MEL Manager

at One Acre Fund
Published August 19, 2026
Location Kampala, Uganda
Category Management  
Job Type Full Time  

Description

About the Role

Seeking an experienced MEL manager to lead monitoring, evaluation & learning across our Uganda, Nigeria, and DRC programs and own the systems and operations that help the entire Global MEL team deliver consistent, high-quality evidence at scale.

Responsibilities
Oversee MEL across the Uganda, Nigeria, and DRC country programs

Directly manage the three Country MEL Leads (Uganda, Nigeria, and DRC), owning their goal-setting, performance reviews, development, and career trajectory.
Ensure survey design and roll-out are executed to global standards across the region.
Carefully review analysis conducted by your team, and oversee the reporting process, including the development of reports and actionable, evidence-based recommendations.
Participate in country steering-committee meetings, presenting MEL results and building buy-in on data-driven programmatic recommendations and global priorities.
Oversee country-level MEL budgets and plans to ensure growth happens efficiently without sacrificing data quality, and ensure adherence to all global MEL guidance.
Own the systems, operations, and ways of working of the Global MEL team

Own the “how we work” of Global MEL — operational and process guidance, SOPs, and team ways of working.
Select, roll out, and drive adoption of project-management systems and tooling across all regions, not only the countries you directly oversee.
Own team knowledge management — where documents live, how they are versioned, and how people find them.
Own team-level project and capacity planning and cross-domain coordination.
Build and run onboarding and non-technical capacity building

Build and run onboarding and non-technical training so new staff and Country MEL Leads ramp quickly and consistently across the whole team.
Establish the systems and tools that keep the MEL department running smoothly, and embed them so they are used consistently across regions.
Maintain contingency and knowledge-transfer plans so the team is resilient to staff departures.
Contribute to Global MEL strategy and thought leadership

Represent the team in global forums (e.g. COP, Impact meet-ups, MEL manager calls) and contribute to thought leadership for the department.
Undertake global department-improvement initiatives, both at the Director's request and proactively as you identify needs.

Qualifications
Across all roles, these are the general qualifications we look for. For this role specifically, you will have:

Experience with quantitative and qualitative research methodologies, implementing evaluations, designing data-collection tools, statistical analysis, and reporting; mastery of experimental and quasi-experimental evaluation designs (e.g. randomized controlled trials, propensity-score matching, difference-in-differences). Proficiency in both Stata and R.
Project management and process design — the ability to select and roll out systems and tooling, standardize workflows, and drive adoption across distributed teams (change management).
Knowledge management — structuring documentation, versioning, and information systems so a dispersed team can find and reuse work.
People management and the ability to manage and develop staff across multiple countries and time zones, largely remotely.
Preferred Start Date
As soon as possible

Job Location
Minna, Nigeria or Jinja, Uganda or Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. Placement in one of our other countries of operations (Primarily Rwanda, but also Kenya, Malawi, or Zambia for nationals of those countries) may also be considered.

Benefits
Health insurance, housing, and comprehensive benefits

Please send your resume/CV