Training Manager 277 views0 applications

Title: Training Manager

Location: Thies, Senegal or Bamako, Mali

Report to: Director of Agriculture

Language Requirement: French and English fluency

About myAgro

myAgro helps farmers move out of poverty: we do this with a simple approach. We help farmers manage their cash flow better – at harvest time when farmers have more cash, they can lock away their funds for seeds and fertilizer for the next season. They pay using their mobile phone (or mobile money in Tanzania) and myAgro delivers the inputs they’ve paid for before it rains and provides technical training so farmers know how to use the inputs efficiently. This leads to 50% more food and 50% more income per farm. To date myAgro serves 80,000 farmers and will scale to 1 million farmers by 2025. The award-winning team has received recognition from Skoll Foundation, Echoing Green, World Bank, Bill Gates and more.

About the Role

The Training Manager is a key management and leadership role at myAgro that should touch and impact the work and lives of many of our team members and farmers. So what exactly does that mean?!?

1. You are able to Execute @ Scale. In one month you might hire 40 ag trainers who then need to recruit and train 400 seasonal agents. You are able to design and lead a large-scale program and care about the details without getting overwhelmed. You are adept at implementing quality controls to ensure quality of program execution.
2. You are an Effective Collaborator. You know how to coordinate and communicate effectively across departments (sales, product, HR, etc) and have a knack for getting alignment on work plans and calendars, while building in flexibility for the unknowns of the agricultural / sales work.
3. You are an Open-Minded Listener. You are focused on the organizational goals and therefore work at all times starting from the end-users of the programs you design for (both farmers and field staff). You are not one to get stuck on Agricultural Theory or perfection at the cost of delivering on organizational goals.
4. You are a Master Manager. From project management to organizational aptitude to delegation and coaching, you have the tools in your tool-belt to own this role and goals / projects that come with it. You make your team and those around you better with your management tool-belt.

The Training Manager role is critical to ensuring that we are delivering the highest quality of inputs and services possible to our farmers. With our ambitious plans to increase our impact with farmers, this is a crucial role to the team.

While this position is part of the AG team it doesn’t require you to be an Agronomist. We have agronomists on the team and within our network that you will work closely with on a regular basis. The magic ingredient of this role is that you’re a great listener, an excellent project manager and open-minded. A passion for learning about agriculture, life sciences, and working with farmers will get the job done.

Responsibilities include but are not limited to the following:

Manage agriculture programs

• Implement agriculture training programs in collaboration with the sales team to promote successful planting for farmers. These training programs are a mix of training channels: trainings in group, video, flyers, radio, and call center.
• Co-manage the monitoring and evaluation program with the Regional M&E Manager to monitor effectiveness of training and evaluate impact in terms of yield and increased revenues.
• Listen to farmers and collaborate with local R&D team members to inform trials, pilots and package design centered around ‘design for the farmer, with the farmer’.
• Design, test and improve training models to lower costs and increase farmer reach/impact so myAgro can provide training sustainably as we grow

Manage the agriculture team

• Mentor and manage the country-based agriculture field teams, including creating quality training materials, developing work plans, reviewing work deliverables, and providing value-added feedback.
• Set up KPI and data management systems to inform decision making.
• Proactively solve problems and set up the team to achieve their goals of training farmers.

Is this the Role for You?

You are RIGHT for this role if…

• You have 5 years of prior management experience – preferably including background in scaling and expanding programs.
• You have designed, developed, and/or implemented training programs for rural areas.
• You have held a position on the crossroads between multiple departments.

You are NOT qualified for this job if…

• You do not have more than 5 years of project management experience.
• You have never managed a team of 5 direct reports for more than a year.
• You are not fluent in French and English.
• You have no experience working in Africa.

myAgro provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants without regard to race, colour, religion, sexual orientation, marital/parental status, national origin, age, disability, political opinion, social status, veteran status, and genetics. myAgro complies with all applicable federal, provincial and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment