Legal & Compliance Associate, Francophone Markets

Overview

This role involves owning document review and regulatory work across French-speaking markets. You will review and negotiate NDAs, commercial contracts, and regulatory documents in French and English, ensuring fast turnaround for deals and licensing applications.

Level: Mid-level (roughly 3–6 years’ experience)

Team: Legal, Licensing & Market Expansion

Location: Douala or Dakar preferred; open to other major cities across Francophone Africa. Some travel.

Working model: Remote

Languages: French and English (professional written and spoken level)

Responsibilities

Contracts and document review

• Review, redline, and negotiate NDAs, partner and vendor agreements, banking and payment-provider contracts, and service agreements in French and English.
• Draft from templates and improve them by building a bilingual playbook of standard positions, fallback clauses, and red lines.
• Translate legal and regulatory documents between French and English accurately enough to sign or submit.
• Provide clear business decisions on each document: sign, sign with specified changes, or do not sign—and explain why.

Regulatory and compliance

• Prepare and review licence applications, regulator correspondence, and responses to information requests in Francophone markets (for example BCEAO in the UEMOA zone, and BEAC and COBAC in the CEMAC zone).
• Track regulatory change in French-speaking markets and flag implications for products and licences.
• Review AML/CFT policies, KYC procedures, and compliance documents for local fit, and keep them current.
• Manage company secretarial work for Francophone entities, including incorporation documents, filings, board resolutions, and statutory registers.

Working with others

• Manage external counsel in each market: scope the work, check output, and control cost.
• Support country managers, partnerships, and operations with fast, practical legal input.
• Maintain a live tracker for every document and filing you own, including status, blockers, and next dates.

Requirements

• Law degree.
• Admission to the bar or an equivalent professional qualification is welcome but not required.
• Roughly 3–6 years reviewing and negotiating commercial contracts in a law firm, in-house, or a compliance function.
• Excellent French and English, written and spoken. Ability to redline a contract, write to a regulator, and run a negotiation call in either language.
• Sound commercial judgment, including the ability to separate real risk from noise and determine which points are worth pursuing.
• Clear, concise writing, including the ability to summarize a 40-page agreement in five lines for a non-lawyer to act on.
• Working knowledge of at least one Francophone African legal environment.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in fintech, payments, mobile money, banking, or digital assets.
• Hands-on experience with payment or e-money licensing, or direct dealings with BCEAO, BEAC, COBAC, or a national regulator.
• Knowledge of OHADA company and commercial law.
• Experience with AML/CFT, data protection, or sanctions compliance.
• Experience managing external counsel across several countries.

Compensation & Benefits

No compensation or benefits details were provided in the original description.

Application Guidance

In your application, include:

• Something you started without being asked, or
• A problem you solved that was not part of your job, or
• A result you delivered with little guidance

Be specific about what you did and what changed.