One Acre Fund is a nonprofit organization that supplies smallholder farmers in East Africa with asset-based financing and agriculture training services to reduce hunger and poverty.

About the Role

Empowering women farmers must be integral to any solution to extreme hunger and poverty — yet at present, women in Africa have less access to agricultural productive resources and services, achieve only 20-30% of the farm yields as men, and have less control over household decisions and income. These gender-based structural roadblocks inflict cascading negative consequences for women, their families, and society.

In Kenya, we are looking for a passionate Gender Lead to review and inform our strategy, and to design and implement tailored interventions to improve equity in access and benefit for young women across the Tupande programme model. Reporting to the Director of Product Strategy, you will shape our thinking and contribution to gender transformation and build a strategy that helps us deliver improved outcomes for rural women in Kenya.

Responsibilities

• Conduct programme review and gender inclusion assessment:
  • Leverage outputs from recent gender inclusion assessment work in Kenya; review the Tupande programme model to identify constraints faced by young rural women for equitable access to-  and benefit from – Tupande’s multichannel service offering.
  • Identify opportunities for strengthening components of the Tupande programme including farmer training, digital offerings, crop commercialisation work, and micro-enterprise opportunities to increase the engagement and advancement of young rural women.
• Build gender vision and strategy: 
  • Building from the gender inclusion assessment and programme review, and utilizing targeted formative research, develop a country-level gender roadmap which addresses the barriers faced by young women smallholders and ensures Tupande’s farmer-facing work contributes to gender equity, equality, and empowerment of women.
• Design gender transformative initiatives: 
  • Use gender inclusion, formative and other research to design and implement specific interventions and program modifications tailored to the unique constraints, needs and priorities of female smallholders, ensuring integration of a gender lens across Tupande’s programme offering.
  • Provide strategic and technical support to co-design gender transformative initiatives to maximize returns for rural women.
• Support Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL)
  • Work with our Impact and Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning (MEL) teams to determine and track an informative set of gender-related outcomes against dedicated programme initiatives.
  • In collaboration with MEL, provide thought partnership to support effective gender-disaggregation of existing data to monitor potential gender impact.
• Support reporting and budget management
  • Collaborate with implementation leads, and internal stakeholders to compile quarterly donor reports on activities, outputs, and outcomes.
  • Develop and monitor budget utilization status of the project; work with Grants Finance to track budget-vs-actuals and financial reporting.
• Lead gender mainstreaming
  • Provide thought partnership to organizational leadership to build gender capacity across the organization and promote decision-making that prioritizes gender representation throughout the organization.

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:

• Minimum of Bachelor’s Degree, Masters Degree preferred (in public health, adolescent/youth services, gender, social science or related discipline)
• 5+ years of relevant experience leading complex field programs in Sub-Saharan Africa developing gender equality strategy/gender programming. Speficially, experience working with female smallholders and understanding of the socio-cultural and other barriers rural women face.
• Project and stakeholder management abilities, including defining goals, prioritizing tasks, and offering technical advice to support gender-focused results.
• Experience conducting rapid gender-sensitive research or collating existing data to produce reports to inform organizational decision-making.