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.

Women’s Role in Agriculture

Women make up the majority of the agricultural labor force in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, they achieve 20-30% lower farm yields compared to men and off the farm they earn up to 77% less in non-agricultural income. This is primarily due to structural and systemic inequalities: women have less access to productive resources, technical training, market information, mobile technology, have less decision making power, and face gendered constraints around their time and mobility limiting their ability to maximize the impact from agricultural activities. They also have less access to and ownership of land, limiting their ability to take out loans and make decisions regarding how the land they work on, is used. Women are also disproportionately impacted by the effects of the changing climate as they are more exposed to shocks, with less adaptive capacity to respond and recover.

Burundi Overview

Since launching operations in Burundi in 2011, One Acre Fund has experienced powerful demand for our model. Burundi now represents one of One Acre Fund’s fastest-growing programs, reaching 275,900 farmers in our direct service program. After several years of this growth as the country experienced unrest, we are now ready to resume an ambitious growth trajectory in the country. An audacious five-year plan has been set, seeing us reaching 500,000 farm families annually in our core program by 2028, representing ~25% of the entire Burundian rural population (half of whom are women).

Cultural norms and beliefs rooted in the country’s strong patriarchal system often relegate women to the domestic sphere and to unpaid or low-paid activities. Parenting practices in Burundi dictate that a girl should receive proper training in “female” tasks such as household work and raising children, be taught to respect men, and be prepared to work in the fields. Women generally require their husband’s permission to engage in any activity that involves a transaction. Men manage household budgets, and own land. Overall, compared to men, women have limited access to the inputs and resources needed for agricultural production and income-generating activities though they are significant contributors to their family farms.

About the Consultancy Engagement

Gender-disaggregated data from the One Acre Fund Burundi program collected in 2024 found that 76% of clients reported that it is the women in the household who carry out the majority of farm labor yet only 62% of women attend the various trainings. To address this gap, One Acre Fund seeks to increase women’s attendance in climate-smart training sessions by developing and revising training materials to be more gender sensitive and incorporating topics related to gender-based violence, joint decision-making, etc. The goal is to ensure that more women not only attend more trainings as they are more appropriate to their learning style and needs, but that they adopt these practices as well.

Terms of Reference

To achieve this, you will carry out the following activities under two key priority areas:

Provide subject matter expertise on gender and women’s empowerment for key One Acre Fund Training:

Review and revise current climate-smart training (particularly related to soil health and Integrated Pest Management (IPM)) and extension material (such as radio campaigns, visuals, messaging, slogans - related to the relevant campaigns being developed to mobilize and engage farmers) to ensure that they hold relevance for women farmers and are gender smart (e.g.content is unbiased towards crops/technologies that are typically adopted by men, images represent women farmers, radio campaigns include women’s voices, etc.).
Review and revise our current climate-smart training methods to ensure that they are appropriate for women farmer’s education and literacy levels.
Develop training material content to include topics on gender equality (including gender-based violence, joint decision-making in the HH, etc.).

Support the HR team on building staff capacity relating to gender awareness/sensitivity and gender inclusive programming:

Review and revise as necessary current staff training modules focused on building capacity on gender awareness and sensitivity.
Develop training content and methods on the benefits of formalizing marriage and securing land tenure, etc. to be included in staff training modules as appropriate.
Deliver training sessions with field and internal facing staff to build their capacity relating to the above topics.
Conduct training(s) with key staff/field officers on the major changes made on the climate-smart training and extension materials to familiarize staff with changes as well as approaches to utilize when delivering gender-specific training content (i.e. a training of trainers session).

Expected Outputs/Deliverables:

You will be provided with a full compendium of all training materials used by One Acre Fund Burundi. You will be required to submit an inception report outlining timelines and key deliverables with expected time (# of hours) to completion based on the outcomes from the activities under the two key priority areas which must include:

Providing subject matter expertise on gender and women’s empowerment for key One Acre Fund Training and Extension work:

A list of all training and extension related materials reviewed and revised with a short description of key changes made (specific requirements for this output will be clearly agreed upon with the team beforehand).
A track change version of each set of training and extension materials revised as well as cleaned up versions once approved and finalized.
A new set of training and extension materials that include topics on gender equality (including gender-based violence, joint decision-making in the HH, etc.) finalized.
Completed slide deck and delivered a presentation highlighting the overall key changes made throughout all the training and extension materials reviewed and revised as well as training delivery methods recommended. This presentation should also highlight the risks/opportunities to ensure each set of materials remain relevant and appropriate for women farmers (i.e. recommendations on ways to maintain relevance as program needs change and what barriers/opportunities to look out for and how to leverage them to ensure benefits to women).

Supporting the HR team on building staff capacity relating to gender awareness/sensitivity and gender inclusive programming:

Track change version of staff training materials focused on building gender awareness/sensitivity along with capacity to implement gender inclusive programming.
Completed staff training module on the benefits of formalizing marriage and securing land tenure, etc.
Delivered staff training modules focused on:

Building staff capacity on gender awareness/sensitivity and implementing gender inclusive programming.
The benefits of formalizing marriage and securing land tenure, etc. (as appropriate)

Note:

You will report to the Burundi Country Director and Field Operations Lead.
Presence in Burundi during the consulting period is required.
You will be required to join calls on East African Time.

Timeline:

We are looking to hire someone immediately to work on these objectives on a part-time basis over four months.

Qualifications

Across all roles, these are the general qualifications we look for. For this role specifically, the successful applicant must have the following.

Proven experience in gender analysis, gender mainstreaming and gender lens integration in smallholder agriculture.
Proven experience developing training content and methods using training andragogy suited for the lower literacy levels faced by women (eg. heavy use of pictures and minimal technical terms);
Proactive and passionate with a self-starter attitude.
Strong analytical skills.
Minimum of Bachelor’s Degree in Social Sciences, Gender / Women Studies or related field.
Familiarity with Burundi, and/or the East African agricultural context, is preferred.
Genuine commitment to rural communities, and passion for providing opportunity to the hardest-working (women) farmers on the planet.
French and English speaking and written skills are required.

Preferred Start Date

As soon as possible

Job Location

Muramvya, Burundi

Eligibility

This role is open to all nationalities. However, nationals of (or those with an extensive professional background and work history in) our countries of operation are preferred.

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.