Burundi Product Innovation Associate (Fixed - Term)

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.

Our Burundi program, established in 2011, operates under the local brand Tubura. We are a rapidly growing organization with over 1,000 employees nationwide. As of 2024, we serve over 340,000 unique farmers in 7 provinces; Muramvya, Gitega, Kayanza, Mwaro, Ngozi, Muyinga, and Ruyigi. To learn more about our work, look at our Burundi program blog.

About the Role

Planting trees is one of the most efficient actions to generate impact for rural families and improve the local environment. Growing trees can have many benefits for farm families - trees can improve land productivity and soil fertility. Trees can also serve as a critical economic resource for families.. Additionally, they contribute positively to local ecosystems and reduce the effects of climate change.

As the Burundi Agroforestry Lead, you will lead our national agroforestry program to make it more impactful, efficient, and environmentally responsible. Through your technical experience and leadership you will help farmers to plant ten million trees in your first year, with potential to double in scale over time. Your work will support our target of planting 1 billion trees by 2030.

You will also contribute to our Regenerative Agriculture Portfolio in Burundi; improve farmer's ability to use natural resources to deliver healthy soils and continued prosperity.

You will report to the Burundi Impact Lead.

Responsibilities

• Strategic Reviews and Development: We don't just want to run an efficient programme - we want to improve and scale it. We expect under your leadership we could double the size of the Agroforestry Programme, compliment with new varieties, and bring more impact for farmers; through operational reviews each season, and strategy setting.
• Refine and Improve Current Operations: incremental gain in the work we do will have a big impact at scale. Driving new initiatives to improve our agroforestry operations will result in additional impact for each farm household that we serve. Through root cause analysis, you will identify underlying issues and then launch improvement initiatives. For example, these could aim to improve Seedling Survival Rates, New Varieties of Trees, Improving Market Demand, or phytosanitary care.
• Secure our seedling supply chain through our in-house production models. You will assess performance across our country-wide programme and implement improvements to design and deliver trainings on best practices for nursery management and species management and implement tactics and tools to reliably track field performance.
• Planning and Coordination of Distribution: Taking seedlings from 900 nurseries across the country and distributing to 400,000 farmers is a major task; and requires digital management of distribution, close understanding of farmer needs and constraints, and effective working with our field operations team.
• Scope and Launch new Initiatives in Regenerative Agriculture: Investing in additional trees for our farmers will support healthy soils and more productive farms. You will also support new initiatives to grow farmer income through use of natural alternatives to inorganic fertilizer: such as restoring soil health, biodiversity and ecosystem resilience.

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:

• 5+ years working in execution of major decentralised rural programmes, with demonstrated managerial responsibilities including field and performance management
• Field experience working with smallholder farmers
• A track-record of implementation preferred, taking projects from strategic to operational within a relatively short time
• Bachelors required; study or qualifications in Agroforestry or Regenerative Agriculture an advantage
• Nice to have: Prior experience in Agroforestry or Regenerative Agriculture
• Language: English required; French also strongly preferred. Other local languages (Kirundi) desirable.

Preferred Start Date

As soon as possible

Job Location

Muramvya, Burundi

Benefits

Health insurance, housing, and comprehensive benefits

Eligibility

This role is only open to citizens or permanent residents of Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Malawi, Ethiopia, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Application Deadline

01 January 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.