Job Openings at BFREE Africa

About the Role

• The Investment Associate is a core analytical role sitting at the intersection of portfolio performance, collections strategy, and investment decision-making. You will own the continuous analysis of BFree's debt portfolios, diagnosing performance, identifying the levers that drive collections outcomes, and translating data into actionable recommendations that the operations, collections, and investment teams can execute against.
• This is not a passive reporting role.
• We expect the Investment Associate to bring intellectual rigour, intellectual curiosity, and a genuine drive to understand why portfolios perform the way they do and what can be done about it.

Key Responsibilities

Portfolio Performance Analysis

• Maintain portfolio-level and cohort-level performance models across BFree's loan books
• Track key metrics (collection rates, cure rates, roll rates, IRR vs. underwriting) across portfolio vintages, products, and counterparties
• Produce regular performance reporting for internal and external stakeholders
• Identify performance outliers positive and negative and lead root-cause investigations

Collections Strategy & Optimisation

• Work closely with operations and collections leadership to design and evaluate interventions: channel mix, contact cadence, settlement strategies, agent allocation
• Design and analyse A/B tests and operational experiments to establish causal evidence for what drives collections uplift
• Model the expected impact of proposed strategy changes before deployment, and track realised vs. projected outcomes post-deployment.

Data & Tooling

• Query and manipulate large datasets using SQL; build and maintain analytical models in Python, R, or Excel
• Work with the data engineering team to define analytical requirements, flag data quality issues, and improve the analytical infrastructure
• Develop reusable dashboards and automated reporting where appropriate.

Requirements

Experience

• 2–4 years of experience in a quantitatively intensive role: consumer lending analytics, credit risk, structured finance, management consulting, investment banking, or distressed debt
• Prior exposure to debt collections, credit portfolio management, or NPL markets is a  significant plus
• Experience operating in African financial markets preferred.

Skills & Competencies

• Exceptional quantitative and logical reasoning: you can build a model from scratch, stress-test your own assumptions, and know when an answer doesn't pass the smell test
• Proficiency in SQL (required); Python or R for statistical analysis (required);
• Excel/Google Sheets financial modelling (required)
• Ability to design and interpret experiments: you understand statistical significance, selection bias, and the limits of observational data
• Strong written and verbal communication: able to translate complex analysis into clear, decision-oriented narratives for non-technical audiences
• Detail-oriented and self-directed: comfortable managing multiple work-streams with limited oversight in a fast-moving environment

Education

• MBA preferred, particularly from a programme with a strong finance, strategy, or analytics track
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in a quantitative discipline (Economics, Mathematics, Statistics, Engineering, Finance, Computer Science) also strongly considered.

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About the Role

• The Chief of Staff sits at the center of BFREE’s operations, working directly alongside the founders and leadership team across every vertical of the business. You are not a scheduler or a note-taker.
• You are an operator: someone who takes a problem, structures it, and drives it to a conclusion with limited hand-holding and high standards.
• The portfolio is deliberately broad and will shift with the company’s priorities: one week you might be preparing investor materials and coordinating a data room; the next, you could be on the ground in a new market scoping a launch or sitting in a meeting with a regulator.
• You will be exposed to every dimension of a fast-growing African fintech including strategy, operations, commercial, fundraising, and expansion earlier than almost any other role at your stage would offer.

Key Responsibilities

• Support the founders across strategic priorities including structuring problems, building analyses, and following through on execution so nothing falls through the cracks.
• Own discrete special projects end to end: market entry assessments, operational deep-dives, partnership scoping, process improvement initiatives.
• Contribute to fundraising efforts, building presentations and data packs, researching investors, coordinating logistics, preparing briefing notes ahead of meetings.
• Support BFREE’s pan-African expansion by conducting on-the-ground research, building local relationships, and helping stand up new market operations.
• Step into fires: when something breaks or needs urgent attention, you diagnose quickly, bring structure, and help the team move through it.
• Attend meetings with external stakeholders; banking partners, regulators, shareholders.
• Prepared, attentive, and ready to support follow-through on whatever comes out of them.
• Produce board-quality outputs: concise memos, sharp slide decks, structured analyses that allow leadership to make fast, well-informed decisions.
• Track cross-functional workstreams, flag blockers early, and keep the organisation aligned on what matters most.
• Travel across the continent regularly to support expansion, stakeholder engagement, and wherever the work takes you.

Requirements

• At least 2 years of experience in a front-office role at a Tier 1 management consulting firm (McKinsey, BCG, Bain, or equivalent), a Tier 1 investment bank, or a Venture Capital / Private Equity firm. You have been trained to think rigorously and work at pace.
• Knowledge of GenAI, prompt coding will be an added advantage.
• Strong analytical and structured thinking skills. You can break down a messy problem, build a clean model or framework around it, and communicate your findings clearly.
• High ownership and follow-through: you do not hand problems back, you do not need constant direction, and you hold yourself accountable for outcomes rather than activities.
• Genuine comfort with ambiguity. The brief will shift, the priorities will change, and you will need to adapt without losing momentum.
• The maturity to engage with senior stakeholders including founders, board members, institutional investors, regulators, professionally and without needing to be managed.
• A willingness to travel extensively across Sub-Saharan Africa as a regular part of the role.
• Fluency in English. French, Arabic or Swahili is an advantage.
• An interest in or existing connection to the African tech and financial services landscape.

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About the Role

• The Treasury Manager owns BFREE’s financial risk and liquidity posture end to end. You will build and run the treasury function from the ground up: the policies, the tools, the controls, and the relationships.
• You will report directly to the CFO and work alongside the founders, with visibility into every dimension of the business - portfolio performance, capital allocation, debt structuring, and expansion.
• This is not a role for someone who wants to inherit a mature function.
• There is no playbook yet.
• We are early in our treasury management system journey, our FX exposures are growing as we add markets, and the work of turning informal practices into institutional-grade infrastructure is largely ahead of us.
• The right person is energised by that, not unsettled by it.
• Currency and liquidity are two of the dominant risks at BFREE. On the liquidity side, we are an active acquirer of distressed portfolios across multiple markets, and ensuring the business is always funded - with the right cash in the right currency in the right jurisdiction at the right time - is a constant operational discipline. On the currency side, we finance multi-currency portfolio acquisitions, often with hard currency debt facilities, and managing the mismatch between the currency of funding and the currency of deployment is a core part of the role. The primary
• hedging mandate is to protect BFREE’s ability to service and repay hard currency obligations as local currencies move. Where instruments and market conditions allow, preserving portfolio yield is an additional objective. Both mandates require someone who understands how things actually work in African markets - from banking infrastructure and capital controls to deposit-backed structures, SBLCs, NDFs, and short-dated forwards - and has the relationships and structuring experience to execute across multiple jurisdictions simultaneously.

Key Responsibilities

Liquidity & Cash Management

• Own daily cash positioning across all entities and jurisdictions, ensuring BFREE is always funded and never surprised.
• Forecast short- and medium-term liquidity needs, coordinating with portfolio acquisition, operations, and finance teams.
• Manage bank and counterparty relationships; set and enforce counterparty limits to manage concentration risk across the banking partners we rely on.
• Define minimum liquidity buffers, escalation protocols, and an investment policy for idle cash - T-bills, money market funds, short-duration instruments - within approved risk parameters.

Foreign Exchange Management

• Monitor and manage BFREE’s multi-currency exposure across NGN, KES, GHS, USD, and EUR on an ongoing basis.
• Stay ahead of capital controls, FX regulations, and repatriation rules in each operating market; manage intercompany flows and cross-border transfers accordingly.
• Own FX reporting: open positions, exposure by entity, limit utilisation, and regulatory compliance - reported to the CFO on a regular cadence.
• Manage relationships with FX counterparties and banking desks across markets.

Hedging & Risk Mitigation

• Design and own BFREE’s hedging strategy: the primary objective is protecting BFREE’s ability to service and repay hard currency debt facilities as local currencies depreciate; the secondary objective is preserving portfolio yield where instruments and market conditions allow.
• Structure and execute deposit-backed hedges - placing USD collateral with a banking counterparty and drawing a matched local currency loan against it - to synthetically convert hard-currency funding into local currency exposure across large facilities.
• Arrange and manage Standby Letters of Credit (SBLCs) as credit support instruments, negotiating terms with issuing and beneficiary banks to support local currency borrowing.
• Execute and roll short-dated FX forwards and non-deliverable forwards (NDFs) - particularly for NGN where physical settlement is constrained - managing rollover risk and timing across multiple positions.
• Review and critically assess all hedging contracts and facility documentation before execution - in close coordination with the CFO - ensuring economic terms, collateral obligations, and exit provisions are fully understood and acceptable.
• Monitor hedge coverage continuously against drawdown schedules and portfolio performance; rebalance as conditions evolve.
• Advise the CFO and founders on hedging cost vs. exposure trade-offs as new markets and facilities are added, with a clear view on what is achievable within the constraints of each local market.

Debt & Funding Management

• Manage relationships with lenders, maintaining compliance with all covenants, reporting requirements, and drawdown conditions.
• Support fundraising processes by preparing treasury-related materials: debt term sheets, waterfall models, covenant compliance packs.
• Contribute to the structuring of new credit facilities and ensure funding is aligned with portfolio acquisition timelines and market expansion plans.
• Coordinate intercompany lending and cross-border capital deployment across BFREE’s operating entities.
• Work closely with the CFO and finance team to optimise the funding and entity structure for tax efficiency - including intercompany pricing, capital deployment routes, and the location of hedging instruments - ensuring treasury decisions actively support the group’s overall tax position.

Risk Governance & Controls

• Author and maintain BFREE’s treasury policy framework: FX, hedging, liquidity, counterparty, and investment policy.
• Build and own the treasury risk dashboard - KPIs, limits, breaches, and trends - reported to the CFO and Board on a regular cadence.
• Ensure all treasury activity is compliant with local and international regulatory requirements across operating markets.
• Work with external auditors and regulators as required.

Systems, Automation & Process

• Lead BFREE’s TMS build-out: evaluate tools, make the case for investment, and implement the right solution for our current scale and trajectory.
• Use prompt engineering and AI tools to automate reporting, reconciliation, and process-heavy workflows - you should be able to do this yourself, without waiting for an engineer.
• Drive automation of cash reporting, exposure tracking, and covenant monitoring so the function scales without headcount scaling at the same rate.
• Partner with the CFO, finance, legal, tax, and operations in close coordination on all material treasury decisions - hedging structures, funding arrangements, entity-level cash management - so that treasury is integrated into the business rather than operating in isolation.

Requirements

• At least 5 years of treasury experience in a financial institution, corporate treasury function, or an African fintech / fund manager operating across multiple markets.
• Proven, hands-on hedging experience in African currency markets: you have structured and executed deposit-backed hedges, SBLCs, FX forwards, and NDFs - you understand the constraints of NGN, KES, and GHS and know how to work within them.
• Experience reviewing and negotiating hedging and facility contracts, with the rigour to scrutinise terms before committing.
• Hands-on experience with debt instruments, credit facility management, and covenant compliance.
• Strong quantitative and modelling skills. You can build a cash flow model, a hedging cost analysis, or a counterparty exposure report without waiting for someone else to do it.
• Familiarity with treasury management systems and financial data tools. Comfort with
• Excel as a minimum; Python or SQL is an advantage.
• Comfort with AI tools and prompt engineering as a practical lever for automation - you use LLMs to eliminate repetitive work, not just to ask questions.
• High ownership and operational independence. You manage problems, you do not escalate them without a proposed solution.
• The judgement and communication skills to present treasury risk and hedging strategy
• clearly to a non-technical leadership team and Board.
• Experience working in or across Nigeria, Kenya, or Ghana, with a working knowledge of
• local regulatory environments, banking infrastructure, and capital control regimes.
• A professional qualification in finance or accounting (ACCA, ACT, or equivalent) is an advantage but not a requirement - demonstrated experience and track record matter more.