Agroforestry Innovations Associate at One Acre Fund

About the Role

One Acre Fund is home to Africa's largest agroforestry programs, serving over 2 million farmers, providing more than 100 million seedlings per year, and engaging a network of over 2,500 rural nurseries run by local entrepreneurs. We see these programs as part of the solution to three key challenges facing smallholder farmers - poverty, climate change, and biodiversity loss.  As an Agroforestry Innovations Associate, you will strengthen and improve these programs with new approaches to generate positive change for farm families and the environment.  You will work on a variety of complex challenges, including strengthening our supply of quality tree seed, improving training and management tools for nursery managers, and diversifying our species offerings.

The Agroforestry Innovations Associate will be part of our dedicated international agroforestry team and will support ten embedded agroforestry teams—one in each country program.  This role will report to the Agroforestry Director.

Responsibilities

Scope, pilot, and scale new investments to improve program impact and reach.  Example initiatives could include:

• Developing solutions to improve seedling survival rates 
• Building planning solutions to better support nursery managers
• Researching and trialing sustainable socket alternatives
• Implement improvements to tree seed supply systems
• Supporting tree tracking systems at the farm level
• Conducting site<>species matching research (field and desk) to expand species diversity

Provide short-term direct support to agroforestry operations in cases where team bandwidth isn’t adequate.  This could be in the form of high-touch operational support or even a short-term secondment.

Qualifications

Across all roles, these are the general qualifications we look for. For this role specifically, you will have:

Experience in Agroforestry and Landscape Restoration

• 3+ years of leadership and demonstrated results in agroforestry, restoration, or related domains in Sub-Saharan Africa
• University or advanced degree in agroforestry, ecology, restoration, or related fields
• Familiarity with biodiversity projects or nature-based carbon projects is an additional advantage

External Relationships

• Exceptional written and verbal communication to engage a range of audiences, including rural farmers, internal staff, external partners, and organizational leadership
• History of collaboration with primary actors in the forestry and landscape restoration sectors, including implementers, technical resources, and policy-makers
• Experience launching new programs or building successful partnerships

Management Skills

• Experience coordinating complex and scalable programs
• Penchant for data-driven decision-making with structured analysis and fact-based recommendations

Other

• Willingness to travel within the region at least 25% of the time
• English Fluency. Other preferred languages include Swahili, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Chichewa, Amharic, or French.