Legal Counsel

Job Title: Legal Counsel

Location: Dubai, UAE

Reports to: Managing Director

Key responsibilities:

• Review and negotiate contracts in French and English, including framework agreements, commercial contracts and NDA’s
• Conduct legal research on banking regulations, data protection, consumer laws, and other relevant topics with a particular focus on the African market;
• Maintain up-to-date knowledge of Fintech African regulations, and apply this expertise to relevant contracts and operations;
• Advise the executive team and various departments on regulatory and compliance issues, particularly regarding telecommunication and banking products;
• Collaborate cross-functionally with other departments to support business objectives and ensure legal compliance;
• Provide legal support on corporate law matters as needed;

Qualifications and Experience:

• Master of Law (LLM) or other relevant legal degree;
• 4+ years of experience in legal practice, with a focus on commercial contract negotiation;
• Fluency in both French and English is mandatory;
• Understanding of data protection laws (including the GDPR), consumer laws, and banking regulations;
• Prior experience or knowledge of telecommunications or fintech industries is highly desirable;
• Familiarity with African regulations is a significant asset;

The ideal candidate is someone who:

• Ability to adapt to a fast-paced environment;
• Excellent communication skills - both written and verbal, fluency in French is required
• A hard-working and resilient approach to handling multiple tasks and tight deadlines;
• Cross-functional collaboration and teamwork mindset;
• Strong business orientation, with the ability to align legal strategies with business goals

Company overview:

Ezra provides B2B digital lending solutions for emerging markets in partnership with mobile and digital wallet operators and financial service providers. Ezra supports 24 operations in 23 countries, across Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Our key office locations are in Nairobi, Kenya and Dubai, UAE. 

Our flagship products are Airtime Credit Services (ACS), Nano and BNPL. 

• ACS is an airtime or data advance offered to prepaid mobile subscribers at the point of low credit. 
• Nano is a micro cash advance offered to mobile wallet users on demand. 
• BNPL facilitates payment installments for products and services 

As a FinTech company, our business is entirely technology and data driven, from determining subscriber eligibility, generating relevant offers, managing risk, loan issuance, recovery, optimizing performance and reporting, reconciliation and billing. 

Each day we process approximately 21M loan requests and 1.4 TB of data across our markets. This process needs to be robust, reliable and secure. 

But it doesn’t end there. We’re exploring new ways of using our platform and transactional data to improve our products and develop new product opportunities.