🌱 MEL LEAD — ONE ACRE FUND

📍 Location: Zomba, Malawi
💼 Career Level: Professionals
🎁 Benefits: Health insurance, housing, comprehensive benefits
📅 Preferred Start Date: As soon as possible

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, home to two-thirds of Africa's farmers. It provides farm supplies, tree seedlings, accessible credit, agronomic training, and other agricultural services — enabling supported farmers to increase income and assets by more than 35%. The organization has 9,000+ full-time staff. Its Malawi program, founded in 2016, supports more than 670,000 farmers from its office in Zomba, serving the country's southern region.

ABOUT THE ROLE
The Malawi MEL Lead will independently lead all in-country evaluations across One Acre Fund Malawi's Agriculture, Agroforestry, and Carbon portfolios, leading large-scale research to guide the Malawi program toward deeper impact at scale. They will also lead a team of 100+ members, responsible for their growth and well-being.

RESPONSIBILITIES
Oversee Malawi MEL Execution:
👉 Independently lead in-country or program-level impact evaluations and studies
👉 Establish and continuously improve quality assurance frameworks, processes, and procedures with key stakeholders, including the Global MEL team
Analysis and Reporting:
👉 Update existing analysis plans and develop new analysis for new programs/business units
👉 Develop high-quality survey reports and presentations, summarizing key findings and proposing actionable recommendations
Drive Evidence to Action:
👉 Work with Program teams and Global stakeholders to ensure MEL results are understood and acted upon
👉 Strengthen availability and use of high-quality MEL data for decision-making across the organization
👉 Contribute to Malawi's impact deepening strategy
Team Management:
👉 Contribute to MEL OKRs based on Malawi's Impact Strategy and Global MEL priorities
👉 Manage HR matters within the department, including hiring and development of MEL staff
👉 Oversee departmental budgeting and financial management, balancing growth and efficiency with team sustainability and data quality

QUALIFICATIONS
👉 Strong academic or professional experience designing and implementing evaluations and analyzing data (including large-scale data collection and field team management)
👉 Knowledge of evaluation concepts and mastery of experimental/quasi-experimental evaluation designs
👉 Strong analytical skills, particularly statistical techniques used in impact evaluation (propensity score matching, difference-in-difference, regression discontinuity, etc.)
👉 Knowledge of statistical software such as Stata or R
👉 Strong project management skills, able to oversee multiple projects of varying complexity simultaneously
👉 Clear, compelling written communication with an eye for design and visual presentation

ELIGIBILITY
One Acre Fund can support a work permit for this role; however, nationals of (or those with extensive professional background/work history in) their countries of operation are preferred — Malawi is one of their countries of operation, so Malawian nationals are well-positioned for this role.

HOW TO APPLY
https://oneacrefund.org/vacancies/malawi-mel-lead
⏰ Deadline: November 20, 2026 (hiring is rolling — applications reviewed continuously until filled)
One Acre Fund never asks candidates to pay money or for tests at any stage. Official emails come only from @oneacrefund.org addresses.