/business scale-up mindset.
• Experience with Stata or R statistical packages, Excel (can perform analytical functions) skills, and google applications.
• Team and people management experience: Demonstrated experience managing at least one direct report and preferably a team.
• Project management experience, from project design to execution, monitoring and evaluation.

Preferred Start Date

As soon as possible

Job Location

Kigali, Rwanda

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

24 March 2023

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, colour, 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.