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.

About the Role

Seeking an experienced MEL manager to lead monitoring, evaluation & learning across our Uganda, Nigeria, and DRC programs and own the systems and operations that help the entire Global MEL team deliver consistent, high-quality evidence at scale.

Responsibilities

Oversee MEL across the Uganda, Nigeria, and DRC country programs

• Directly manage the three Country MEL Leads (Uganda, Nigeria, and DRC), owning their goal-setting, performance reviews, development, and career trajectory.
• Ensure survey design and roll-out are executed to global standards across the region.
• Carefully review analysis conducted by your team, and oversee the reporting process, including the development of reports and actionable, evidence-based recommendations.
• Participate in country steering-committee meetings, presenting MEL results and building buy-in on data-driven programmatic recommendations and global priorities.
• Oversee country-level MEL budgets and plans to ensure growth happens efficiently without sacrificing data quality, and ensure adherence to all global MEL guidance.

Own the systems, operations, and ways of working of the Global MEL team

• Own the “how we work” of Global MEL — operational and process guidance, SOPs, and team ways of working.
• Select, roll out, and drive adoption of project-management systems and tooling across all regions, not only the countries you directly oversee.
• Own team knowledge management — where documents live, how they are versioned, and how people find them.
• Own team-level project and capacity planning and cross-domain coordination.

Build and run onboarding and non-technical capacity building

• Build and run onboarding and non-technical training so new staff and Country MEL Leads ramp quickly and consistently across the whole team.
• Establish the systems and tools that keep the MEL department running smoothly, and embed them so they are used consistently across regions.
• Maintain contingency and knowledge-transfer plans so the team is resilient to staff departures.

Contribute to Global MEL strategy and thought leadership

• Represent the team in global forums (e.g. COP, Impact meet-ups, MEL manager calls) and contribute to thought leadership for the department.
• Undertake global department-improvement initiatives, both at the Director's request and proactively as you identify needs.

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:

• Experience with quantitative and qualitative research methodologies, implementing evaluations, designing data-collection tools, statistical analysis, and reporting; mastery of experimental and quasi-experimental evaluation designs (e.g. randomized controlled trials, propensity-score matching, difference-in-differences). Proficiency in both Stata and R.
• Project management and process design — the ability to select and roll out systems and tooling, standardize workflows, and drive adoption across distributed teams (change management).
• Knowledge management — structuring documentation, versioning, and information systems so a dispersed team can find and reuse work.
• People management and the ability to manage and develop staff across multiple countries and time zones, largely remotely.

• Directly manage the three Country MEL Leads (Uganda, Nigeria, and DRC), owning their goal-setting, performance reviews, development, and career trajectory.
• Ensure survey design and roll-out are executed to global standards across the region.
• Carefully review analysis conducted by your team, and oversee the reporting process, including the development of reports and actionable, evidence-based recommendations.
• Participate in country steering-committee meetings, presenting MEL results and building buy-in on data-driven programmatic recommendations and global priorities.
• Oversee country-level MEL budgets and plans to ensure growth happens efficiently without sacrificing data quality, and ensure adherence to all global MEL guidance.
• Own the “how we work” of Global MEL — operational and process guidance, SOPs, and team ways of working.
• Select, roll out, and drive adoption of project-management systems and tooling across all regions, not only the countries you directly oversee.
• Own team knowledge management — where documents live, how they are versioned, and how people find them.
• Own team-level project and capacity planning and cross-domain coordination.
• Build and run onboarding and non-technical training so new staff and Country MEL Leads ramp quickly and consistently across the whole team.
• Establish the systems and tools that keep the MEL department running smoothly, and embed them so they are used consistently across regions.
• Maintain contingency and knowledge-transfer plans so the team is resilient to staff departures.
• Represent the team in global forums (e.g. COP, Impact meet-ups, MEL manager calls) and contribute to thought leadership for the department.
• Undertake global department-improvement initiatives, both at the Director's request and proactively as you identify needs.

• Quantitative and qualitative research methodologies
• Implementing evaluations
• Designing data-collection tools
• Statistical analysis
• Reporting
• Experimental and quasi-experimental evaluation designs (e.g. randomized controlled trials, propensity-score matching, difference-in-differences)
• Stata
• R
• Project management
• Process design
• Change management
• Knowledge management
• People management

• Experience with quantitative and qualitative research methodologies, implementing evaluations, designing data-collection tools, statistical analysis, and reporting; mastery of experimental and quasi-experimental evaluation designs (e.g. randomized controlled trials, propensity-score matching, difference-in-differences). Proficiency in both Stata and R.
• Project management and process design — the ability to select and roll out systems and tooling, standardize workflows, and drive adoption across distributed teams (change management).
• Knowledge management — structuring documentation, versioning, and information systems so a dispersed team can find and reuse work.
• People management and the ability to manage and develop staff across multiple countries and time zones, largely remotely.