Malawi Market Access Lead

About the role

The Market Access Lead will have a unique opportunity to own one of the key pillars of One Acre Fund's vision by owning the development of high-value cash crop chains in Malawi. If successful, this role will enable a scalable number of smallholder farmers to consistently grow more cash crops, getting higher profit in their pockets, while building export channels bringing sustainable USD revenue critical to our programs' growth.

Responsibilities

• Market Access Strategy and Execution
• Lead Malawi Market Access (MKT) Strategy, including long-term vision, seasonal target setting, work planning and delivery from start to end.
• Steer the MKT team's rapid development, including structuring and hiring of additional HQ and field staff to successfully support ambitious buyback expansion.
• Expansion and iteration of existing value chains
• Strengthen chili buyback to expand both its impact and scale, with an ambitious yet achievable 3-year strategy for chili to become a "value chain winner" in 2030, in line with Global Market Access (MKT) criteria and international market demand.
• Revamp soya buyback, challenging and improving the current set up where OAF aggregates and sells to a local buyer with no margin.
• Develop new high value chains and transformation services
• Start new buyback value chains from scratch subject to thorough analysis of impact potential for smallholder farmers and market needs.
• Contribute to setting up processing services (eg: solar dryers to dry fruits) to enable smallholder farmers to get higher value from their harvest while contributing to building more crop transformation capacity in Malawi, leveraging dedicated funding for "big bet" investments.
• Career Growth and Development

Requirements

• Across all roles, these are the general qualifications we look for . For this role specifically, you will have:
• Passionate, Impact-Driven, Hard-Working, Result-Oriented individual who can 100% align with OAF's values:
• "Farmers first"
• "Work hard"
• "Own your results"
• "Grow through feedback"
• Entrepreneurial profile: This role requires a high level of innovation and ambition, with ad hoc risk assessment and mitigation, clear bias towards action and strong capacity to keep moving despite complexities, ambiguities and uncertainties.
• Team & project management:
• Nurture high accountability on results across the HQ and field impact team, ensuring people are being celebrated and challenged as needed to maximize program impact, practicing radical candor with care
• Design and lead in parallel multiple medium to large projects with a high degree of independence and ability to navigate ambiguity with little manager support
• Analytical decision-making: ability to collect and analyze KPIs autonomously and critically, leading to data-based and impact-driven decisions.
• Preferred Start Date
• As soon as possible
• Job Location
• Zomba, Malawi or Lilongwe, Malawi

Benefits

Additional Information

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 Malawi program, founded in 2016, provides more than 670,000 farmers with quality farm supplies and training. Our office in Malawi is located in Zomba, in the country's south. One Acre Fund works in Malawi's southern region, which has the highest concentration of smallholder farmers in the country.

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