We are a united, energetic and passionate team. A place where leaders coach, teams connect, and everyone is empowered to go further, faster. A place where heroes become superheroes; through growth, opportunity, and the chance to work with the best minds in FinTech.
We are Africa’s largest FinTech providing services to more than 60 million customers and 5 million businesses solutions across Financial Services, Enterprise, Merchant and Retail. We are now well on our way to becoming the preferred digital payment method across the markets that we serve, for both in-store, remote and online payments. With headquarters in both Kenya and South Africa, we serve markets that include Kenya, Tanzania, DRC, Lesotho, Ghana, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Mozambique.
About the Role
Provide leadership in strategic global sourcing to drive the fintech technology roadmap. By collaborating with cross-functional teams, you will influence, negotiate, build consensus, and make critical strategic vendor decisions at all levels of the organization. You will be responsible for developing, implementing, and managing sourcing category strategies, as well as formulating procurement plans that enable the successful execution of the M-Pesa technology roadmap, ensuring alignment with our innovation and scalability objectives.
Responsibilities
- Provide leadership and stakeholder management across various teams within the organization, with a specific focus on technology-related sourcing for M-Pesa’s roadmap.
- Serve as lead negotiator in collaboration with Business Units, Legal, Policy, and Tax teams to execute supplier contracts, ensuring alignment with tech-focused goals and requirements.
- Manage tech-related sourcing activities, including defining user requirements, conducting spend analysis, supply market analysis, contract analysis, and managing bidding processes to ensure a seamless and efficient tendering process.
- Establish group partnerships to deepen value creation, focusing on technology suppliers that drive M-Pesa’s innovation, and build and maintain effective relationships with these tech suppliers.
- Socialize supplier strategy with senior business decision-makers to ensure alignment between M-Pesa’s tech value proposition and that of our suppliers, driving growth and increasing M-Pesa’s share of value in technology-driven solutions.
- Align business functions’ priorities with technology supplier strategy, creating proactive procurement plans that integrate short- and long-term tech goals, and facilitate business functions in meeting their revenue targets.
- Lead supplier performance and roadmap reviews with business functions, driving technology innovation and ensuring suppliers’ strategies are competitive and aligned with M-Pesa’s future growth.
Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Procurement, Engineering, Economics, or equivalent practical experience.
- 5+ years of experience in a similar role, particularly in telecommunication service providers or Fintech organizations in emerging markets.
- CIPS Certification (Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply) – Indicate if you have this certification.
- Team Leadership Skills – Proven ability to lead cross-functional teams, manage priorities, and drive high-impact procurement initiatives.
- Negotiation Expertise – Experienced in negotiating complex agreements within the telecommunication and fintech space, ensuring alignment with organizational goals and securing favorable terms.
- Stakeholder Management – Strong skills in identifying and managing stakeholders at all levels, building productive relationships, and aligning objectives.
- Problem-Solving – Creative approach to solving unclear multi-stakeholder challenges and navigating ambiguity in high-pressure environments.
- Analytical and Detail-Oriented – Acute attention to detail with a high level of data integrity and accuracy, especially when dealing with large-scale procurement data.
- Communication Skills – Exceptional oral and written communication skills with the ability to convey complex ideas concisely to diverse audiences.
- Interpersonal Skills – Strong ability to collaborate with people at all organizational levels, building relationships and fostering cooperation.
- Proficient in Microsoft Office (Outlook, Word, Excel, Visio, PowerPoint) and various online applications relevant to procurement and project management.
About Us
We are the leading telecommunication company in East Africa. Our purpose is to transform lives by connecting people to people, people to opportunities and people to information. We keep over 42 million customers connected and play a critical role in the society, supporting over one million jobs both directly and indirectly while our total economic value was estimated at KES 362 Billion ($ 3.2 billion) for the 12 months through March 2021. We are listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) and with annual revenues of close to KES 298 Billion ($2.5 billion) as at March 2022. We were founded in 1997 as a fully owned subsidiary of Telkom Kenya before a 40 percent acquisition by Vodafone Group PLC in May 2000, and a public offering of 25 percent shares through the NSE in 2008. Under the management of Vodafone Group PLC, we welcomed Michael Joseph, as our first CEO, a few months later in July of 2000. He led the company’s growth to accommodate 16.71 million subscribers from the previous 20,000, largely owing to innovative products like M-PESA in 2007.
