Quantitative finance
Model markets and risk with mathematics and machine learning.
Your running project
Measure a portfolio's risk
- The need
- Estimate what could be lost, test the model on the past, state its limits.
- The data
- Public historical prices, such as those from the BRVM.
- External tools
- PythonpandasNumPyJupyter
Workshop
Establish the needs
Who uses it, what problem it solves, how to tell it worked.
What you will learn
- Probability, statistics and stochastic calculus
- Python for finance and time series
- Asset pricing and risk management
- Applied machine learning, and its pitfalls
Certifications to aim for at the end
None is truly entry level: this job generally requires a strong maths background.
- IntermediateCFA Program (Chartered Financial Analyst)CFA InstituteThree levels, and not specific to quantitative finance.
- AdvancedFinancial Risk Manager (FRM)GARP
- AdvancedCertificate in Quantitative Finance (CQF)CQF InstituteThe only one specific to the job; six months part-time, online.
These certifications are issued by their own bodies, not by Nangmo, and their exams are paid for with them. Checked on 3 November 2026: confirm the language, price and exam location on their site before registering. These exams are generally taken without AI: you will need to read and reason on your own.
How to start a career in this field
- 1Strengthen your maths and statistics: this is the main filter.
- 2Have a risk model generated in Python, then test it, flagging its limits.
- 3Prepare CFA Level I or FRM Part I.
- 4First aim for a risk analyst role at a bank or insurer, then a specialised master's if needed.
First jobs to aim for
- Junior risk analyst
- Junior quantitative analyst
- Financial analyst
The workshop is open, but this path's lessons are not online yet. Tell us you are interested: it helps us decide which to write first.