Market Category Specialist, Capex (East Africa)

Role Overview

This role sits within the East Africa procurement category team and carries day-to-day responsibility for delivering the capital expenditure programme across Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania — from early strategy and sourcing work through to signed contracts, supplier performance management and verified savings. You will work shoulder to shoulder with category leads, in-market engineering and operations colleagues, and external suppliers to convert business requirements into commercially sound outcomes for breweries, distilleries and the supporting distribution and export network. The work matters because capital projects that land on time, on budget and to specification are what keep production capacity, utility costs and the group's sustainability commitments on track.

Key Responsibilities

• Deliver the East Africa CAPEX programme end to end, ensuring projects meet agreed timelines, budgets (including savings targets) and technical specifications.
• Support the category lead in refreshing category strategy, supplying performance and spend analysis that shapes where the function focuses next.
• Lead or contribute to major strategic sourcing projects, with primary focus on large capital and utilities CAPEX, and additional exposure to MRO and utilities spend areas.
• Design and run sourcing events and RFPs with internal partners so that evaluation criteria reflect genuine business and commercial outcomes rather than price alone.
• Apply the negotiation toolkit to plan and prepare negotiations, support category managers in closing contracts, and manage those contracts through their full lifecycle including compliance monitoring.
• Carry out market and supplier risk assessments, feed data into mitigation activity, and keep procurement standards current by applying and refining established tools and techniques.
• Manage supplier relationships using the function's SRM framework — reviewing performance, agreeing improvement plans, and developing the supply base in line with sustainability targets.
• Act as SPM programme lead for key suppliers within the sub-category, and build benchmarking, cost modelling and analytics capability that the wider procurement team can reuse.
• Partner with in-market teams across the region, sharing supplier performance data, insights and good practice, and aligning on pan-regional and global sourcing recommendations.

Requirements & Qualifications

• Graduate or equivalent qualification, plus membership of a recognised professional body such as CIPS.
• At least three years' experience in CAPEX procurement, ideally gained in a manufacturing, beverage, FMCG or comparable capital-intensive environment.
• Proven track record in category management, sourcing execution and supplier relationship management, with consistent delivery against targets.
• Strong analytical and financial awareness, including a clear grasp of financial goals and the value drivers behind them.
• Technically literate, with demonstrated success in using procurement and enterprise systems.
• Confident verbal, written and presentation skills, supported by strong interpersonal ability and comfort working with technical and engineering teams.
• Experience running sourcing exercises across multiple business partners at pan-regional or global scale — analysing options, making recommendations and securing business alignment.
• Able to collaborate effectively with regional and in-market colleagues throughout sourcing execution and ongoing supplier performance management.

What We Offer / Why Join

You will join a procurement function that manages a multi-billion-pound spend base, treating innovation in services, partnerships and supplier solutions as core to how it creates value. The role gives you scope to work across large capital projects, utilities and adjacent spend categories, applying recognised category excellence standards and contributing to the development of new tools and techniques that get adopted by the wider team. You will operate in a genuinely multi-cultural, multi-national, multi-currency environment with varied regulatory, tax and compliance demands, and be supported and encouraged within an inclusive culture wherever you choose to take your career.