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About Airtel Africa
Airtel Africa is a leading provider of telecommunications and mobile money services, with a presence in 14 countries in Africa, primarily in East Africa and Central and West Africa.
Airtel Africa offers an integrated suite of telecoms solutions to its subscribers, including mobile voice and data services as well as mobile money services, both nationally and internationally. We aim to continue providing a simple and intuitive customer experience through streamlined customer journeys.
Our vision is to enrich lives of our customers and our obsession is to win them for life through an exceptional experience. Our objective is to grow market share profitably and create superior enterprise value.
We are poised to win in the market by :
- Building best digital experience among Telcos in Africa – music, video, financial services and self-care
- Reliable operations & agile product development built on simplified IT architecture
- Comprehensive regulatory and legal compliance across all operating subsidiaries through efficient processes and controls and
- Becoming the most preferred brand for mobile & fixed data and financial services
Purpose of the Job (Max 500 words)
Product Operations person will be responsible for end-to-end Group operational ownership of an assigned portfolio of Airtel Money products across 14 African markets.
The role will drive operational stability, transaction integrity, reconciliation, settlement, dispute management, partner performance, incident management and continuous improvement across the assigned product portfolio.
The incumbent will work closely with Airtel Money OpCos, Product, Technology, Finance, Risk, Compliance and external partners to ensure scalable, controlled and customer-focused operations.
Deliverables (Maximum 5-6 key responsibilities)
1. End-to-End Product Operations
- Own Group-level operational performance for the assigned product portfolio across all Airtel Money markets.
- Establish standardized operating models, processes and controls across OpCos.
- Monitor transaction processing, operational exceptions, failures and customer-impacting issues.
- Ensure operational scalability as transaction volumes and product adoption grow.
- Drive consistency while accommodating market-specific regulatory and operational requirements.
- Oversee transaction reconciliation and settlement processes relevant to the assigned products.
- Monitor aged breaks, unreconciled transactions and settlement exceptions.
- Ensure appropriate ownership, escalation and closure of reconciliation breaks.
- Partner with Finance, Technology, OpCos and external partners to address systemic reconciliation issues.
- Drive automation and reduction of manual reconciliation activities.
- Oversee product-specific disputes, chargebacks, reversals, refunds and transaction investigations.
- Establish appropriate SLAs and escalation mechanisms.
- Monitor dispute trends and drive root-cause elimination.
- Ensure adherence to applicable scheme, partner and internal requirements.
- Manage the operational interface with banks, payment processors, schemes, aggregators, fintech partners and other relevant service providers.
- Monitor partner operational SLAs and performance.
- Lead resolution of significant partner-related operational issues.
- Establish and maintain Group SOPs and operational control frameworks.
- Define and monitor operational KPIs, KRIs and SLAs.
- Support internal/external audits and closure of operational observations.
- Maintain operational risk and dependency registers.
- Act as the Group Operations point of contact for assigned products across Airtel Money OpCos.
- Conduct structured operational reviews with countries.
- Work closely with Product, Technology, Finance, Risk, Compliance and Customer Experience.
- Drive adoption of Group standards across markets.
- Identify opportunities for process simplification, automation and straight-through processing.
- Reduce manual interventions and operational failure points.
- Drive root-cause-based improvement rather than repetitive exception handling.
- Establish dashboards providing Group-level visibility across products and markets.
Demonstrate (Key competencies)
- Strong understanding of transaction lifecycle across products such as Cards, IMT, Loans, Merchant and Enterprise platforms.
- Knowledge of payment processing, reconciliation, settlement, reversals, refunds, disputes, chargebacks and exception handling.
- Strategic & Commercial Thinking — understands how operational decisions impact customer experience, revenue, cost, risk and product growth.
- Ability to govern and standardize operations across multiple OpCos while accommodating local regulatory/business requirements.
- Ability to identify operational risks, establish preventive/detective controls and maintain strong maker-checker and governance frameworks
- Ownership & Accountability — takes end-to-end accountability rather than limiting responsibility to functional boundaries.
- Ability to use KPIs, transaction data, reconciliation breaks, incident trends and dashboards to identify issues and make decisions.
- Ability to drive outcomes across Product, Technology, Finance, Risk, Compliance and OpCos without necessarily having direct authority.
- Executive Communication — communicates complex operational matters clearly to Group leadership, OpCo CEOs/CXOs and senior functional stakeholders.
Educational Level
Minimum: Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, Commerce, Finance, Economics, Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related discipline from a recognized university.
Preferred: MBA / PGDM in Operations, Finance, Strategy, Technology or a related field.
Working Experience:
- 10–15 years of relevant experience, preferably within Fintech, Digital Payments, Mobile Money, Banking or Financial Services.
- Minimum 7 years of relevant experience in Payments/Product Operations with strong understanding of end-to-end transaction lifecycle.
- Minimum 3–5 years of experience in a managerial or leadership capacity.
- Experience across multiple payment/product domains such as Cards, Merchant Payments, Remittances/IMT, Lending, Wallets or Enterprise Payments preferred.
- Strong experience managing cross-functional stakeholders including Product, Technology, Finance, Risk, Compliance and external partners.
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