About this role
Why You'll Love Working Here
Our pioneering technology fortifies staple grains in African mills, reaching over 70 million people daily. Our solution is more than a product; it's a mission of saving lives. You will be part of a passionate, mission-driven team committed to transforming health outcomes across Africa. We foster a high-performance work environment where career development is supported, and employee wellbeing is a priority. Our guarantee is that you will find a culture that makes you want to show up every day!
What is Expected of You
As our Senior Manager Procurement, you will lead procurement strategy and operations across East Africa, ensuring every purchasing decision delivers maximum value, strengthens operational excellence, and enables Sanku to achieve its mission. This isn’t just a job; it’s an opportunity to shape procurement into a strategic competitive advantage that supports Sanku's continued growth across Africa. You’ll collaborate with a passionate team to deliver solutions that directly improve lives and accelerate our mission.
How You'll Deliver Impact
• Lead strategic sourcing and category management across Sanku's spend: raw materials (except vitamins and minerals), packaging, freight and logistics, equipment, and indirect procurement. Define, refine, and redefine processes and categories as the business evolves, concentrating effort where value and risk are opportunities for cost and time savings.
• Oversee high-value procurement projects, supplier selection, tender processes, contract negotiations, and commercial agreements while ensuring value for money and effective risk management.
• Own import logistics and landed cost: at Sanku, procurement owns the international purchase all the way from the port of origin: freight, clearing, duties and exemptions, and delivery into the warehouse. The measure is total landed cost, not purchase price.
• Safeguard supply continuity: keep key materials at or above safety-stock thresholds through the weekly coordination with key department, build second-source coverage on critical materials, and extend contract and price-lock coverage for continuity and price stability.
• Build and maintain strategic supplier relationships with regional and international suppliers, negotiating favorable terms while ensuring quality, reliability, and long-term partnership. Procurement is Sanku's face to the supplier market: deal fairly, work with Finance to keep suppliers paid to agreed terms, resolve disputes quickly when they arise, and protect the reputation that keeps good suppliers choosing Sanku.
• Establish and run internal service standards: define and publish what internal customers can expect from procurement, tiered by criticality, and hold the function to it.
• Ensure full compliance with Sanku procurement policies, donor requirements where applicable, local procurement regulations, internal controls, and ethical procurement standards across all operating countries.
• Drive procurement digitalization and reporting: improve systems, analytics, and contract management; develop procurement KPIs and dashboards; and deliver clear, decision-ready monthly reporting on performance, risks, and priorities on your own initiative.
• Identify procurement risks across the region and implement mitigation strategies to strengthen supply continuity, supplier resilience, and business sustainability.
• Lead and develop the country procurement teams, building capability and succession depth, and set up procurement for new markets as Sanku expands within the region.
What We Are Looking For
• 9+ years of progressive Procurement and Supply Chain experience, with at least 3 years leading multi-country or regional procurement operations.
• Bachelor's Degree in Procurement, Supply Chain Management, Business Administration, or a related field, plus professional procurement certification such as MCIPS, CPSP, CIPS, CPSM, or equivalent.
• A practical, hands-on operator and aggressive self-trainer: builds structure in ambiguity, creates practical standards and processes quickly, sized for the company as it is and planning for future needs, closes their own gaps month by month, and finds workable solutions where the textbook answer does not exist.
• Strong analytical skills with excellent spreadsheet fluency: turns raw data into decisions and runs root-cause analysis on failures.
• Experience owning import logistics end to end: incoterms in practice, freight, clearing, duties and exemptions, and landed-cost management in African contexts.
• Strong negotiation, stakeholder management, and influencing skills in every direction: upward, across functions, and with their own team.