Senior Vice President – Africa

Position description

Heifer International is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, status as a protected veteran, among other things, or status as a qualified individual with disability.

About Heifer International

Heifer International is a global nonprofit dedicated to partnering with smallholder farmers to sustainably address hunger and poverty in their communities while caring for the Earth. Since 1944, we have helped more than 52 million families around the world break the cycle of poverty. We operate in 19 countries across Africa, Asia, and the Americas, including the U.S., working with small-scale farmers to achieve living incomes and ensuring that they have adequate food, housing, and other essential resources to lead decent and dignified lives.

Heifer’s work advances farmer-centered solutions that foster more productive, inclusive, and sustainable food systems and more resilient rural communities. We work with farming communities to establish strong social capital, provide technical and business training, facilitate new formal market avenues, form strategic partnerships at all levels, leverage third-party investments, and invest in and deploy appropriate and accessible technologies. Heifer’s model is locally led, built on close collaboration with communities and key stakeholders to catalyze sustainable, scalable impact.

Our Values

At Heifer, our work and culture are grounded in our twelve Cornerstones and six Cultural Guiding Principles, which reflect our deep commitment to dignity, fairness, and impact. These values shape how we lead, collaborate, and grow as an organization. We believe in Passing on the Gift, accountability, caring for one another, sustainability, gender and social inclusion, and environmental stewardship. We prioritize full participation, open communication, and continuous learning rooted in self-awareness and human-centered leadership. Together, we foster a culture of belonging and shared purpose that drives meaningful, lasting change in the communities we serve.

The Organizational Context: A Global Ecosystem in Transformation

Heifer International is undergoing a bold, organization-wide transformation. Today, amid increasing volatility and complexity, a world that is Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, and Incomprehensible (BANI), we are evolving into a locally led, globally connected network rooted in resilience, empathy, flexibility, and transparency.

This is not a surface-level shift. Power is being redistributed closer to smallholder farmers and communities through semi-autonomous country nodes that operate with greater agility and contextual responsiveness. At the same time, global and regional roles are redefined to enable coherence, learning, and support, rather than control. Our mission remains unchanged, but how we deliver it is transforming.

Position Summary

The Senior Vice President – Africa (SVP Africa) is responsible for the overall vision, strategic leadership, and strategy of Heifer’s Africa Regional program, currently spanning nine countries. The SVP – Africa reports to the CEO and President and leads the Africa regional and country nodes. This role will be a champion of Locally Led Development, ensuring that country nodes in Africa thrive as semi-autonomous, high-performing, and context-responsive centers of leadership, innovation, and impact. The SVP – Africa will guide and mentor senior leaders in the region to cultivate a results-driven, inclusive, and values-based culture that reflects Heifer’s Cornerstones and regenerative leadership principles.

As a member of Heifer’s Steering Committee and Global Programs Leadership Team, the SVP – Africa will collaborate with peers across regions and functions to enhance cross-learning, advance organizational transformation, and ensure that Africa’s strategy and priorities inform and align with Heifer’s global direction. The SVP – Africa will represent Heifer in Africa internally and externally with governments, partners, donors, and stakeholders, while ensuring strong operational and programmatic performance. The SVP – Africa is also a bold and visible ambassador for Africa, shaping the global development narrative to reflect African leadership, regenerative practices, and locally led solutions that challenge outdated paradigms.

Job location: Africa region (Remote/Hybrid Possible), preferably in a country where Heifer has an office within Africa.

Core Responsibilities

• Program Leadership

• Lead the design and execution of the Africa regional strategy, aligning with Heifer’s global vision and the Twelve Cornerstones for Just and Sustainable Development.
• Align the program model, lead, and drive the Africa program for program quality and impact.
• Champion Locally Led Development by empowering country programs to act as strategic and operational centers, ensuring they have the autonomy, capacity, and resources to thrive.
• Establish an enabling environment with Global Support Functions and Regional Nodes to support successful program design, delivery, and adaptation.
• Ensure program goals, budgets, and timelines are met, and adhere to compliance requirements while driving cohesion.
• Maintain awareness of the competitive development landscape, expansion opportunities, and industry trends in Africa.

• Strategic Partnership, Relationship Building, and Management

• Represent Heifer Africa with bilateral, multilateral, corporate, and philanthropic partners, cultivating long-term, trust-based relationships and strategic partnerships driven by the business model and inspired by the ambitions of the program model.
• Collaborate with global revenue and partnership cultivation teams to align Africa’s priorities with donor engagement strategies and secure sustainable funding pipelines for long-term and innovative partnerships.
• Elevate Heifer’s visibility and influence in Africa and abroad through strategic partnerships, advocacy and policy engagement, and thought leadership.
• Position Heifer Africa as a top-tier development ecosystem, thought leader, and impactful organization fostering effective communication and external collaboration.

• People Leadership and Culture

• Build and mentor a high-performing regional leadership team, fostering collaboration, accountability, and continuous learning, and champion talent fluidity by nurturing a connected ecosystem of leaders, ensuring skills, insights, and experiences flow seamlessly across country, regional, and network nodes to strengthen collective capacity.
• Champion a culture of equity, inclusion, transparency, and integrity that aligns with Heifer’s values and regenerative leadership model.
• Develop leadership capacity within country programs to strengthen locally led and sustainable organizations.
• Translate organizational vision into specific, actionable strategies that mobilize and inspire teams across the region.

• Execution, Risk, and Operations

• Oversee internal program execution, operations, finances, and compliance within Africa to ensure Heifer’s reputation as a trusted and high-performing organization.
• Collaborate across functions to mitigate risks, optimize resources, and accelerate results.
• Enable country programs to adopt adaptive strategies rooted in evidence, learning, and contextual realities.

• Foster Engagement, Learning, and Transformation

• Actively contribute to Heifer’s organizational transformation, ensuring Africa serves as a leading example of semi-autonomous, regenerative, and learning-driven node.
• Institutionalize learning loops that capture insights from Africa programs and share them across Heifer’s global network.
• Promote a culture of shared leadership and interconnectedness across Africa and globally.
• Promote internal engagement and foster uncommon collaboration across Africa and globally to maximize learning.

1. Other tasks as assigned.

Leadership Model

• SVP – Africa will champion a Regenerative Leadership Model grounded in shared leadership, stewardship, systems-thinking, trust-building, and courageous humility. The SVP – Africa will lead not through control, but by cultivating coherence, presence, and shared purpose; also model a leadership approach grounded in wholeness and well-being, recognizing that personal renewal, empathy, and care are foundational to sustainable impact.

Qualifications

• A minimum of fifteen (15) years of international development experience with a bachelor’s degree in a relevant field (e.g., international development, business administration, agriculture, economics, or public policy), or a combination of education and experience can be considered.
• Extensive experience living and working in Africa in the field of agriculture, agri-business, and food systems, etc., with strong knowledge of the continent’s development dynamics.
• Knowledge of small holder business development and agriculture.
• Proven success leading complex programs and organizations, including financial and operational management in the non-profit space.
• Demonstrated experience of engaging institutional donors (IFAD, DFID/FCDO, UN agencies, Foundations, Corporations).
• Fluent in English.
• The ability to travel within Africa and globally up to 50% of the time.

Preferred Requirements

• Master’s degree in a relevant field (e.g., international development, business administration, agriculture, economics, or public policy).
• Six to seven (6~7) years of experience in executive leadership roles.
• Prior experience working in the INGO space.
• Proficiency in French or another widely spoken African language.

Most Critical Proficiencies

• Deep commitment to Locally Led Development and smallholder farmer prosperity.
• Demonstrated ability to represent an organization with governments, donors, private sector, and grassroots actors.
• Strong track record of building and sustaining high-performing teams and organizations.
• A systems thinker with the ability to manage complexity, ambiguity, and competing priorities; has an adaptive mindset.
• Exceptional leadership presence, communication, and influencing skills across diverse audiences.
• Strong organizational change and strategy execution experience in distributed, international organizations.
• Ability to navigate cultural nuances with humility, transparency, and inclusion.
• Ability to lead and partner through influence across formal and informal authority lines.

Why Join Us?

• At Heifer, we believe in shared power, bold ideas, and community-led change. As we reshape the way we work, we invite leaders who are comfortable with complexity, excited about transformation, and grounded in purpose.
• We offer the opportunity to contribute to a locally led, globally connected organization, being a member of a mission-aligned team, and the chance to shape systems, drive change, and co-create a future where African smallholder farmers and communities thrive.
• You will join an executive team that has the courage to be vulnerable on their way to building trust. You will receive proper support and onboarding to join the transformation journey and support your journey towards belonging.

Application instructions

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