About One Acre Fund

Founded in 2006, One Acre Fund equips 5.5 million smallholder farmers to make their farms more productive. Across nine countries that together are home to two-thirds of Africa's farmers, we provide high-quality farm supplies, tree seedlings, accessible credit, modern agronomic training, and a wide range of other agricultural services. On average, this model enables any farmer to increase their income and assets on supported land by more than 35 percent, while permanently improving their resilience. This is all made possible by our team of 9,000+ full-time staff, drawn from diverse backgrounds and professions.To learn more, please see our Why Work Here blog post.

The Malawi program, established in 2013, serves over 500,000 farmers, providing quality farm supplies and training through our “Core” program, and distributing a range of different tree species through our Agroforestry program which utilizes local nurseries situated close to farmers. Headquartered in Zomba, we operate in two distinct regions of Malawi, the densely-populated Southern region focused on staple crops and the breadbasket Central region with its rich legume and cash crop farming history. To learn more about our work, look at our Malawi program blog.

About the Role

The Agroforestry Operations Associate will conceptualize, design and manage implementation of innovations, early-stage pilots and program improvements for the Malawi Trees team.

You will report to the Malawi Agroforestry Manager.

Responsibilities

Ideate:

• Manage the long-term Agroforestry innovations and improvements pipeline, with a focus on key parameters related to better planting rates, survival, and tree-based income for farmers
• Find the most important operational improvements to make for key parameters for the program, like scale, planting rate, tree survival, et al.
• Liaise regularly with MEL on data, findings, and recommendations based on their surveys for new products, services, et al.

Implement Pilot:

• Work with the relevant field-facing team (Trees, or Field Operations, or any other) through regular meetings and coordinate to implement pilots
• Maintain critical path for pilots and partnerships, including:
  • Clear timelines for each activity (action plans)
  • Targets are clarified for each stage of the pilot
  • Team needs are clarified and the right team in place
  • Budget is clear and managed through the pilot phase

Post-Mortem & Scale:

• Work with the relevant field-facing team to identify data collection needs, and follow-up with MEL / other teams to create surveys
• Use survey findings to create simple but clear post-mortems that have a clear recommendation
• Use data and lessons learned from trials or surveys to improve agroforestry programming
• For pilots that can grow, create a “scale integration” plan to do a proper handover, where necessary, to the relevant field team.

Scale Fruit Tree Work:

• Lead operations of the current fruit tree pilot in Malawi
• Work across 2+ fruit value chains, to take the program from nursery setup to farmer adoption of fruit trees
• Help scale this pilot to all current districts of operation.
• Support MEL planning to follow-up on survival, growth and fruit production from distributed trees.

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:

• 3 or more years of experience in agriculture, forestry, agroforestry, agricultural development or related fields
• 3+ years of experience in one of our countries of operation.
• Experience working with farming and farmers in rural settings
• Technical skills: Google workspace and tools (i.e. Google Sheets, Google Forms), Budget Management
  • Nice-to-haves: Some fluency with CommCare; basic data analysis of CommCare / Excel data; basic knowledge about trees generally or One Acre Fund program offerings specifically

• Knowledge: Fluency in English.

Preferred Start Date

As soon as possible

Job Location

Zomba, Malawi

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

20 August 2025. Please note that we hire on a rolling basis which means that applications are reviewed and processed on a continuous basis until a hire is made.

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, color, 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.