Group Management Accountant at UpEnergy

This role will require someone who is both very organized and thrives in a fast-paced environment with energy, tenacity and passion to drive through challenges that arise.

This role will report to the Global Finance Operations Director and the location is flexible, but ideally in an UpEnergy market in Africa.

Key Responsibilities

Management of the financial planning and budgeting process

• Ensure the short-term and long-term budgeting process runs smoothly, linking strategic intent and climate finance with operational execution. Working with individual countries and global functional teams to prepare and consolidate their budgets into one overall corporate budget.
• Consistently and constructively challenging the assumptions of the country/business unit leaders. Comparing historical results against budgets and forecasts, performing variance analysis to explain differences in performance and make improvements going forward.
• Build capability within the country accounting teams to better analyse the actuals and think commercially, fully understand and clearly present the financial trends and opportunities. The key deliverables will be the production of comprehensive management reports which will support critical business decision making at Group and country levels.
• Creating, updating and maintaining financial models and detailed forecasts of the Group’s future operations.
• Preparing internal reports and business cases for executive leadership and supporting decision making.

Development and enhancement of BI and analytical tools

• Lead development and rollout of best-in-class BI and analytical tools throughout the Group.
• Leverage automation, BI, ERP and AI as appropriate to build capability, efficiency and a competitive edge.

Evaluation of assets, new investments and risk

• Evaluate new capital projects and monitor them during implementation and post completion, tracking and evaluating whether the projects have delivered against NPV, IRR>WACC, and Payback investment criteria.
• Evaluating whether the Group’s current assets and investments are the best use of working capital, by looking at ROI and comparisons with viable alternatives (e.g., other possible investments, dividends, etc)

Gauging the Group’s overall health

• Using key financial ratios such as performance, efficiency risk and liquidity ratios to generate actionable insights.
• Lead companywide internal and external financial benchmarking that guides management to establish priorities and growth plans.
• Develop and maintain value-chain and profitability analysis for each product by country.
• Examine and evaluate the cost-efficiency of each function by country, implement leanings and insights into the planning process.

Does this sound like you?

Must Have

• Relevant Bachelor’s degree and MBA and/or CPA/ACCA/CIMA
• 5+ years of accounting and/or FP&A experience.
• Experience working within the FP&A function of a global entity.
• Experience leading rollout of BI and reporting tools in a global entity.
• Advanced and proven financial modelling skills, including advanced MS Excel skills.
• High work ethic.
• Strong leadership and team building abilities.
• Excellent communication skills and interpersonal skills.
• Exceptional attention to detail.
• Strong organizational skills.
• Willing to travel occasionally to our different markets.

Nice to Have 

• Familiarity with project finance and/or the development of energy or carbon projects. Experience in carbon project development is a huge plus.
• An understanding of customers and business culture in Sub-Saharan Africa.