Head of Agrifood Systems, PANA

About the role

The Mastercard Foundation is seeking a senior leader to head its Agrifood Systems portfolio across the Pan-African (PANA) region. Reporting to the Director of Agrifood Systems, you will drive the design and execution of transformative programmes that create sustainable, dignified work for young people in agriculture and food value chains.

Key responsibilities

• Interpret and cascade the Foundation’s agrifood systems strategy, ensuring alignment with the Young Africa Works agenda.
• Develop and manage new regional and pan-African partnerships to generate systemic impact for youth.
• Collaborate with country programme teams to provide context-specific support for agrifood, agribusiness and climate-related initiatives.
• Lead the creation of collaboration platforms and networks that accelerate scaling of agrifood programmes.
• Collect, synthesize and disseminate learnings from country and regional projects to inform future programme design.
• Co-lead the community of practice on agrifood systems and climate resilience, fostering internal and external knowledge sharing.
• Represent the Foundation at conferences, workshops and media events, building relationships with donors, private sector and government stakeholders.
• Provide functional leadership to the agriculture thematic team, setting clear objectives and assessing performance.

Required profile

• Extensive experience in agrifood systems, agribusiness or related development sectors across Africa.
• Proven track record of establishing and managing multi-stakeholder partnerships.
• Strong understanding of climate-resilient agriculture and youth employment strategies.
• Excellent communication and representation skills for high-level stakeholder engagement.
• Leadership experience managing multidisciplinary teams.

Required skills

• Strategic programme design and implementation.
• Partnership development and network facilitation.
• Knowledge of agrifood value chains and climate-smart agriculture.
• Monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) processes.