Logistics Officer (Nairobi)

Private-sector style career development in a field setting

Excellent career development opportunity emphasizing management and leadership skills

Industry:          Nonprofit/International Development

Function:         Logistics (prior experience not required – we are seeking a good business mind)

Employer:        One Acre Fund

Job Title:          Logistics Officer

Job Location:   Major East African city (Nairobi preferred), with travel to other cities and our rural operations

Commitment:  Two-year minimum

Language:        English required, French desirable

Organization Description

Most of the world’s poor are farmers, representing the largest and most uniform group of poor people in the world. One Acre Fund is a start-up NGO in Kenya, Rwanda, and Burundi that is innovating a new way of helping farm families to achieve their full potential. Instead of giving handouts, One Acre invests in farmers to generate a permanent gain in farm income. We provide farmers with a “market bundle” that includes education, finance, seed and fertilizer, and market access. Our program is proven impactful – every year, we weigh thousands of harvests and measure more than 100% average gain in farm income per acre. We have laser-like focus on generating better lives for the people that we serve.

We are growing quickly. In five years, we have grown to serve 130,000 farm families with more than 500 full-time field staff. In three more years, we will at least quadruple in size, while adding several new countries. Our approach has won widespread validation, winning grants from the highly competitive Echoing Green and Skoll Foundations, and the global Financial Times/ IFC award for “basic needs financing” in 2010 and 2011. Website: www.oneacrefund.org

Job Description
We are seeking a logistics officer who can manage all of our strategic purchases in East Africa. Our organization buys a lot of physical goods in several countries – these purchases are of high strategic importance, and we invest significant time and energy into these purchases. The logistics officer will be responsible for:

-       Understanding our core business and needs. We want to find a colleague who is humble, has a “can-do” attitude, and is able to listen to our field operations and understand their needs.

-       Innovating new purchases – We spend a lot of time investigating new kinds of things that we can buy. Oftentimes, these purchases unlock new strategic avenues for us to generate impact. Examples:

• Plastic dosing scoops – we recently custom-manufactured scoops that deliver a precise, 2.4g dose of fertilizer to a planting hole. This involved working with a plastics manufacturer and then field-testing the scoop in the field with actual farmers.
• Packaging for chlorine – we recently worked with a plastics manufacturer to innovate a new bottle for holding water purification chlorine, which could save us more than 50% on this item.
• Marketing signs – we recently discovered a new kind of marketing sign that is durable in the field, bright, etc.

-       Building relationships with fertilizer and seed suppliers. We are still a small business in the grand scheme of things, but we are growing. This year we will spend about $5m USD on seed and fertilizer – but we will grow 20-30x in the coming eight years. We are seeking someone who will build and maintain relationships with a dozen different seed and fertilizer suppliers, and work together with them to save us millions of dollars on purchases.

-       Research. This position will involve investing significant time and energy into research. Understanding fertilizer markets for example, requires cultivating key contacts who can feed data to us, and doing significant independent research into worldwide cost drivers. For various products, we also want to trace the supply chain back to original manufacturers in China for example.

-       Transportation. It is not easy to get dozens of tractor-trailer-loads of items all over East Africa, across borders, etc.

Career Growth and Development: One Acre Fund invests in building management and leadership skills. We provide constant, actionable feedback delivered through weekly mentorship and through regular career reviews. We also have regular one-on-one meetings, where we listen to and discuss career goals, and work collaboratively to craft roles that each person can be passionate about. Because of our rapid growth, we constantly have new high-level roles opening up and opportunities in many functions and countries. This results in fast career growth for our staff.

Qualifications

We are seeking exceptional professionals with 2 to 5+ years of work experience, and a demonstrated long-term passion for international development. They will serve in a career-track position that combines both field and management experience.

We are looking for truly extraordinary candidates that will help take our organization to the next levels of impact and scale. This is not a short stint in Africa – this is a competitive posting for a career-track role. Only 3% of applicants make it to a phone screen. Therefore, please only apply if you fit these criteria:

• Strong work experiences. Examples include a demanding professional work experience, or successful entrepreneurial experience (e.g. starting a field program in a developing country, leading a conference, starting a business, solid Peace Corps accomplishments)
• Leadership experience at work, or outside of work
• Top-performing undergraduate background (please include GPA and test scores on your resume)
• Prior logistics experience is ideal (e.g. fertilizer purchasing experience), but mostly we are looking for someone with a strong business mind, who has a passion for operations and logistics. This job will involve a broad variety of duties, and so our ideal profile is a smart generalist.
• Humility and personal stability. We have a fantastic and likeable team. We are looking for passionate professionals that combine strong leadership skills with good humor, patience, and a humble approach to service
• A willingness to commit to living in rural areas of East Africa for at least two years – this is a long-term, career-track role. The ideal candidate will have at least one year demonstrated experience working in the developing world, although this is not a strict requirement
• Language: English required in Kenya, and French required in Rwanda and Burundi. French-speakers are particularly encouraged to apply
• Ability to cook/ laugh – desirable

Preferred Start Date: Flexible

Compensation: Starts very modest. However, this is a career-track role with fast raises for performance, paying a meaningful salary for long-term placement in developing nations.

Benefits: Health cover, immunizations, flight, room and board. Two annual home flights provided.

Career development: Quarterly management consulting-style career reviews and constant feedback. Your manager will invest significant time in your career development.

Sponsor International Candidates: Yes

To Apply

Email cover letter and resume to (Subject line: Logistics Search + name of the site that referred you).