Legal & Compliance Manager – Smartphones (Fintech/Startup/Mobile Payments)

Our client is a rapidly growing scale-up dedicated to improving the lives of everyday households across Africa by providing access to solar energy and the internet. Our client provides financing, builds technology, and operates a distribution network that enables hundreds of people every day to buy solar panels and smartphones.

   

Our client's solar business operates across 4 countries—Malawi, Madagascar, Nigeria, and the DRC—and has provided more than half a million families access to small home solar systems over the last 5 years. They employ 100s of agents who visit local villages, field credit applications using our client’s custom-built technology, and deliver and set up the solar systems.

    

Our client’s smartphone business operates in Malawi, Uganda, Rwanda, and Zambia. In these countries, they partner with hundreds of phone retailers—including some of the biggest telecom companies like MTN—to allow customers to purchase smartphones on credit and pay for them over time.

    

Working with our client is about creating trust in markets where trust is often the lowest, and providing life-changing value to people who need it most.

    

Job Type: Full time/Permanent

Location: Cape Town, South Africa

     

Requirements

• Education: Bachelor's degree in Law, Compliance, Finance, Accounting, Business or a related discipline. Legal admission or a compliance qualification is strongly preferred. CA, ACCA, CIMA or equivalent is relevant where accompanied by meaningful legal, regulatory or compliance experience. Exceptional relevant experience may compensate for the absence of a formal professional qualification.
• Core technical strength: Deep expertise in at least one of legal, regulatory or compliance work, with strong working knowledge across the other two. Experience interpreting regulatory requirements into practical business actions; working with regulated businesses (licensing, filings, compliance monitoring, disputes, contracts or regulator engagement); reviewing customer contracts and consumer-protection obligations; and coordinating matters that cross functional boundaries.
• Commercial literacy: Able to understand business models, pricing, unit economics and the financial implications of regulatory decisions. Familiarity with IFRS 9, cross-border tax, treasury or financial modelling is useful but not required.
• Execution and judgement: Structures ambiguous problems from first principles; distinguishes administrative compliance from matters requiring specialist advice; prioritises across multiple countries; escalates early with clear options and recommendations; balances growth with regulatory and reputational risk.
• Experience: 3+ years of relevant experience in legal, regulatory, compliance or related advisory work (exceptional candidates with less experience may be considered). Meaningful exposure to regulated financial services, lending, fintech or consumer finance. Experience across multiple jurisdictions or emerging markets. African market experience is strongly advantageous.

   

Responsibilities

As Legal & Compliance Manager for Smartphones with our client, you will unblock growth by proactively identifying, coordinating and resolving regulatory, legal and compliance obstacles across priority markets. You will partner with country owners and regional owners to operate compliant businesses, while building the systems, specialist support and external-adviser network required for sustainable expansion.

     

Initial country scope: Malawi, Rwanda and Zambia, with progressive support for Uganda, Nigeria and approved new-market assessments subject to agreed priorities and capacity. You will:

• Map the risk landscape: Build a practical understanding of the regulatory, legal and compliance position across priority markets — mapping key regulators, licences, legal entities, reporting obligations, advisers, disputes and material open risks.
• Create visibility: Establish a reliable regulatory and compliance calendar, and implement a live risk and action tracker showing each issue, owner, next step, deadline and escalation status.
• Drive complex matters to decisions: Identify issues that cross legal, regulatory, compliance, credit, tax, accounting and commercial boundaries; bring together the relevant specialists; and drive an integrated, decision-ready recommendation and implementation plan.
• Embed proactive input: Ensure legal and regulatory input into product, pricing, credit, collections and partnership decisions before launch or material change. Coordinate review of customer agreements, terms, pricing and disclosure, collections and repossession rights, and data consent provisions.
• Coordinate specialists and advisers: Brief, manage and challenge external advisers. Coordinate regulatory perimeter and licensing analysis for new activities, products, entity structures and partner arrangements.
• Govern third parties: Establish a consistent approach to material outsourcing arrangements — underwriters, banks, MNOs, payment providers, distributors, credit bureaux, collections and technology providers — ensuring responsibilities are clearly allocated and monitored.
• Support expansion: Lead structured regulatory, legal and compliance readiness assessments for potential new markets, and create repeatable templates for regulatory correspondence, adviser briefs, risk assessments and issue escalation.

Technical ownership remains with the relevant business function or external specialist. This role advises and supports country owners; it does not replace the accountability of country owners, Finance or Credit.

   

Why work with our client

Our client offers the stability of a large company with the culture of a tight-knit start up. While our client employs more than 1,000 people across the continent, the core management team in Cape Town, South Africa is an agile, talented group of less than 30. No matter your age or level of experience, you'll be given large responsibilities from Day 1 and expected to be a self-starter and self-teacher. While expectations are high, so is the level of support: they foster a culture where colleagues from across the business are eager to support and learn from one another.