Specialist – Implementation and Delivery

Location: Nairobi, Kenya

Job Reference: PO/ATO/01/2026

AGRA and its Work to Transform Agriculture

AGRA is an African-led institution that actively supports the drive towards inclusive agricultural transformation and sustainable food systems. We do this by empowering the continent’s 33 million smallholder farming households to transform their agriculture from a struggle to survive to profitable businesses. The continent’s farmers regularly face challenges, and we aspire to provide uniquely African solutions that respond to their agricultural and environmental challenges, leading to increased harvests for reduced hunger and more income aligned with the Kampala CAADP and national priorities.

Working in alignment with the development priorities of our focus countries, we enable farmers to access improved and high-yielding seeds, gain knowledge on sustainable farming, and linkages to profitable markets. In our work, we aspire to build the alliances, partnerships, and networks required to drive an inclusive agricultural transformation. We work with our partners to create an equitable youth-friendly environment that harnesses the youth dividend on the continent to drive growth and facilitate open employment opportunities for young women and men. We achieve our key objectives through a focus on the following four areas of intervention:

1. Policy and state capability – We support governments in creating an enabling environment for private sector involvement in agricultural transformation.
2. Seed systems – We trigger higher productivity by increasing the availability and access to improved seeds by farmers allowing them to increase their harvests for food security and better incomes.
3. Sustainable farming – We support farmers in building resilient farming systems for sustained high yields through interventions such as mechanization and irrigation.
4. Inclusive markets and trade – We work to increase the linkages between farmers, and other market actors for a positive, sustained cycle of commercialization and reinvestment.
5. Youth, Gender, and Inclusiveness – We enable women and youth to contribute to and benefit from agriculture for their economic empowerment.

Implementing Our New Strategy Through People

People are the heartbeat of our organization and remain the true drivers of our delivery, impact, and success. We have cultivated a workplace that fuels Depth in Collaboration, Excellence in Execution, Constructive Engagements, and a spirit of being Increasingly Entrepreneurial; all underpinned by our cherished I-RISE Values (Integrity, Respect, Innovation, Stewardship and Equity)

We work with incredible people and partners who have roots in farming communities across the African continent combined with an inclusive, diverse, and talented workforce from over 25 nationalities. Our commitment to a call to action goes beyond ourselves as we arise to catalyze African Food Systems transformation and improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers.

We are looking for people who are passionate about being part of a mission-driven team that is making a real difference on the continent; love to work on cutting edge Ag technologies; and able to grow their skills, expertise, and experience career growth, while enjoying very competitive compensation and benefits.

Background

AGRA, with the support of its partners, is hosting the African Agriculture Transformation Initiative (AATI) – an initiative to strengthen delivery structures (called Agriculture Transformation Offices in some instances) for the National Agrifood Systems Investment Plan accelerated implementation. Under this effort, AGRA is establishing a dedicated unit – a center of excellence – under its policy and state capability unit to enhance its delivery and related capabilities. The center of excellence (CoE) will have a continental outlook and serve to strengthen government agri-food delivery structures, as called for by the implementation guidelines of the Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Plan 2026-2035 (CAADP 3.0).

The Position

Specialist – Implementation and Delivery Job Reference: PO/ATO/01/2026

Specialist- Implementation and Delivery will support the Center of Excellence (CoE) in building and strengthening the implementation and delivery capabilities of the teams of the two Agricultural Transformation Offices (ATOs) in Tanzania and Sierra Leone through deploying management and delivery tools, providing needs-based capacity building interventions, and sharing lessons and best practices. The specialist will work under the Lead – Implementation and Delivery to provide technical backstopping, curation of best practices, build capacities, and strengthen the center of excellence to emerge as a thought leader for delivery and institutional capacity.

Key Duties and Responsibilities:

• Develop and strengthen multi-stakeholder coordination and accountability mechanisms for priority programs in current and/or future ATOs.
• Design and implement performance management and problem-solving frameworks; this entails designing tools and templates to be used in performance management.
• Develop and support the utilization of delivery tools and practices, delivery chain analysis, stakeholder mapping, prioritization, and root cause analysis.
• Develop data collection, organization, and analysis framework; and serve as a champion of evidence-based decision making.
• Provide needs-based technical support, coach, supervise, and manage delivery specialists/analysts within the ATO.
• Support Lead- Implementation and Delivery in the preparation of the center of excellence plan and budget, with a clear implementation plan and a results framework.
• Support ATOs to design and operationalize investment cases on priority value chains.
• Document lessons, produce knowledge products, and thought pieces related to the center of excellence delivery model and approaches.
• Engage and work with key government stakeholders to mainstream the delivery and institutional capacity
  approach.
• Coordinate with ATO staff and other partners to provide targeted capacity-building programs to drive priority programs.
• Direct and provide on-the-job coaching and learning by doing to relevant technical and administrative staff of the government and the ATO teams.
• Facilitate and work with governments to strengthen functional sectoral/multi-sectoral coordination platforms, working groups (ASWGs), and donor working groups (DWGs).
• Support the team in designing compelling resource mobilization pitches and engaging development partners to support priority programs.
• Map, target, and engage partners in agrifood systems to forge and operationalize new partnerships.
• Inspire and grow teamwork, partnership, and collaboration among the ATO and government teams to enhance performance and impact.
• Conduct delivery chain analysis across actors and the ecosystem to provide evidence-based recommendations to the ATOs.
• Assess constraints and key drivers of performance, motivations, and perceptions of delivery system actors and provide evidence based recommendations to catalyze agrifood systems transformations.
• Develop and lead systematic routines, frameworks, and dashboards, and track performance and ensure accountability.
• Design and provide need-based capacity building strengthening packages to enhance leadership skills and delivery functions in consultation with the AGRA and other partners.
• Instill and enforce the discipline of delivery culture and routinization by instilling management routines and digital tools to plan/prioritize, set targets, solve problems, a data-tracking system, evaluate, and report performance against agreed targets.
• Identify systemic constraints and key drivers of performance, motivations, and perceptions of delivery system actors and provide evidence-based recommendations.
• Facilitate and coordinate functional sectoral/multi-sectoral platforms with clearly defined roles & responsibilities, structures, and systems among actors to effectively roll out implementation.
• Track, evaluate, and report performance outcomes to ensure accountability mechanisms and learnings across the implementing partners in the delivery system.

Key Qualifications and Experience Required:

• Bachelor’s or master’s degree in business administration, Public Policy, Economics, Management, public/development administration, Rural Development, or any other relevant field from an accredited institution.
• An advanced degree in the fields mentioned above will be an added advantage.
• Minimum 8 years’ professional experience in building and operating delivery mechanisms within or outside food systems; this entails establishing and/or running Agricultural Transformation Offices, Presidential.
• Delivery Units or other types of delivery mechanisms
• Experience in institutional capacity building of government institutions.
• Proven track record of managing complex, multi-stakeholder initiatives with tangible results.
• Experience in working with multi-stakeholder platforms and processes, or other complex collaboration and partner management platforms across sectors.
• Strong knowledge of Africa’s food system context and political savviness.
• Exceptional collaboration skills to actively strengthen delivery culture through coaching, mentoring, and capacity building to enhance team and institutional performance.
• Ability to identify systemic constraints and conduct systemic analysis and provide evidence-based innovative solutions.
• Deep understanding of market and government systems, agribusiness ecosystems, value chain dynamics, and market systems to identify viable entry points for private sector engagement and investment.
• Ability to map, engage, and coordinate with key ecosystem and delivery chain public and private sector actors, internal and external stakeholders across agrifood systems, to foster alignment, coordination, and synergy around government priority programs.

If you believe you are the right candidate for this position, please apply for this vacancy by clicking the link
below:

https://ekjd.fa.em2.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/CandidateExperience/en/sites/CX/jobs

Applications must be received on or before 2nd February 2026. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.

For more information on the AGRA, visit www.agra.org.

AGRA is an Equal Opportunity Employer