Global MEL Manager

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.

Preferred Start Date

As soon as possible

Job Location

Minna, Nigeria or Jinja, Uganda or Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. Placement in one of our other countries of operations (Primarily Rwanda, but also Kenya, Malawi, or Zambia for nationals of those countries) may also be considered. 

Benefits

Health insurance, housing, and comprehensive benefits

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) our countries of operation are preferred.

Application Deadline

17 November 2026. Please note that we hire on a rolling basis which means that applications are reviewed and processed on a continuous basis 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 will always arrive from an @oneacrefund.org address. Please report any suspicious communication here (globalhotline@oneacrefund.org), but do not send applications or application materials to this email address.

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI), and anti-racism are deeply connected to our organization’s mission and purpose. One Acre Fund aspires to build a culture where all staff feel consistently valued, represented, and connected – so that our team can thrive as professionals, and achieve exceptional impact for the farmers we serve.

We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender, gender identity or expression. We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace.