Senior Vice President - Africa at Heifer International

Position Summary

• The Senior Vice President – Africa (SVP Africa) is responsible for the overall vision, strategic leadership, and strategy of Heifer’s Africa Regional program, currently spanning nine countries. The SVP – Africa reports to the CEO and President and leads the Africa regional and country nodes. This role will be a champion of Locally Led Development, ensuring that country nodes in Africa thrive as semi-autonomous, high-performing, and context-responsive centers of leadership, innovation, and impact. The SVP - Africa will guide and mentor senior leaders in the region to cultivate a results-driven, inclusive, and values-based culture that reflects Heifer’s Cornerstones and regenerative leadership principles.
• As a member of Heifer’s Steering Committee and Global Programs Leadership Team, the SVP – Africa will collaborate with peers across regions and functions to enhance cross-learning, advance organizational transformation, and ensure that Africa’s strategy and priorities inform and align with Heifer’s global direction. The SVP - Africa will represent Heifer in Africa internally and externally with governments, partners, donors, and stakeholders, while ensuring strong operational and programmatic performance. The SVP – Africa is also a bold and visible ambassador for Africa, shaping the global development narrative to reflect African leadership, regenerative practices, and locally led solutions that challenge outdated paradigms.

Job location: Africa region (Remote/Hybrid Possible), preferably in a country where Heifer has an office within Africa.

Core Responsibilities

Program Leadership

• Lead the design and execution of the Africa regional strategy, aligning with Heifer’s global vision and the Twelve Cornerstones for Just and Sustainable Development.
• Align the program model, lead, and drive the Africa program for program quality and impact.
• Champion Locally Led Development by empowering country programs to act as strategic and operational centers, ensuring they have the autonomy, capacity, and resources to thrive.
• Establish an enabling environment with Global Support Functions and Regional Nodes to support successful program design, delivery, and adaptation.
• Ensure program goals, budgets, and timelines are met, and adhere to compliance requirements while driving cohesion.
• Maintain awareness of the competitive development landscape, expansion opportunities, and industry trends in Africa.
• Strategic Partnership, Relationship Building, and Management
• Represent Heifer Africa with bilateral, multilateral, corporate, and philanthropic partners, cultivating long-term, trust-based relationships and strategic partnerships driven by the business model and inspired by the ambitions of the program model.
• Collaborate with global revenue and partnership cultivation teams to align Africa’s priorities with donor engagement strategies and secure sustainable funding pipelines for long-term and innovative partnerships.
• Elevate Heifer’s visibility and influence in Africa and abroad through strategic partnerships, advocacy and policy engagement, and thought leadership.
• Position Heifer Africa as a top-tier development ecosystem, thought leader, and impactful organization fostering effective communication and external collaboration.
• People Leadership and Culture
• Build and mentor a high-performing regional leadership team, fostering collaboration, accountability, and continuous learning, and champion talent fluidity by nurturing a connected ecosystem of leaders, ensuring skills, insights, and experiences flow seamlessly across country, regional, and network nodes to strengthen collective capacity.
• Champion a culture of equity, inclusion, transparency, and integrity that aligns with Heifer’s values and regenerative leadership model.
• Develop leadership capacity within country programs to strengthen locally led and sustainable organizations.
• Translate organizational vision into specific, actionable strategies that mobilize and inspire teams across the region.
• Execution, Risk, and Operations
• Oversee internal program execution, operations, finances, and compliance within Africa to ensure Heifer’s reputation as a trusted and high-performing organization.
• Collaborate across functions to mitigate risks, optimize resources, and accelerate results.
• Enable country programs to adopt adaptive strategies rooted in evidence, learning, and contextual realities.
• Foster Engagement, Learning, and Transformation
• Actively contribute to Heifer’s organizational transformation, ensuring Africa serves as a leading example of semi-autonomous, regenerative, and learning-driven node.
• Institutionalize learning loops that capture insights from Africa programs and share them across Heifer’s global network.
• Promote a culture of shared leadership and interconnectedness across Africa and globally.
• Promote internal engagement and foster uncommon collaboration across Africa and globally to maximize learning.
• Other tasks as assigned.

Leadership Model
 

• SVP - Africa will champion a Regenerative Leadership Model grounded in shared leadership, stewardship, systems-thinking, trust-building, and courageous humility. The SVP - Africa will lead not through control, but by cultivating coherence, presence, and shared purpose; also model a leadership approach grounded in wholeness and well-being, recognizing that personal renewal, empathy, and care are foundational to sustainable impact.

Minimum Requirements

• A minimum of fifteen (15) years of international development experience with a bachelor's degree in a relevant field (e.g., international development, business administration, agriculture, economics, or public policy), or a combination of education and experience can be considered.
• Extensive experience living and working in Africa in the field of agriculture, agri-business, and food systems, etc., with strong knowledge of the continent’s development dynamics.
• Knowledge of small holder business development and agriculture.
• Proven success leading complex programs and organizations, including financial and operational management in the non-profit space.
• Demonstrated experience of engaging institutional donors (IFAD, DFID/FCDO, UN agencies, Foundations, Corporations).
• Fluent in English.
• The ability to travel within Africa and globally up to 50% of the time.

Preferred Requirements

• Master’s degree in a relevant field (e.g., international development, business administration, agriculture, economics, or public policy).
• Six to seven (6~7) years of experience in executive leadership roles.
• Prior experience working in the INGO space.
• Proficiency in French or another widely spoken African language.

Most Critical Proficiencies

• Deep commitment to Locally Led Development and smallholder farmer prosperity.
• Demonstrated ability to represent an organization with governments, donors, private sector, and grassroots actors.
• Strong track record of building and sustaining high-performing teams and organizations.
• A systems thinker with the ability to manage complexity, ambiguity, and competing priorities; has an adaptive mindset.
• Exceptional leadership presence, communication, and influencing skills across diverse audiences.
• Strong organizational change and strategy execution experience in distributed, international organizations.
• Ability to navigate cultural nuances with humility, transparency, and inclusion.
• Ability to lead and partner through influence across formal and informal authority lines.