Right-Hand-Person (Location Agnostic) at MFS Africa

Description

MFS Africa is the leading digital payments platform in Africa, enabling low-cost payments across the continent. The company works in close partnership with mobile network operators and financial institutions to bring simple and relevant payment services to African consumers and businesses. MFS Africa connects over 320 million mobile money users across Africa through its platform, which enables cross-border payment for mobile money networks, banks, money transfer operators, and large corporates.

As a fintech company, we strive towards elegance and simplicity in everything we do. We pride ourselves on world-class operations and a distributed team. Our locations include Port-Louis, Accra, Johannesburg, Kampala, Nairobi and London, but many employees work from locations where we do not have offices.

Within MFS Africa, the Emerging Enterprise team is charged with bringing digital payment tools to SMEs across the continent. The team operates as a “start-up within a start-up,” innovating and delivering quickly to serve this vast and dynamic market. Our product is Beyonic, a world-class business payments suite developed by a company of the same name, which was acquired and fully integrated into MFS Africa in 2020.

The Role

The Managing Director (MD) of the Emerging Enterprise team seeks a Right-Hand Person (RHP) to accelerate her own and the team’s delivery. The exact title can be agreed upon with the successful candidate.

The RHP will be responsible for supporting the MD’s effectiveness by handling two major categories of tasks: a) organizational and administrative tasks, such as scheduling, venue booking, and team logistics, and b) basic project management, e.g., following up on commitments and requests, document preparation and management, and owning the team’s progress-tracking tools.

Success in this role will require impeccable communication and organizational skills, and the ability to work in a demanding environment where strategies and priorities are likely to evolve relatively quickly.

The right candidate will find this role to be an exciting opportunity to take an active role and an inside view in a business being built from the mezzanine up to the penthouse (an excellent foundation already exists). Strong candidates might be seasoned Executive/Personal Assistants wishing to get more substantive, hands-on experience into the operations of a business, or early-career professionals coming from the financial, technology, consulting, or similar corporate spaces.

This position is location agnostic; however, a candidate’s home time zone will be relevant to success in the role (GMT –1 to +3 preferred)

The duties and responsibilities of the role will be as follows:

• Act as custodian of the company’s values, fully embodying them in the execution of the role

• Act as the focal point for the Leaders/Managers in the teams, judging between different priorities and proactively working to manage demands

• Establish, maintain, and develop appropriate systems and processes, to track and monitor the activities of the team

• Responsible for managing diaries, organising internal/external meetings, organising events, booking travel, hotels, and couriers

• Collate and produce high quality documents for a variety of audiences, primarily internal team and management meetings, but occasionally external stakeholders

• Contribute to projects and activities as appropriate for the team e.g. project co-ordination, research, presentation and communication support and day-to-day operational activities

Requirements

Essential Skills

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English are essential – you should have excellent grammar, punctuation, and be able to easily communicate appropriately to a range of audiences

• Highly organised with great attention to detail

• Strong interpersonal, collaboration and relationship-building skills

• Able to learn quickly and adapt to change

• Able to use sound judgement to make decisions

• Can work autonomously; self-starter with a proactive approach

• Solution driven with a bias to action

• Expert-level proficiency in the full Microsoft Office Suite (Outlook, PowerPoint, Excel in particular)

Qualifications and Experience

• Associate/Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field

• At least four years of professional experience working with executive level within a corporate environment, preferably within the technology, consulting, or financial sectors. Preference will be given to candidates who have worked in a high growth organisation

• A demonstrable track record of execution, delivering on targets and meeting deadlines

• Exposure to various scheduling, CRM, and diary management tools

• Familiarity/experience with market and business contexts across Africa

Benefits

• We are highly innovative and were ranked by Fast Company as one of the most innovative companies in the world

• We work at the very cutting edge of fintech in Africa

• We solve relevant problems for Africa and the world and are building payment infrastructure designed to transcend generations

• We have a very diverse work environment, with over 30+ nationalities represented and continually strive to build a culture of caring and execution