The Position

The Chief of People & Culture serves as a thought partner to the President and Executive Committee in catalysing a transformation of AGRA’s culture, capabilities, and people systems. This leader will align AGRA’s organisational design with its purpose and strategy, ensure accountability across the people function, shift AGRA’s culture to its future-forward vision and build internal strength through values-driven leadership.

This role goes far beyond traditional Human Resources. It is about reimagining how people, culture, and systems converge to enable bold action, inclusivity, and innovation across Africa’s agricultural development landscape.

This leadership opportunity is for an individual with deep integrity, cross-cultural intelligence, and a passion for designing human systems that shape the future. The role is not just about embedding AGRA’s values—it is about living them out loud, mobilising people around a shared purpose, and ensuring the organisation’s operating model and mindset evolve in step with its strategic ambitions.

Key Responsibilities of the role include:

Strategic Alignment and Transformation

Be a strategic business partner to AGRA’s President and programme leadership to enable delivery of the organisation’s vision and goals.

Translate AGRA’s ambitions into a clear people strategy with defined cultural and organisational outcomes.

Lead the people side of AGRA’s transformation, including overall organisational structure, decentralisation and top team effectiveness.

Support the implementation of the redesigned leadership structure.

Redesign organisational structures and decision-making norms to reflect agility, accountability, and inclusivity.

Serve as a catalyst for transformation across AGRA’s leadership, helping build a culture of trust, empowerment, and co-creation.

Leadership and Culture

Implement and embed AGRA’s organisation-wide culture strategy.

Develop and implement a culture metrics framework and embed desired behaviours.

Coach and empower senior leaders to model AGRA’s values in ways that are both visible and impactful.

Design leadership development programmes that anchor a growth mindset and collaborative ethos.

Be a steward of culture and psychological safety across the organisation and the ecosystem that AGRA is building in Africa.

Talent and Systems

Build strong internal pipelines for leadership and technical roles through robust talent mapping and succession planning.

Shape a forward-looking view of the external talent market and design bold, effective solutions for pipeline development

Lead equitable and high-impact performance management, reward and recognition, and career development systems that balance empowerment with accountability

Strengthen AGRA’s employer brand in alignment with its purpose and people proposition, across markets.

People Experience and Engagement

Champion employee experience across the lifecycle—onboarding, development, feedback, and growth.

Oversee systems and rituals that support well-being, agility, and inclusion.

Develop and track people-related KPIs that reflect both engagement and impact.

Compliance and Governance

Ensure adherence to local and international employment law and lead on ethical standards.

Launch a comprehensive compensation and benefits review.

Maintain oversight of HR compliance and policy frameworks.

Lead digital transformation of HR operations.

 The Ideal Leader

AGRA is looking for a values-driven, emotionally intelligent leader with the courage to challenge the status quo and the wisdom to build with care. This individual must bring both credibility and imagination to the role—balancing strategy, values and systems thinking with deep empathy and cultural awareness.

This leader will:

Demonstrate Courageous Integrity, speaking truth to power and guiding executive decisions with principle and care.

Be a Systems Thinker, able to connect dots across strategy, operations, people and culture, and design coherent structures for impact.

Influence Across Levels, building trust with board members, senior executives, and staff, while inspiring belief and momentum.

Demonstrate comfort with Ambiguity, operating with humility and agility in fast-changing environments, and fostering a culture of learning across AGRA.

Their leadership will not be about control—it will be about connection. They will inspire teams not only to perform, but to believe in AGRA’s purpose and feel at home in its evolving culture and mandate. This is a rare opportunity to build an organisation where people thrive because they are seen, valued, and invited to shape the future.

Key Requirements of the role include:

Experience in strategic HR leadership roles, including transformation mandates in multi-stakeholder or international organisations.

Proven experience designing and implementing culture change, talent strategies, and organisational development initiatives.

Experience directly partnering with CEOs / Presidents.

Deep familiarity with African labour markets, regional dynamics, and development sector practices.

Master’s degree in HR, Organisational Psychology, Business Administration or related fields. SHRM-SCP/SPHR certifications are a plus.