Vice President - Continental Programs and Technical Advisory, AGRA

AGRA is an African-led institution that works to transform agri-food systems across the continent. For twenty years, AGRA has been working in partnership with people across the continent to build a more prosperous future for smallholders. Grounded in country priorities, AGRA partners with governments, the private sector, research institutions and development actors to identify and unlock systemic constraints that limit smallholder farmer productivity, market access and resilience. Through catalytic investment, technical insight and convening power, AGRA supports inclusive, sustainable transformation that strengthens food security and long-term economic growth.

Main responsibilities

The Vice President - Continental Programs and Technical Advisory is a member of AGRA’s Executive Committee, reporting to the President, and has two mutually reinforcing accountabilities. First, the role conceives, builds, finances, and delivers a small portfolio of two to three major continental or regional flagship programmes that address constraints no country can solve alone. Second, the role builds and leads a compact bench of approximately five to ten outstanding African technical experts who work with country teams to design strong programmes, shape fundable propositions, build delivery and financing partnerships, solve difficult technical problems, and provide authoritative support to continental partnerships.

The role translates continental ambition into executable initiatives that connect regional agreements to changes in national policy, institutions, infrastructure, markets, investment, and delivery. Potential flagships include regional food corridors, trade and standards initiatives, investment platforms, or sector collaborations such as the ECOWAS Rice Observatory. The Vice President works through the African Union, AUDA-NEPAD, the AfCFTA Secretariat, regional economic communities, governments, businesses, funders, and specialist institutions, reinforcing their mandates rather than creating parallel structures.

This is a senior operating and leadership role with end-to-end accountability for results. The Vice President selects and shapes a deliberately limited portfolio; secures institutional ownership, partnerships, and financing; establishes governance, plans, budgets, targets, milestones, and risk controls; and holds programme leaders and partners to their commitments. The role intervenes early when delivery is off track and makes timely decisions to accelerate, redesign, pause, transfer, or exit work. At the same time, the Vice President sets AGRA’s standard for thought leadership, technical excellence, recruits and develops exceptional experts, and directs their effort toward the highest-value country and continental priorities. Experts are expected to co-design programmes with country teams, strengthen the technical case for funding, open and support strategic partnerships, and turn field evidence into influential continental knowledge and thought leadership. Success is measured by programmes that move from agreement to coordinated implementation, technical support that improves country outcomes and helps mobilize resources, disciplined stewardship, and stronger African institutions and partnerships that sustain progress beyond AGRA’s direct involvement.

Dimensions of the role

1. Continental Portfolio Strategy & Choice

• Translate AGRA’s strategy into a coherent continental portfolio focused on constraints and opportunities that require cross-border or collective action.
• Maintain a disciplined portfolio of two to three major flagships rather than a proliferation of disconnected initiatives; define transparent entry, continuation, scale, transfer, and exit criteria.
• Use country demand, political commitment, market opportunity, institutional ownership, evidence, financing potential, and AGRA’s comparative advantage to identify and test flagship concepts.
• Develop rigorous opportunity cases for potential programmes, including the system constraint, cross-border rationale, beneficiary and market outcomes, political economy, institutional landscape, delivery model, financing pathway, risks, and AGRA’s catalytic role.
• Recommend to the President and Executive Committee what AGRA should lead, co-lead, enable, influence, or decline, and protect the organization from commitments that are attractive externally but weak in strategic fit or deliverability.
• Ensure the portfolio complements country transformation priorities and reinforces continental commitments, including CAADP and AfCFTA, rather than operating as a separate layer of activity.
• Design every flagship for durability from the outset, identifying the African institution or coalition that should ultimately own the agenda and the capabilities, governance, finance, and transition steps required.
• Embed gender equity, youth opportunity, farmer and local-enterprise voice, nutrition, climate resilience, and natural-resource sustainability in programme choices, governance, and results.

2. Flagship Conception & Coalition Building

• Personally lead the early formation of each flagship, moving from an idea to a credible programme proposition with clear outcomes, partners, governance, resources, and implementation pathways.
• Build and steward senior relationships with the African Union Commission, AUDA-NEPAD, AfCFTA Secretariat, regional economic communities, governments, development finance institutions, donors, businesses, research bodies, and producer organizations.
• Identify the institutions with mandate, legitimacy, technical capability, capital, and delivery authority, and form coalitions in which each party’s role, contribution, decision rights, and accountability are explicit.
• Secure political sponsorship and institutional ownership while protecting AGRA’s non-partisan standing and ensuring that programme design reflects the incentives and constraints of participating countries.
• Use AGRA’s convening power to resolve contested priorities, bridge public and private interests, and convert broad declarations into specific decisions, investments, national actions, and delivery commitments.
• Assess proposed governance mechanisms against authority, focus, accountability, durability, and representation; strengthen existing platforms wherever possible rather than establishing duplicative structures.
• Bring credible specialist partners into the coalition where they are better placed to lead, and define AGRA’s value as the combination of agrifood expertise, country relationships, orchestration, catalytic resources, and implementation discipline.
• Represent AGRA at senior continental and regional forums where executive leadership can shape agendas, secure commitments, mobilize resources, or unblock delivery.

 3. Programme Execution & Accountability

• Convert approved concepts into executable multi-year programme plans with outcomes, workstreams, milestones, budgets, procurement and grant strategies, staffing, partner commitments, risk registers, evidence plans, and transition pathways.
• Appoint, direct, coach, and hold accountable strong programme leaders; establish clear authority and interfaces between programme teams, technical experts, country teams, and corporate functions.
• Chair disciplined monthly and quarterly performance reviews covering delivery milestones, partner commitments, budget and forecast, grants and contracts, risks, evidence, decisions required, and corrective actions.
• Track dependencies across regional institutions, countries, regulators, infrastructure actors, businesses, and funders; intervene early when slippage in one workstream threatens the whole programme.
• Make timely stop-start-scale-transfer decisions and lead remediation when a programme, partner, grant, or workstream is underperforming, no longer catalytic, or inconsistent with AGRA’s risk appetite.
• Ensure continental frameworks are translated into country-level policy, regulatory, institutional, investment, and operational changes, working through Country Directors and nationally mandated actors.
• Hold the portfolio to high standards of financial stewardship, donor and legal compliance, procurement, safeguarding, ethics, security, data protection, and reputational risk management.
• Provide candid, decision-useful reporting to the President, Executive Committee, Board, funders, and governing partners, distinguishing activity from outcomes, leverage, institutional change, and sustainability.

4. Technical Bench & Professional Standards

• Define the small number of technical domains in which AGRA must maintain leading in-house credibility, based on country demand, continental priorities, strategic differentiation, and the availability of capable external partners.
• Recruit, lead, coach, and retain a diverse bench of approximately five to ten outstanding African experts who combine deep subject knowledge with political judgement, partnership skills, and practical delivery experience.
• Set clear professional standards for diagnostic work, policy and programme advice, evidence use, peer review, quality assurance, ethics, inclusion, documentation, and communication with governments and partners.
• Create a culture in which experts act as problem-solving partners rather than owners of vertical programmes, work across disciplines, challenge assumptions constructively, and remain accountable for the usefulness of their advice.
• Hold each expert accountable for four linked contributions: country programme design, technically compelling funding propositions, partnerships that improve delivery or mobilize resources, and influential knowledge or thought leadership grounded in practice.
• Require experts to maintain purposeful networks with universities, research centres, professional bodies, firms, investors, delivery organizations, and independent specialists, and to mobilize those relationships around country and continental priorities.
• Develop succession, mentoring, professional learning, and external engagement plans that sustain technical depth, African leadership, and institutional memory beyond individual experts.
• Ensure experts remain close to implementation through field engagement, programme design, donor and partner dialogue, delivery reviews, and follow-through; thought leadership must emerge from and return value to real transformation work.
• Protect technical independence and evidence integrity while ensuring advice is responsive to context, political feasibility, institutional capacity, affordability, and the needs of farmers, women, young people, and local enterprises.

5. Country Support & Integrated Deployment

• Establish a demand-led service model with the Vice President - Country Delivery through which Country Directors define the decision, challenge, outcome, counterpart, timeframe, and support required; prioritize assignments by urgency, impact, strategic fit, expert capacity, and equitable country access.

• Translate requests into clear assignments with a named technical lead, scope, outputs, milestones, quality standard, country-team owner, and plan for applying the work in programme, funding, partnership, policy, investment, or delivery decisions.

• Work alongside country teams through the full programme-design cycle: diagnose the problem, develop the theory of change and intervention logic, specify the delivery model and partnerships, cost the approach, define results and evidence, assess risk, and build a credible implementation and sustainability plan.

• Support country teams and Development to convert priorities into technically strong concept notes, proposals, investment cases, and donor presentations; participate in technical due diligence, cultivation, co creation, and negotiation while Development retains ownership of donor strategy and relationship management.

• Help country teams identify and engage the partners that can add capability, legitimacy, finance, technology, market access, research, or delivery capacity; advise on partner fit, roles, incentives, and technical quality, while Country Directors retain ownership of country relationships.

• Form multidisciplinary teams when priorities span several domains and broker external expertise when AGRA lacks the required depth, while retaining responsibility for coherent, high-quality support rather than fragmented technical advice.

• Track responsiveness, quality, application, funds influenced or mobilized, partnerships enabled, and country-team satisfaction; address weak briefs or impractical advice quickly and ensure engagements generate reusable tools and evidence while respecting local ownership and confidentiality.

6. Evidence, Scale & Enterprise Leadership

• Build evidence and learning into programme governance and technical assignments, with explicit assumptions, indicators, feedback loops, contribution pathways, and decisions that the evidence must inform; partner with Impact and Learning to evaluate performance and influence.

• Use country experience as a lighthouse for continental learning and ensure continental programmes return practical value to countries through standards, markets, political backing, investment, specialist support, and peer exchange.

• Identify credible African practices, institutional models, technologies, partnerships, and innovations; document the conditions that made them work, test them with peers, and support responsible adaptation across contexts.

• Set a selective, audience-led thought-leadership agenda for the expert bench around questions where AGRA has distinctive evidence, practical experience, and a credible contribution to continental debate or action.

• Produce and disseminate high-quality technical positions, practical tools, case studies, synthesis reports, policy contributions, and expert commentary; build the standing of AGRA’s experts through communities of practice, senior dialogues, and credible African and global forums.

• Partner with Development to build a forward pipeline of fundable country and continental propositions, prepare technical narratives and evidence, support donor engagement, and prevent financing opportunities from fragmenting agreed priorities.

• Partner with Communications to translate technical depth into clear narratives and formats for policymakers, partners, funders, practitioners, and public audiences without overstating certainty, attribution, or AGRA’s role.

• Contribute actively to organizational strategy, annual planning, resource allocation, enterprise risk, culture, and cross-functional performance; model AGRA’s values and build an ambitious, collaborative, accountable, technically rigorous, and delivery-oriented culture.

Skills and experience

Education

• Master’s degree or equivalent in agricultural economics, economics, public policy, international development, business, food systems, science, engineering, finance, or a closely related field.

• A combination of highly relevant executive experience and professional education may be considered where it demonstrates equivalent depth.

Professional Qualifications & Languages

• Relevant executive education or professional qualification in programme and portfolio leadership, systems change, regional integration, finance, technical leadership, negotiation, or organizational development is advantageous.

• Excellent command of written and spoken English is required.

• Professional proficiency in French is a strong advantage; additional African languages are valued.

Relevant Experience

• 20+ years of progressively responsible experience in agrifood systems, economic development, regional integration, programme delivery, applied research, policy, or markets, including at least 8 years in senior executive leadership.

• Demonstrated success conceiving, financing, and delivering complex multi-country or continental programmes with governments, regional institutions, businesses, funders, and technical partners.

• Substantial leadership experience in Africa and a strong understanding of African institutions, regional economic communities, political economies, markets, and agrifood systems.

• Track record of building trusted senior relationships with continental and regional bodies, ministers, senior officials, private-sector executives, investors, donors, research leaders, and producer organizations.

• Evidence of turning high-level commitments into governed, financed, accountable implementation across institutions and countries.

• Experience leading large programme, grant, or investment portfolios, including programme design, budgets, procurement, adaptive delivery, risk, compliance, and donor accountability.

• Demonstrated ability to align public, donor, development-finance, and private resources around shared agendas and to develop compelling programme propositions through cultivation, co-creation, due diligence, and funding negotiations.

• Recognized technical credibility in at least one domain relevant to African agrifood transformation, together with the breadth and humility to lead experts from other disciplines and commission external expertise.

• Experience building, leading, and quality-assuring high-performing teams of senior technical experts and programme leaders, including talent development and succession.

• Evidence of influential thought leadership - technical positions, applied research, policy contributions, practical tools, or senior convening - grounded in African implementation experience.

• Strong executive communication, political judgement, negotiation, and problem-solving skills, including the ability to make difficult portfolio and performance decisions amid ambiguity.

• Willingness and ability to travel frequently across Africa and internationally.

Don’t meet every single requirement? Research shows that individuals from underrepresented groups are less likely to apply for roles unless they meet every listed qualification. At Millar Cameron, we are committed to supporting our clients in building diverse and inclusive teams. If you’re enthusiastic about this role but don’t meet every requirement, we still encourage you to apply - you could be exactly what our client is looking for, either for this position or another.

Please note that due to the high volume of applications we receive, we are only able to respond to candidates who are shortlisted for the next stage of the process. We sincerely appreciate your interest and the time taken to apply.

Since 2007 Millar Cameron has specialised in sourcing leadership and keyperson talent across a number of industries, including agribusiness, international development, industrial, consumer, financial and professional services, private equity, and technology, media and telecommunications. Our mission and purpose is to positively contribute to the development of Africa, and other emerging markets, through the provision of people.