Lead – Implementation and Delivery

Location: Nairobi, Kenya

Job Reference: LID/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

Lead – Implementation and Delivery Job Reference: LID/ATO/01/2026

The Lead – Implementation and Delivery will direct and oversee the functions of the CoE, strengthen the delivery capabilities and track the performance of the ATOs, and collaborate with other business lines and countries. He/she will support the two ATOs with prioritization, planning, investment attraction, resource management, and performance management systems to drive governments agrifood systems flagships and other priority agendas. The role holder will lead the central team members to support the effective implementation of the unit’s priority programs. Coordinate planning, budgeting, and performance management systems of the unit and its team. The lead will nurture and embed a culture of delivery and accountability through continuous learning, fostering cross country lessons while adopting appropriate systemic routines.
The ideal candidate will design and deploy management and delivery tools to enhance the effectiveness of the ATOs, provide coaching and mentorship, target training programs, and support with designing and launching KPIs and dashboards for each ATO and team members. Ensure evidence-based decision-making and standardized quality service deliveries of the ATOs through leveraging the integrated government programming (IGP) and integration of emerging analytical and delivery tools and approaches. Assess demands for new countries Agrifood Delivery Systems (ADS) and support countries with investment and resource mobilization efforts. Capture and document lessons, best practices, and success stories that can be replicated in other countries across Africa.

Key Duties and Responsibilities:

• Direct and oversee the functioning of the CoE, lead the central team members to support the effective implementation of the ATOs priority programs.
• Support ATOs to design & operationalize investment cases on priority value chains.
• Engage and work with the ATOs teams and other related teams to understand their needs and jointly plan, prioritize, design an implementation plan, and manage performance to foster ownership and commitments to embed effective routinization of delivery functions and culture.
• In collaboration with ATOs, identify, map, target, and engage with anchor firms, potential local and foreign private sectors committed to working with smallholder farmers in priority flagships.
• Advise governments and delivery structure leads on how to design, operationalize, and strengthen existing or new delivery structures for effective CAADP 3.0 NAIP coordination and delivery.
• Manage a network of delivery structures and of specialist delivery support organizations, for CAADP 3.0 NAIP across the continent and facilitate inter-connectedness and peer-learning among them.
• Coordinate and ensure quality planning, prioritization, and budgeting, tracking, and performance management processes of the center of excellence unit, and the ATOs with clear KPIs and an implementation plan.
• Design and implement innovative approaches, systematic routines, delivery tools (playbooks, stock takes, delivery chain analysis, prioritization, root cause problem-solving, etc.), and results framework while leveraging integrated government programming (IGP) to support the delivery capacities of the ATOs and countries.
• Support the ATOs with tools and frameworks to support the establishment and effective functioning of coordination mechanisms, ensuring alignment across stakeholders.
• Provide access to a wealth of knowledge on food system transformation and effective delivery strategies through best practices, case studies, and lessons learned from other regions and countries.
• Catalyze and foster synergy & alignment between AGRA business lines, country offices, ATO teams, and partners.
• Map delivery chain analysis across actors and ecosystems to provide evidence-based recommendations to the ATOs.
• Identify binding constraints and key drivers of performance, motivations, and perceptions of delivery system actors and provide evidence-based recommendations to catalyze agrifood systems transformations.
• Design and provide need-based capacity building, strengthening packages to enhance leadership skills and delivery functions that ensure sustainability.
• Design and introduce standard quality delivery services to enhance the capabilities of the ATOs teams to catalyze agrifood systems transformation, with a demonstrated measurable impact.
• Coordinate and provide need-based structured capacity building programs, including on-the-job coaching and learning by doing.
• Collect and analyze data regularly to track and monitor the performance progress of the ATOs against milestones & targets and ensure evidence-based feedback to take timely actions.
• Document best practices, produce knowledge products, and lessons related to the ATOs delivery model and other delivery mechanisms.
• Embed and facilitate accountability mechanisms for effective execution of plans across the delivery system.
• Monitor, track, and report the performances of the ATOs regularly.
• Coordinate with internal and external partners to provide targeted capacity-building programs to the ATO team members.
• Support the design business and investment cases, pitch to local and international private sector investors across the priority value chains in collaboration with the ATOs and relevant institutions
• Engage with new wave countries to assess their demands for ATO-type and/or other delivery mechanisms.
• Recruit and enable talent management and development employees and manage team dynamics to ensure high-performance and positive employee experience.
• Embed and enforce the discipline of delivery culture and routinization by instilling management routines and digital tools to plan/prioritize, set targets, solve problems, use a data-tracking system, evaluate, and report performance against agreed targets.

Key Qualifications and Experience Required:

• 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.
• Professional experience, with at least 4 years in supervisory roles in economic growth, public administration, or the development sector.
• Hands-on expertise in delivery structures in an African government, with first-hand experience applying deliverology and performance management tools, frameworks, and best practices.
• Strong understanding of the economics of agro-industrial policy and of market systems.
• Experience in institutional capacity building of government institutions.
• Experience engaging in the private sector to improve the enabling environment.
• 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 the African context and global food systems is highly desired.
• Demonstrated expertise in designing a prioritized implementation plan with clearly articulated KPIs, time-bound responsibilities, tracking, and monitoring performance consistently.
• 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 the Feed Salone Strategic priorities and deliverables.
• Ability to establish sound relationships and cross-functional partnerships, identify and respond to current and future stakeholders’ needs, thereby providing quality delivery services.
• Ability to set ambitious and measurable goals, inspire and mobilize teams to deliver desired outcomes and results that lead to success.
• Ability to design compelling investment and resource mobilization plans and proposals.
• Ability to establish sound relationships with the Ministry of Finance/treasury, private sector, development partner working groups, and development finance institutions to secure resources and investment on priority flagship initiatives.
• Must possess a 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.
• Exceptional ability to communicate effectively, negotiate partnership terms, and influence senior-level decision-makers in the private sector, government, and development community.
• Ability to provide strategic direction and operational oversight with demonstrated competence in leading multidisciplinary teams, setting priorities, allocating resources, and ensuring alignment with institutional strategy and CAADP 3.0 objectives.
• Exhibits strong political awareness and contextual understanding, enabling effective navigation of complex institutional, cultural, and governance environments.
• Ability to conduct delivery chain analyses, identify binding constraints, and diagnose performance drivers and incentives with Proven capacity to translate evidence into actionable recommendations and adaptive management decisions

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