Nithio is a venture-backed finance and analytics platform that uses advanced data analytics and machine learning to improve credit scoring capabilities for businesses, capital providers, governments, and other stakeholders in the distributed energy sector in Africa. The company aims to address the acute need for modern energy access on the continent by providing a sustainable infrastructure for capital delivery, offering state-of-the-art underwriting tools, and a powerful information sharing platform for stakeholders to identify high need grant recipients and credit-worthy customers. 

The Investment Officer will lead the origination, structuring and execution of our client's debt financing transactions from end to end in West Africa.. He/she will be responsible for establishing and maintaining client relationships, identifying clients’ needs, developing innovative and bankable financing solutions, and building our loan portfolio across West Africa. The successful candidate will have strong relationship management and problem-solving skills, an ability to translate complex problems into clear frameworks, and an entrepreneurial mindset. As a lean, entrepreneurial company, flexibility and willingness to pitch in wherever needed is critical.

This position will perform a range of duties including, but not limited to, the following:

• Take end to end ownership of transactions: developing and maintaining client relationships, origination, due diligence and credit analysis of existing and/or new borrowers; structuring the appropriate financing solution; preparing financial projections; negotiating legal documents with counterparties alongside legal counsel. Presenting analysis to internal credit committees.

Portfolio Management. Maintain close business relationships with existing (and potential) borrowers with regular check-ins for portfolio monitoring purposes and flagging any early warning signs, ensuring a high quality loan portfolio in the region. Monitoring ongoing performance of facilities, tracking covenants.

• Support senior management in performing detailed market research, due diligence, and business analysis; prepare analytical products, including presentations, reports, briefings, and other materials

• Performing credit analysis of the financial condition and credit-worthiness of existing and prospective borrowers using analysis of historical and projected financial statements (income, cash flow, balance sheet), P&L, tax returns, biographical data, market information, credit reports and other data; manage client on-boarding, KYC/AML reviews

• Support customized client engagements (e.g., investors, distributed energy companies, policymakers, and development agencies); assist in the structuring, legal documentation implementation and monitoring of commercially viable financing facilities aligned with risk standards and detailed understanding of the clients strategic and financial objectives

• Maintain in-depth knowledge of company's credit risk policies and procedures in compliance with applicable local and US regulations and assist the company in achieving satisfactory risk-adjusted returns on its lending portfolio as well as strong internal and external audit results

• Assist in defining the risk tolerance, by supporting the creation of the systems to measure, mitigate, manage and limit credit risk exposures.

The successful candidate will have the following qualifications and skills:

• Bachelor’s, or Master’s in a quantitative field (Business, Finance, Mathematics, Economics, Engineering or in a related field)

• 5 years work experience in either investment/commercial banking, private equity, debt funds, or corporate finance.