One Acre Fund Job Vacancy : Microfinance Partnerships Director

Job Location:             Nairobi preferred; major European city possible. Frequent world travel, particularly East and West Africa.

Duration:                     Minimum 2 years commitment, full-time job

 

 

Job Description
The global microfinance movement has thousands of institutions and is starting to explore how to serve farmers, who are the majority of the world’s poor. One Acre Fund is growing the largest network of smallholding farmers in Africa, and proving that loans to smallholder farmers can be commercially viable. We are challenging ourselves to think big, and to invest resources into figuring out how to help the microfinance movement more seriously consider serving the world’s farmers.

 

One Acre Fund is playing an active role in promoting and shaping the emerging agricultural microfinance movement. The Microfinance Partnerships Director will lead One Acre Fund’s ongoing efforts to bring together organizations with experience in agriculture microfinance. These efforts will primarily involve:

Representing One Acre Fund in a newly formed association of agriculture finance organizations

Coming up with a strategy for strategic promotion of core principles for agriculture finance practitioners

Developing structures to incentivize other organizations to enter agriculture microfinance.

Separately, s/he will explore the eventual possibility of operating partnerships between One Acre Fund and other organizations (most likely microfinance organizations, but could be other organizations that are interested in serving rural farmers at scale).

 

We are seeking an exceptional mid-career professional with microfinance/financial access experience (preferred) or other base-of-the-pyramid business experience to serve as Microfinance Partnerships Director.

 

Primary Duties and Responsibilities

The Microfinance Partnerships Director will manage the three existing members of the microfinance partnerships team, and perform the following and other duties as assigned:

 

Build meaningful and genuine one-on-one relationships with worldwide microfinance leaders and other organizations interested in serving rural farmers at scale.

Travel frequently within East and West Africa in particular

Leverage One Acre Fund’s existing relationships to discover new relationships

Build real relationships with some of the most effective organizations in the world

Help to build the overall agricultural finance movement.

Oversee the completion of a database of farm finance practitioners (this project is already underway).

Develop a multi-year strategy for movement-building

Promote core principles that distinguish agriculture finance from the regular microfinance movement (e.g. asset finance, training, retail of seed and fertilizer)

Play a leading role in a newly-formed agriculture finance industry association

Explore the eventual possibility of operational partnerships.

Working closely with our core operating staff and help to determine partnership strategy

Write MOUs and take the lead on communicating with the partner

Continue to be involved strategically after One Acre Fund assigns internal operations staffers to the partnership

 

Career Growth and Development

One Acre Fund invests in building management and leadership skills. Your manager will invest significant time in your career development. We provide constant, actionable feedback delivered through mentorship and regular, management consulting-style career reviews. We also have regular one-on-one meetings, where we listen to and discuss career goals, and work collaboratively to craft roles that each person can be passionate about.  Because of our rapid growth, we constantly have new high-level roles opening up and opportunities in many functions. This results in fast career growth for our staff, and a diverse array of professional opportunities for high performers.