Associate, Procurement (7 Positions)

Department: Administration
Reports To: Senior Manager, Admin Operations

About Kifiya:

Kifiya is an AI-powered financial and market infrastructure company advancing inclusive economic growth across Africa. We design and deploy risk decisioning systems, intelligent financial infrastructure, and market linkage platforms that unlock credit, insurance, payments, and capital access for MSMEs and smallholder farmers. We build the AI, data, and financial infrastructure that helps financial institutions serve hard-to-finance segments at scale.

Business Unit Description

The Administration unit is responsible for the end-to-end corporate support service, ranges from creating and maintaining conducive working environment to providing administrative, logistics, procurement, property management, and expatriate support services. A central admin support provider across all Kifiya offices.

Position Summary

The Procurement Officer is responsible for executing the end-to-end procurement cycle for goods and services across the organization, ensuring adherence to policy, achieving cost-efficiency, and maintaining an up-to-date vendor database. This role is key to managing the flow from procure to pay (requisition to payment), leveraging the ERP system and meticulous documentation.

Key Responsibilities

1. End-to-End Procurement Management

• Process Execution: Manage the full procurement cycle: processing the approved requisition in ERP, communicate with requestor for clarification of specifications, sourcing of vendors, quotes collection, thorough bid analysis, procuring/contracting, warehousing coordination, final Purchase Order (PO) creation in ERP within a reasonable time.
• Sourcing and PO: prioritize and follow the approved vendor list to issue RFQ and obtain quotes in a timely manner. Responsible to have and upload completed documentation to create a PO.
• Procured Items verification: Coordinate with technical team (requestor) to ensure the procured items are as per the requested specification, in terms of quantity, quality, sample, and other terms and conditions.
• Warehousing: Ensure all procured items have been issued with good receiving note through coordinating with Storekeeper.
• Payment Follow-up: Serve as the liaison between the Administration/Procurement and Finance team to ensure timely payment follow-ups and resolution of any invoice discrepancies.

2. Vendor Management

• New Vendor Registration: Record and vet new vendors in the official vendor list/system, ensuring all required documentation (e.g., business license) is submitted and compliance checks are performed.
• Vendor Database Maintenance: Update and maintain the vendor list with complete and accurate profile information such as TIN, VAT, contact phone numbers, physical addresses, category of service, and performance ratings.
• Performance Record: Regularly maintain the database about vendor performance based on key metrics (e.g., quality, timeliness, responsiveness, credit provision) and flag for poor performers.

3. ERP Management and Procure-to-Pay

• PO Initiation: Analyze requisition, sourcing and create PO into the ERP system for both office administration needs and program team with their procurement requisition requirements.
• PO Issuance: Ensure all final purchase decisions are accurately converted into a compliant Purchase Order (PO) in the ERP before committing to the vendor. Compliant means to deal with eligible vendors, competitive bidding and document it well as per procurement policy and procedure.
• Reporting: Generate weekly reports from the ERP on procurement spend, PO status, and vendor activity for Head of Admin Operations to review.

4. Other Procurement Support

• SharePoint Filing: Work actively on this folder to store all quotes and bid analysis per each procurement type in the designated SharePoint folders for audit purposes.
• Document Archiving: Systematically archive all well-scanned procurement-related documents (Requests, POs, Bid documents, Contracts, GRNs) in SharePoint, following a standardized and chronological system.
• Audit Readiness: Ensure all procurement files are complete, accurate, and readily available for internal and external audits.
• Report: Prepare and submit monthly procurement and vendor list reports for the Head of Admin Operations. Assist in tagging on and physical inventory of fixed assets.
• Perform any other task assigned by the Supervisor.

Key Outputs

• Cost Savings Achievement: Achieve a cost saving for key procured items through sourcing with direct sellers, authorized agents, obtain warranty, and reliable vendors.
• Procurement Cycle Time: Maintain an average end-to-end procurement cycle time (from approved requisition to PO issuance) of 4 working days or less for competitive bidding. Procuring with contracted vendors (vehicle rent, hotel services, office rent, etc) or emergency requests, direct PO issuance is processed within 1 working day.
• Vendor Database Accuracy: Achieve a 100% compliance rate for new vendor registration, with all required legal and profile documents on file.
• Compliance Rate: Ensure 98% of purchases comply with the established procurement policy (e.g., proper competitive bidding thresholds followed).
• PO to Invoice Accuracy: Maintain a PO/Invoice matching accuracy rate of 99% to minimize payment delays.
• Document Archive and Retrieval Time: Ensure any archived document is retrievable from SharePoint within a maximum of 5 minutes (measured through spot checks).

Qualifications and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Procurement, Supply Chain Management, Business Administration, or related field.
• A minimum of 4+ years of direct experience as a Procurement Officer or Specialist, with proven experience in competitive bidding, negotiation, and contract management.
• Proven experience or certification in ERP and procurement systems (e.g., Microsoft Dynamics) is highly desirable.

Core Competencies

• Excellent proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), intermediate ERP system user skills, and experience with SharePoint or similar document management systems.
• High level of attention to detail, strong organizational and time management skills, ability to handle multiple tasks simultaneously, a proactive approach to problem-solving, and a mind-set with customer support service.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills in English, with the ability to interact professionally with internal staff, vendors, and expats from diverse backgrounds.
• Ability to negotiate, maintain professionalism with a high level of integrity and ethical conduct, and handle ad hoc requests, and be keen and proactive in assisting another team.