Mara Foundation is Mara Group?s social enterprise that focuses on emerging African entrepreneurs. It works to create sustainable economic and business development opportunities for young business owners through various initiatives.
Mara Foundation was launched in 2009 by Ashish J. Thakkar, Founder of Mara Group. The Foundation is active in a number of countries across Africa, including Uganda, Tanzania, Nigeria and Kenya.
Mara Foundation?s mission is to provide comprehensive support services including mentorship, funding and business training to African entrepreneurs.
Mara Foundation believes that these support services will play a crucial role in transforming business ideas into reality. These businesses will, in turn, create jobs for other Africans and help build an SME sector that can genuinely contribute to the development of both the local and pan-African economies.
Mara Online Overview
Mara Online seeks to empower young people in Africa by providing a complementary suite of technology products tailored to their needs. One of these products is Mara Mentor, a Mara Foundation initiative that is a social network with a purpose ? creating a social impact.
Mara Online is seeking to build a technology ecosystem to tap into Africa communications. There are more than 650 million mobile phone subscribers and a large population of youth looking for new ways to communicate, faster and cheaper.
Head of Operations
Job Type
Full Time
Qualification
BA/BSc/HND
Location
Lagos
Job Field
Administration
About the position
We are looking for an ambitious and self-motivated individual to lead and coordinate all activities related to Mara Online in Nigeria.
Mara Mentor?s aim is to connect, inspire and empower entrepreneurs across the African continent. It is an online community that connects ambitious entrepreneurs with experienced and inspiring business leaders. The initiative encourages idea and knowledge sharing among promising young entrepreneurs, inspiring a collaborative approach to business start-up and growth.
Mara Mentor has been created to empower Africa?s youth in their business endeavours, in recognition that they are the driving force behind the continent?s growth and future prosperity.
Mara Mentor can be accessed via the website (
https://mentor.mara.com/) and a mobile App that is available on iTunes, Blackberry and Android.
The successful candidate will drive a national rollout of Mara Mentor in Nigeria. Mara Mentor will be promoted by coordinated above-the-line and below-the-line campaigns facilitated by agencies. There will be a number of complementary activities such as one-on-one mentoring events, BizHack competitions, and youth gatherings. All activities will be organised with close coordination with our partners.
The Head of Operations will build and manage a strong team to support the national rollout, coordinate with all agencies and stakeholders and execute all activities related to Mara Mentor.
They will directly interact with and be required to influence and negotiate with senior executives business, community and government stakeholders via email, phone and face-to-face meetings. The successful candidate will build and lead the team, project-manage in-country and cross-region activity seeking creative and innovative ways to execute at pace.
The Head of Operations will report to the West Africa Region Head, based in Nigeria.
Summary of job role
- Recruit and train Mara Mentor Youth Leaders and Representatives for each countyas well as Project Managers for Mara One-on-One, Mara BizHack, and any other necessary team members
- Coordinate all roll out activities, including coordination with media agencies and county teams
- Monitor and evaluate the progress of Mara Mentor?s outreach, identify opportunities for improvements and adapt courses of actions accordingly
- Manage the Stakeholder relationships, including government, sponsors, media and youth organisations
- Attend workshops, seminars, and conferences torepresent Mara Mentor and Mara Online
- Network extensively and maintain long-lasting relationships with youth, youth organisations and start-up organisations
- Manage team to generate engaging local online content via social media
- Timely response to all phone and email communications internally and externally
- Manage and monitor all expenses based on the allocated budget for the region
- General administration duties, and any other duties as assigned by line manager
Skills and Requirements
- Commitment to Mara Foundation?s aims, objectives and principles
- Proactive; able to set challenging personal goals and remain motivated despite obstacles
- Experience mobilising youth including on-the-ground expertise in running large campaigns
- Large network of connections in Nigeria and West Africa, ideally within Banks and Telecommunication companies
- Experience in recruiting, on-boarding and managing a team, including effective motivation and reward techniques
- Confident in presentation; skilled in negotiation
- Excellent organisational skills and attention to detail
- Creative, flexible, able to use own initiative to solve problems
- Possesses a ?can-do? infectious positive attitude and an entrepreneurial team player perspective.
Must be honest, accountable and assertive
- Must be a team leader and lead-by-example
- Must be self-directed and reliable in project planning and delivery. Must have exceptional time management skills and the ability to establish and meet deadlines across multiple workstreams
- Must have excellent written, verbal and interpersonal communication skills in English
- Must be an effective relationship manager with a broad range of stakeholders
- Must be able to effectively use office equipment, computers and scanner and other resources for completion of projects
- Graduate in business studies, project management or equivalent, preferred
- +10 years organisational experience
- A track-record of leading an event, project or programme of scale and evidence of its success
Finance Manager
Job Type
Full Time
Qualification
BA/BSc/HND
Location
Lagos
Job Field
Finance / Accounting / Audit
About the position
We are looking for an ambitious and self-motivated individual to lead and coordinate all financial activities related to Mara Online in Nigeria.
Mara Mentor?s aim is to connect, inspire and empower entrepreneurs across the African continent. It is an online community that connects ambitious entrepreneurs with experienced and inspiring business leaders. The initiative encourages idea and knowledge sharing among promising young entrepreneurs, inspiring a collaborative approach to business start-up and growth.
Mara Mentor has been created to empower Africa?s youth in their business endeavours, in recognition that they are the driving force behind the continent?s growth and future prosperity.
Mara Mentor can be accessed via the website (
https://mentor.mara.com/) and a mobile App that is available on iTunes, Blackberry and Android.
The Finance Manager oversees the day to day finance and accounting activities and ensures the companies finance function is organised and efficient and produces accurate financial and management accounts.
The Finance Managerwill report to theWest Africa Region Head, based in Nigeria.
The Finance Manager oversees the day to day activities of the finance department and ensures the Nigeriafinance function is organised and efficient and produces accurate financial and management accounts.
Summary of job role
- Management of the finance function.
- Preparation of budgets, forecasts and cash flows
- Maintenance of financial ledgers and accounting processes
- Preparation of Monthly Consolidated P&L and Balance Sheet as required
- Timely production of statutory and internal financial reports
- Financial modelling and analysis
- Cash management and treasury duties
- Ensuring that appropriate systems and internal controls are implemented and maintained
- Overseeing the Payroll process
- Preparation of statutory returns
Skills and Requirements
- Fully qualified ACA/ACCA/ICAN (or equivalent) with previous financial control and management reporting experience
- The candidate should be confident, a self-starter, with the ability to operate in a dynamic environment
- You must be able to demonstrate good attention to detail, good judgement showing logical decision making, and a hands on approach
- Computer literate with good excel skills and solid understanding of accounting software principles
- Must have excellent written, verbal and interpersonal communication skills in English
- +5 years organisational experience
- A track-record of relevant financial experience would be preferred
Technical Support
Job Type
Full Time
Qualification
BA/BSc/HND
Location
Lagos
Job Field
ICT
Mara Mentor is an online community that enables ambitious entrepreneurs to build their networks, access online training and receive advice from mentors. This is an exciting opportunity to lead the customer and technical support functions for Mara Mentor in Southern Africa. The Technical Support will join a new team driving the development of the support functions for Mara Mentor. Working closely with the Senior Interaction Designer and Product Team the Technical Support will be responsible for coordinating customer support, resolving issues quickly, reporting to product team, product testing and consolidating user feedback.
Responsibilities:
? Grow to become a subject matter expect for Mara Mentor Web and App
? Assist customers to resolve issues through electronic tools and standard reporting features
? Analyse customer problem & service requests and resolving them within agreed service levels
? Use troubleshooting/debugging techniques and tools to analyse technical product problems.
? Answer product related queries and provide proactive support to customers by guiding them through technical best practices
? Identify potential product defects and create test cases to reproduce the issues, escalate to development? Proactively and reactively look for solutions to prevent problems from occurring in product
? Conduct regular product testing as new versions of the web and app are released
? Gather and collate user feedback, summarising key ideas for product team
? Help to develop Mara Mentor?s support features, including ?how-to? guides and FAQs
? Build and maintain strong relationship up to senior management level
Experience required:
? 2-5 years experience in a customer support role, ideally in a technical area
? Bachelor?s degree (technical field preferred)
? Demonstrable experience conducting technical support for Web and Mobile Apps
? Experience developing user research findings into recommendations for product changes
? Excellent written and verbal communication skills
? Organized, self-directed, efficient and able to manage multiple projects in a timely manner
? Commitment to Mara Foundation?s aims, objectives and principles
Nokia Asha App Developer
Job Type
Full Time
Qualification
BA/BSc/HND
Location
Lagos
Job Field
ICT
Job Description:
Mara Online requires a well experienced candidate who will be responsible for Nokia Asha mobile applications development. The candidate should be proficient in application development with attention towards usability, simplicity and efficiency. The candidate should lead end to end delivery of enterprise projects including architecture, solution design, effort estimation and code reviews. The candidate must understand the business requirements and translate them into well-designed software components. He should also contribute to the continuous improvement of the software development framework and processes.
Required Skills:
? Fluency in multiple programming languages/application development tools including HTML5, CSS3, Java, J2ME, JQuery.
? Nokia Series 40 and series 60 development
? Database Handling
? Backend services
? Image/ Video handling
? Social Media Integration
? Web Service Integration
? Good knowledge in native framework
Interaction Designer, Mara Mentor
Job Type
Full Time
Qualification
BA/BSc/HND
Location
Lagos
Job Field
ICT
Responsibilities:
? Engage with stakeholders, users, and the product team to synthesize the wants and needs of our users, with the business and technical requirements, and deliver an amazing support function
? Participate and drive the full iterative design process for support, including; research, brainstorming, sketching, wire framing, prototyping and validating the implementation
? Train and manage the technical support team to provide ongoing customer support, consolidating feedback and sending regular reports to the product team
? Coordinate with technical support staff to gather user insights and conduct regular product testing
? Support the continuous development of the user experience for Mara Mentor; collaborate and brainstorm with other designers to collectively increase the design IQ and deliver consistent experiences to our users
? Communicate effectively with the product team
Experience required:
? Minimum of 5 years experience as a UX Designer, participating in the complete product development lifecycle of successfully launched products
? Bachelor Degree in Interaction Design, HCI or related discipline
? Demonstrable experience designing and documenting navigation structures, information architectures, user interfaces, and complex interaction designs
? Demonstrable experience designing for Web and Mobile Apps
? Proven experience with integrating usability research findings into designs
? Experience creating support functions and teams for Web and Mobile Apps, ideal but not required
? Experience in HTML, CSS, Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator
? Excellent written and verbal communication skills
? Organized, self-directed, efficient and able to manage multiple and complex projects in a timely manner.
? Proven abilities to hire, on-board and manage people
? Commitment to Mara Foundation?s aims, objectives and principles
Method of Application
Interested candidates should apply by emailing a CV and a covering letter explaining their interest in the position and what they could bring to it to careers@mara.com. Please specify the job title in the email subject. Only complete applications will be considered. Only successful applicants will be contacted.
The position will be based in Lagos. The candidate should be available to start ASAP.