Regional Program Manager – East & Southern Africa

Location: Nairobi, Kenya

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 small-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.

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.

AGRA is implementing a Youth Entrepreneurship for the Future of Food and Agriculture (YEFFA) within its network and seeks to recruit a qualified Regional Program Manager – East & Southern Africa.

The Position

Regional Program Manager – East & Southern Africa

The Regional Program Manager – East & Southern Africa will strengthen delivery, quality, and coordination of YEFFA implementation across Eastern & Southern Africa by providing technical backstopping, adaptive management support, and rapid troubleshooting to country teams and continental pillar investments. The role accelerates country-level delivery towards YEFFA targets through improved field monitoring linkages, risk escalation, and strengthened learning loops between country and continental pillars.

The ideal candidate will provide hands-on regional leadership, technical guidance (market-systems, agribusiness, workforce development lens), and operational coordination to country teams in the ESA cluster. The role supports the Head-YEFFA Program Delivery, liaises with the PMO, and ensures country implementation fidelity, efficient burn-rate management, and timely escalation of delivery risks to safeguard achievement of program outcomes.

Key Duties and Responsibilities:

• Lead regional planning and coordination with CPLs to align country acceleration plans with continental investments and YEFFA results framework.
• Convene and facilitate regular regional delivery reviews, portfolio check-ins, and rapid response meetings.
• Translate continental strategy into regionally relevant operational plans and backstop country workplans.
• Provide technical guidance on market-systems approaches, inclusion (gender & youth), and quality assurance for grant design and implementation.
• Support adherence to AGRA/YEFFA quality, safeguarding, and environmental standards in regional activities.
• Work with Grants & Finance to track regional grant disbursement and compliance.
• Monitor achievement of regional targets, consolidate lessons, and provide input into quarterly MEL dashboards and portfolio reports.
• Identify bottlenecks in grant execution and propose corrective action to CPLs and PMO.
• Support cost-control and burn-rate management with Program Finance and PMO.
• Build and maintain strategic relationships with donors (Mastercard Foundation regional teams), government, private sector, and implementing partners to accelerate delivery and mobilize support.
• Represent the ESA region at continental coordination fora and learning events.
• Promote cross-country learning and synthesize evidence for continental programming.
• Act as first-line regional troubleshooter — triage implementation challenges, propose adaptive solutions, and escalate where necessary to PMO/Head YEFFA.
• Strengthening linkages between country-level evidence and continental policy/technical interventions.
• Maintain a unified regional governance system with standardized tools for RAG tracking, milestone monitoring, and issue escalation across ESA countries.
• Consolidate country delivery reports and risks into a regional dashboard to strengthen coordination and timely decision-making.
• Manage a clear escalation workflow to track and resolve cross-country bottlenecks and operational challenges.
• Prepare governance briefs and reports for AGRA Management and the Mastercard Foundation, ensuring alignment and consistency across ESA.
• Coordinate regional governance and learning forums—including portfolio reviews and annual learning
  events—to reinforce cross-country alignment and continuous improvement.

Key Qualifications and Experience Required:

• Master’s degree (or equivalent) in Development Studies, Agricultural Economics, Agribusiness, Market Systems, Public Policy, or related field.
• Project management certification is an advantage.
• 8+ years of progressively responsible program management experience in multi-country/regional development programs (preferably in agriculture, youth employment, or market systems.
• Demonstrated experience in adaptive management, troubleshooting, and supporting rapid scale-up in complex donor-funded programs.
• Experience working with donors (Mastercard Foundation, Gates, etc.), governments, and private sector actors.
• Track record in coordinating cross-functional teams and delivering results across multiple countries.
• Ability to coordinate governance structures, track decisions, and ensure alignment with program priorities.
• Strong skills in planning and managing multi-country and cross-team engagements.
• Proficient in producing clear, high-quality briefs, reports, and knowledge products.
• Skilled in tracking progress, follow-ups, and maintaining organized institutional records.
• Good understanding of youth employment, agriculture systems, and development governance in Africa

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 19th February 2026. Due to the large volumes of applications we
usually receive, we will only be able to contact those candidates who are shortlisted.

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

AGRA is an Equal Opportunity Employer