Head of Marketing at M-KOPA

About the job

• We're looking for a Head of Marketing to lead the evolution of our brand from a device-financing company into a consumer fintech platform - someone who knows how to build compelling propositions around services, not just physical products, and deliver that transition across five markets.

The Impact

• Your marketing leadership will directly shape how 7 million + customers across Africa discover, choose, and stay with M-KOPA. We've already disbursed over $2 billion in credit to Every Day Earners who were invisible to conventional financial services. It's your chance to lead the marketing strategy for a business that's literally transforming lives across an entire continent 

The Opportunity

• Mission-driven marketing: You'll own the Marketing strategy for a platform that's rewriting the rules of financial inclusion - turning smartphones into pathways to credit, insurance, and economic progress for people who've never had access before.
• Global recognition: Join a company named by TIME 100 as one of the world's most influential and by the Financial Times as Africa's fastest-growing for four consecutive years (2022–2025).
• Real scale challenges: Five markets. Multiple product categories. One coherent brand. You'll be building the marketing architecture to make it all work - from group brand strategy down to in-market execution.
• Environmental impact: We're embedding sustainability into how we grow - having avoided 2.155 million tonnes of CO₂ through solar, refurbished phones, and e-mobility.

What You'll Do

• At M-KOPA, you'll own the full marketing mandate - brand strategy, creative direction, campaign execution, and marketing talent development across Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, Ghana, and South Africa. You'll advance our "More Than a Phone" proposition, partner with Country GMs to shape how marketing is structured and governed across markets, and build the marketing function that powers M-KOPA's next phase of growth.
• This is a hands-on leadership role. You'll do the core thinking yourself - developing brand strategy, reading local markets, interrogating data and consumer insights, writing the brief, evaluating creative, optimising the media mix, and building the business case for investment. Agencies and third parties support that work; they don't replace it.

Your Environment 

• Brand: CI guidelines, value proposition framework, brand architecture across devices and digital product categories
• Product launches: Positioning, selling points, and campaign direction for hardware and digital product launches across markets
• Packaging: Device packaging owned end-to-end - reflecting brand identity and meeting retail, agent, and customer requirements
• Campaigns: ATL, BTL, in-trade, and digital execution - TV, radio, OOH, digital, and experiential - across five markets
• Digital platforms: Performance marketing, CPA targeting, content and video, website strategy and optimisation
• Products: Smartphones, digital loans, flexible advances, device protection, insurance, data bundles, e-motorbikes
• Partnerships: Group agency relationships - briefing, performance reviews, contract oversight
• Measurement: Brand measurement framework - sentiment, awareness, recall, consideration - with OKRs and survey baselines

Our Marketing Approach 

• Strategy before execution: Own the brand thinking, brief the agencies, evaluate the output - not the other way around
• Locally adapted, globally coherent: Group brand standards that give country teams room to execute with cultural relevance
• Data-driven decisions: Campaign effectiveness reviews, channel mix optimisation, and post-campaign iteration grounded in real performance data
• Field-first orientation: Deeply customer-centric - understanding the lived realities of Every Day Earners in our markets
• Emerging channels: Actively tracking trends and piloting creator-led campaigns - scaling what works, stopping what doesn't

What You Need

• You're a strategic brand thinker who can translate complex business positioning into creative, market-relevant narratives. You're curious and culturally attuned, with a deep interest in African consumer behaviour. You lead with influence, not title - holding the line on brand while partnering collaboratively across functions and markets.

Required Experience:

• 10+ years in marketing, with 5+ in a senior group, regional, or multi-market leadership role
• Proven track record building and evolving brand strategy in high-growth fintech, consumer services, or creative agency environments
• Hands-on ownership of multi-market budgets with direct accountability for spend performance
• Deep experience in M-KOPA's core markets
• Strong ATL campaign craft - directing agency partners and overseeing integrated media plans
• Hands-on performance marketing credentials - funnel optimisation, data-driven acquisition, paid social across Facebook, TikTok, WhatsApp and what comes next
• Proven people leader with experience developing marketing talent across geographies
• Commercially fluent - comfortable with budgeting, managing marketing investment and understanding its contribution to the full proposition economics