Manager – Credit Strategy & Operations

Apollo Agriculture is an agritech company that provides smallholder farmers in Africa with access to high-quality farming inputs, financing, insurance, and agronomic training. By bundling these services into an integrated offering delivered through a network of local agrodealers, the company enables small-scale farmers to significantly improve their yields and income. Apollo uses data science and satellite imagery to assess credit risk for farmers who lack formal credit histories, making financial services accessible to a population historically excluded from traditional banking and lending systems. The company operates primarily in Kenya and is expanding across sub-Saharan Africa. Apollo Agriculture's mission is rooted in sustainability and climate resilience. By improving access to certified seeds, fertilizers, and crop insurance, the company helps farming families build more stable and productive livelihoods while contributing to broader food security goals. The emphasis on climate adaptation, including supporting farmers in selecting inputs suited to changing weather patterns, positions Apollo as an active participant in the green and climate-focused technology sector. What makes Apollo Agriculture distinctive is its end-to-end approach to smallholder farmer empowerment. Rather than addressing a single pain point, the company tackles financing, inputs, insurance, and training simultaneously, reducing the barriers that typically prevent small-scale farmers from investing in their land. This holistic model, combined with technology-driven credit assessment and a last-mile distribution network of agrodealers, allows Apollo to reach and serve farmers in rural and remote areas at scale.

Management: Reports to Head of Credit

 

Location: Nairobi, Kenya (preferred), or remote within ±4 hours of EAT with extensive travel to Nairobi and Apollo’s other markets.

About Apollo Agriculture:

Apollo Agriculture is a leading agri-fintech platform empowering small-scale farmers across Africa to boost profits and farm sustainably. Apollo uses AI and automation to unlock the massive small-scale farming market, enabling farmers to access optimised financing, high-quality inputs, expert digital advice, and risk management solutions. Apollo has grown quickly since launch, already reaching more than 400,000 paying farmers across Kenya and Zambia. Apollo’s technology delivers a much lower cost for financing and supplying critical farming inputs, advice, and risk solutions to smallholder farmers, enabling a future where millions of underserved farmers grow more, earn more, and thrive in a sustainable, market-driven system. 

About the Role:

We are looking for a versatile, high-ownership problem solver to own Apollo’s acquisition credit engine — how we decide which farmers to serve and on what terms, and how we keep that engine profitable and protected from fraud as we scale across markets. As more of our routine credit operations get automated, the role concentrates on the harder problems: framing decisions, bringing the analysis and a clear recommendation, aligning teams, and owning execution and results — setting direction together with credit leadership. What matters most is how you work: deep collaboration, clear communication, first-principles thinking, and genuine curiosity about our customers and our business.

Key Responsibilities:

• Own acquisition credit strategy end-to-end: who we approve, how much credit they get, how it is priced, how the product is structured, and the expected profitability of those decisions.

• Be a thought partner: collaborate closely with Product, Commercial, Growth, Engineering, and Finance to keep credit strategy aligned with business milestones — and go beyond credit: elevate good ideas, push back with data and align on facts, and take on hard operational problems across the business.

• Build and run the monitoring and learning loop: dashboards, controls, and automated triggers that show how policies and the portfolio are performing; experiments and impact assessments; and timely corrective action when performance deviates from plan.

• Lead fraud and data verification strategy and ops team:the rules and detection processes that stop fraud at acquisition, and the day-to-day running of the team — SOPs, incentives, performance management, and quality.

• Spend regular time in the field: meet farmers, agrodealers, field officers, and verification agents to understand their challenges first-hand, and use those insights to improve Apollo’s credit offering.

• Coach and develop the team: build accountability, resilience, and future leaders within the function.

• Be AI-first in your workflows: use AI wherever it cuts turnaround times, automates repetitive work, or improves quality.

Your responsibilities will evolve as Apollo grows, and this role will suit someone who is comfortable with frequent change.

Ideal Candidate:

The ideal candidate is a versatile generalist — a strong problem solver, communicator, and collaborator — with the analytical rigor to own credit decisions, and genuine motivation for Apollo’s mission of serving small-scale farmers. We welcome strong candidates from a range of backgrounds, including credit, strategy, analytics, product, and consulting.

• 4–7 years of experience in credit, risk, strategy, analytics, or product roles, ideally within financial services or consulting — including exposure to credit or lending risk: you understand how lending economics work (risk, pricing, portfolio performance).

• Structured, first-principles problem solving, with a track record of turning ambiguous business problems into shipped policies.

• Exceptional analytical ability, including SQL and dashboard tools — able to read through data, extract the hidden insights, and visualize them in ways most people cannot.

• Experience collaborating deeply across functions, influencing without formal authority, and leading and developing teams in fast-paced, high-growth environments.

• Strong communication skills: shares thinking with clarity in writing and in person, aligns people on facts, and constructively challenges the status quo.

• Real appetite for time in the field with the farmers we serve — based in Nairobi or willing to travel extensively to Apollo’s markets.

• Hands-on experience with AI tools and AI-assisted workflows.

• A degree in a quantitative or analytical discipline such as engineering, statistics, mathematics, or economics.

• Direct experience designing and optimizing credit policies (approve/decline, limit assignment, pricing) or fraud frameworks is a strong plus.

You don't need to tick every box — if most of this sounds like you, we'd like to hear from you!

What We Offer:

• A mission-driven role with the opportunity to shape how Apollo acquires and serves small-scale farmers across its markets.

• High ownership and the chance to work closely with senior leaders, with tangible impact on credit and commercial outcomes.

• A competitive compensation and benefits package.

• A collaborative, supportive culture that values autonomy, honesty, transparency, and respect — and a dynamic environment that fosters talent and growth.