Global MEL Senior Associate

Location: Flexible: any One Acre Fund country of operation, including Malawi
Employer: One Acre Fund
Contract type: Fixed term
Contract duration: 2 years
Reports to: Senior Manager, Global MEL Team
Travel: About 10–25% of time, within the region
Closing date: Rolling; applications reviewed until a hire is made

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, it provides high-quality farm supplies, tree seedlings, accessible credit, modern agronomic training and a wide range of other agricultural services. On average, this model enables a farmer to increase their income and assets on supported land by more than 35 percent, while permanently improving their resilience. The organisation has a team of more than 9,000 full-time staff from diverse backgrounds and professions.

Job overview

One Acre Fund is seeking an exceptional monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) professional with 3+ years of experience to strengthen the quality and rigour of monitoring and evaluation across its growth-country portfolio and agroforestry programme.

The Global MEL Senior Associate will be a strong analyst providing technical guidance, analytical support and quality assurance across a portfolio of 2–3 country programmes within the growth-country portfolio. Countries of operation currently include Tanzania, DRC, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Uganda, Zambia and Burundi.

Country MEL Leads are responsible for day-to-day MEL operations in their programmes. This role complements them with dedicated technical depth and a cross-country perspective: reviewing and strengthening analytical approaches, advising on evaluation methodology, building tools and frameworks that leads can adopt, and surfacing learning across the portfolio. Over time, the role is expected to build MEL capacity meaningfully in the countries it supports.

Beyond country support, the role contributes to selected Global MEL initiatives, such as designing and rolling out team trainings, developing shared tools and templates, and cross-programme methodology work. Depending on the candidate’s profile, the portfolio may also include analytical support for One Acre Fund’s Agroforestry programme, a large and technically complex area with significant opportunity for rigorous measurement work.

Duties and responsibilities

Country portfolio support

• Serve as the primary technical resource for country MEL Leads in your assigned portfolio, providing structured guidance, review and feedback throughout the programme cycle.
• Review and strengthen survey instruments and data collection approaches, including questionnaire design and programming in CommCare (or equivalent), before deployment.
• Assess and improve data quality back-check processes, identifying opportunities to automate checks and strengthen data validation pipelines.
• Review and advise on country-level data analysis (Stata required; R a plus), ensuring analytical integrity, reproducibility and appropriate interpretation of results.
• Quality-control MEL deliverables, including reports, dashboards and presentations, and give actionable feedback to raise the standard of country outputs.
• Help country MEL Leads translate data and evaluation findings into clear, decision-relevant insights for programme teams and leadership.
• Actively identify and share learning across your portfolio, bringing effective approaches from one country to another and flagging common challenges to the wider Global MEL team.

Evaluation design and methodology

• Advise on evaluation design and review methodology across assigned programmes, with fluency in quasi-experimental approaches (propensity score matching, difference-in-differences) and randomised controlled trials.
• Proactively identify methodological gaps or risks in ongoing evaluations and raise them early with the relevant Global Senior Manager and MEL Director, not just at reporting time.
• Contribute to developing and documenting global MEL standards, evaluation frameworks and shared analytical tools for use across country programmes.

Global MEL initiatives

• Contribute to the design and rollout of MEL trainings and capacity-building programmes for country MEL teams, translating global standards into practical, accessible learning materials.
• Support the development of shared tools, templates and guidance documents that improve consistency and quality across the MEL portfolio.
• Contribute to cross-programme methodology projects and special initiatives prioritised by the Global MEL Director, which may include piloting new approaches, conducting portfolio-level analyses or supporting strategic planning.
• Depending on candidate profile, provide dedicated analytical support to the Agroforestry portfolio, a large and technically complex programme area with many open methodological questions. This involves close collaboration with the Agroforestry team and MEL Director on measurement approaches, data systems and building the evidence base for tree-related programme outcomes.
• Peer-review cross-country workstreams, providing quality control and suggesting areas for improvement.

Qualifications and experience

One Acre Fund is seeking a technically strong MEL professional with a passion for smallholder agriculture and a commitment to evidence-based programme improvement.

Essential

• Master’s degree in economics, applied statistics, agricultural economics or a closely related field.
• Minimum 3 years of professional experience in monitoring, evaluation and/or applied research, preferably in international development.
• Advanced quantitative skills; proficiency in Stata is required.
• Demonstrated experience with impact evaluation design and methods, including propensity score matching (PSM), difference-in-differences (DiD) and/or randomised controlled trials (RCTs).
• Demonstrated ability to design and improve data quality assurance processes, including back-check surveys and automated data validation.
• Experience designing and programming surveys for mobile data collection.
• Background in agriculture.
• Professional fluency in English, with strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to translate complex findings for non-technical audiences.
• Willingness to travel within the region (about 10–25% of the time).

Desirable

• R skills (a strong plus).
• CommCare experience.
• Experience working in Sub-Saharan Africa and with smallholder agricultural programmes (strongly preferred).
• Familiarity with common agricultural MEL frameworks and indicators, such as yield estimation, adoption surveys and income measurement.
• Experience with agroforestry, tree planting programmes or forest ecosystem measurement (strongly preferred, and a significant advantage in portfolio assignment).
• Professional fluency in French (a significant asset, particularly for candidates supporting DRC).

Skills and competencies

• Strong attention to detail and commitment to analytical rigour and reproducibility.
• Collaborative working style with a service orientation; comfortable giving structured feedback and coaching to peers and junior colleagues.

Working conditions and benefits

One Acre Fund has a strong culture of constant learning and invests in developing its people. You will have weekly check-ins with your manager, access to mentorship and training programmes, and regular feedback on your performance. Career reviews are held every six months, with time set aside to discuss your aspirations and career goals.

• Benefits: health insurance, housing and comprehensive benefits.
• Preferred start date: as soon as possible.
• Eligibility: One Acre Fund can support a work permit for this role. However, nationals of (or those with an extensive professional background and work history in) its countries of operation are preferred.

How to apply

Apply online: Apply for the Global MEL Senior Associate position

The advert gave a deadline of 4 November 2026, but One Acre Fund hires on a rolling basis and the vacancy remains open: applications are reviewed continuously 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 always come from an @oneacrefund.org address. Report any suspicious communication to [email protected], but do not send applications or application materials to this address.

Equal opportunities and safeguarding

One Acre Fund is committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, colour, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender, gender identity or expression. It strongly encourages applications from African professionals with deep local knowledge and investment in the communities it serves.

Applications go directly to the employer, not to Malawi24.

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