Finance Officer - Kenya Office

Position Overview

Educate!, is seeking a  Finance Officer to work in our finance department in Kenya. As a Finance Officer, you will be supporting Finance, logistics, procurement, and administration tasks at Educate! She/he will be responsible for facilitating payments and maintaining accounts records in compliance with Educate! procedures. He/she will also provide logistical and administrative support, and other various operations projects within Educate Kenya. The role involves managing finance systems, mobile money platforms, and related funds reimbursement. 

The Finance Officer will work closely with the Finance Manager and Operations manager to provide monthly financials and BVAs. He/she will also collaborate closely with the program team and the field staff to build strong and sustainable solutions to support the field payments. The Finance Officer will report to the Finance Manager.

About Educate! 

Africa has the world’s youngest and fastest-growing population. By 2035, the continent is poised to contribute more people to the global workforce each year than the rest of the world combined. 

At Educate! we're obsessed with impact. We leverage iterative learning to build highly scalable youth employment solutions aimed at unlocking the potential of the world’s youngest continent. 

Educate! prepares youth in Africa learn, earn and thrive in today’s economy by: 

1) introducing an employment-focused school subject into secondary, and 

2) delivering livelihood bootcamps for out-of-school youth, with a focus on marginalized rural girls and young women.

To date, more than 250,000 youth have been meaningfully impacted across Uganda, Rwanda, and Kenya, and along the way, Educate! has become the largest youth employment and skills provider in East Africa.

Educate! is a team of over 250 largely African staff and 300 volunteer youth mentors. We prioritize building an engaging, fulfilling and growth oriented work environment. 50% of our top 30 leaders have been with us for over 5 years, 10+ alumni have started their own organizations and 6 current or former team members were Acumen Fund East Africa fellows. 

We have been backed by top foundations such as Imaginable Futures, Big Bang Philanthropy,  #startsmall, Generation Unlimited, CIFF and Echidna Giving. Educate! won a 2018 Klaus J. Jacobs Prize and a 2015 WISE Award, and has been highlighted by the World Bank’s S4YE's Impact Portfolio, an Al Jazeera documentary, BBC, The Brookings Institution as one of 14 case studies on scaling education, and the Gates Foundation as a Goalkeepers Accelerator. In 2022, we received a catalytic investment from philanthropist Mackenzie Scott to scale our systems change work.

Educate!'s long-term vision is to design solutions that measurably impact millions of youth across Africa each year. By 2025, we aim to scale our annual reach by 4x and measurably impact over 400,000 new youth. 

Performance Objectives

Finance Administration (70%)

• Ensuring that field teams are receiving timely payments and addressing the bottlenecks affecting payments
• Entering all journal entries in the accounting software
• Reconciling ledger accounts
• Produce daily and weekly transaction posting reports
• Verifying accountabilities and reconciling staff advance account
• Facilitating payment of vendors and responding to inquiries regarding finance
• Supporting in both internal and external audit processes

Enforcing Controls and compliance (15%)

• Ensuring that all payments are fully supported by requisite documentation before disbursement
• Ensuring that all staff advances are in line with the updated Common Cost
• Flagging any policy compliance issues to the Senior Finance Coordinator and the finance manager for action

Administration (10%)

• Supporting the Finance manager with other finance administrative tasks as may be assigned
• Facilitating the HQ payments and operations to ensure that teams in the office are adequately supported
• Working closely with and supporting the HR in organizing staff meetings, venues and travel logistics.

Logistics  (5%)

• Providing support to the Operations team to Coordinate training events as required, including but not limited to, pre-booking calls to venues, travel arrangement, providing supplies and materials, equipment and the point person at events.
• Provide support to the program team by arranging logistics for events and meetings held in program districts to ensure that they are properly organized and conducted.
• Book, schedule, and coordinate vehicles when needed
• Conduct periodic inventory checks of office assets and equipment and oversee repairs where necessary

Qualifications and Requirements

• BCom, Accounting or Business Administration with proficiency in Excel and Quickbooks.
• Finance & Accounting experience working in a non-profit environment.
• At least 3 years of experience in finance and accounting, financial analysis (including gathering, evaluating, presenting, and reporting financial information to management and external stakeholders). 
• Solid experience in coordinating audit activities and managing reporting, budget development and analysis, accounts payable and receivable, general ledger, payroll taxes, and accounting.  
• Entrepreneurial drive, proven ability to take ownership, lead the team’s combined learning and a collaborative, data-oriented approach to problem-solving.
• Possess and display high ethical and business standards.
• A good fit with our Five Cultural Tenets (see “What is Educate! About?” Below; learn more by looking at Educate!’s culture deck here. 

What Is Educate! About? 

We’re ambitious. Are you? Educate! is growing fast, so new opportunities are opening up and expanding all the time. We’re inspired by people with drive, and we love to help them reach their full potential. We expect everyone at Educate! to contribute above and beyond their job description, grow their skills, and advance their careers, and we are committed to supporting our staff members on that journey of their careers, and we are committed to supporting our staff members on that journey.

1. We put Youth First, Impact-Obsessed - We never forget that Educate! exists to impact youth. We are purpose-driven. We obsess over impact daily and if it doesn’t lead to impact, we want nothing to do with it. We prioritize interacting with and listening to youth. We design and manage the organization to ensure every dollar creates transformative experiences that youth value. 
2. We Exceed Expectations - We take pride in going above and beyond to achieve the best results. When we know what needs to be done, we do it. We don’t wait to be asked and we don’t stop at what is asked of us. We look for solutions as much as we identify problems.
3. We Are Always Learning - We are committed to seeking and applying new knowledge and ideas. We stay open-minded. We know there is always another way and we are excited to learn about it. We continuously look for resources of all kinds from multiple disciplines. We try new things, experiment, grow, and improve. We invest in learning for ourselves and our teams.
4. We are One Team, Many Views - We say what we think while treating each other well. We believe that all people have the same inherent value and that diverse ideas and open dialogue fuel excellence. We constantly strive to create an environment where everyone can and does express themselves freely. We support and respect each other as people and colleagues. We act as one team: We prioritize the organization's mission and goals over team or individual goals.
5. We have the Startup Mindset - We will always keep innovating to grow our impact. We aspire to be game-changing. We never think “we have arrived” or “we’re done.” We question the status quo in our industry. We move fast and embrace change to move towards our long-term vision. We’re not afraid of failure. We interrogate anything that slows us down. 

Every person at Educate! — from interns to the executive director — is evaluated by how they live up to these five cultural tenets. They are at the core of how we achieve our mission and why we work as well as we do. 

Educate is committed to providing an inclusive and welcoming environment for all who interact in our community.  In creating this environment, we encourage people from a variety of cultures, backgrounds and life experiences to join our diverse team. 

Child Safeguarding: Educate! is committed to child-safe/youth-safe recruitment, selection and screening. Our recruitment and selection procedures reflect our commitment to the safety and protection of children in our programs. The successful candidate will be required to provide a satisfactory Certificate of Good Conduct as a condition of employment. We reserve the right to decline to offer employment to an individual or terminate an employment contract with an employee that may pose a risk to children and youth.