Job Vacancies @ UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) – 4 Positions

National Consultant - SDG Investor Map

Location : Freetown, SIERRA LEONE

Application Deadline : 10-Aug-22 (Midnight New York, USA)

Additional Category : Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction

Type of Contract : Individual Contract

Post Level : National Consultant

Languages Required : English

Starting Date : (date when the selected candidate is expected to start)

29-Aug-2022

Duration of Initial Contract : 7 Weeks

Expected Duration of Assignment : The expected duration of work is up to 7 weeks spanning in 7 monthss

UNDP is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence.

UNDP does not tolerate sexual exploitation and abuse, any kind of harassment, including sexual harassment, and discrimination. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks.

Background

At a time of unprecedented global challenges, sustainable finance is a driving force for social and economic resilience. Public and private finance are essential for recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, and from the wide-ranging effects on the achievements of the SDGs. Rallying private sector participation and strengthening private and public sector networks for achieving sustainable and inclusive economic growth take on new urgency. National resource mobilization and increased commitments from private investors and enterprises will be needed for recovery, while maintaining progress towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. In order to achieve transformational changes in health, climate, energy, environment, finance, education, agriculture, gender equality, and the eradication of poverty in all its forms, greater private sector engagement and investments are critically needed.

In this context and in response to this need, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) developed the SDG Impact as a Sustainable Finance Hub (SFH) flagship initiative to empower investors with clarity, insights and tools to achieve the SDGs. SDG Impact aims to provide investors, businesses and others with unified standards, tools, and services required to authenticate their contributions to advance the SDGs and to identify SDG investment opportunities in emerging economies and developing countries. In this context, the SDG Impact introduced an impact intelligence tool - the SDG Investor Maps – to be produced by UNDP Country Offices as a dynamic tool containing a range of market-specific investment opportunities for SDG-aligned capital deployment.

Government of Sierra Leone in collaboration with UNDP is implementing a joint programme on recommendations of the Sierra Leone Integrated Financial Framework Report, to promote integrated planning and financing for sustainable development, to accelerate attainment of the SDGs and middle level income status by 2035. Through this Programme, the Government of Sierra Leone is expected to establish a functional and sustainable integrated planning and Public Financial Management ecosystem that contributes to accelerated achievement of the SDGs targets and the National development priorities as defined in the MTNDP. Specifically, the joint Programme supports the Government of Sierra Leone to achieve a private sector-led economic growth and employment creation, by facilitating creation of conducive policy environment, strengthening PFM processes, providing platforms for dialogue and generating evidence for private –public collaboration. The specific objectives of the joint program are: (i) development of integrated financial and planning systems for implementation of development agenda; (ii) strengthening public financial management processes to ensure budget effectiveness and efficiency; and (iii) promoting private-public partnerships and collaborations in the context of the national development Plan and SDGs.

At present the Government of Sierra Leone is piloting the Integrated National Financing Framework (INFF) and developing internal capacities to ensure SDG-aligned integrated planning and financial management processes and policies. The INFF is a holistic and integrated approach to development financing, provided by the Addis Ababa Action Agenda on financing for development to help countries strengthen planning processes and overcome existing impediments to financing sustainable development and SDGs at the country level. The INFF provides a layout of a full range of financing sources – domestic and international sources of both public and private finance – and allows countries to implement strategies to increase investment, manage risks and achieve sustainable development priorities, as identified in a country’s national sustainable development strategy.

The present SDG Investor Map initiative will contribute to the expansion of the current INFF initiative by providing comprehensive market intelligence across priority sectors where development needs and policy priorities overlap and private capital can make a difference to people and planet. This will help determine the investment themes that could benefit from private sector investment flows to generate development outcomes. The SDG Investor Map will strengthen the Assessment and Diagnostics Pillar of the INFF by providing new insights into the financial landscape and information on business opportunities to attract and maintain private investors towards the emerging priorities from the global “cost of living crisis” (agriculture and agribusiness, energy and finance) through Public-Private partnerships. This follows the Joint SDG Fund’s spirit, as it will make it possible to identify business models and deploy innovative financing instruments to increase the flow of resources available and advance SDG and national development priorities.

The INFF was informed in 2019 by Development Finance Assessment commissioned by UNDP for the government of Sierra Leone. The DFA was an inception tool for the INFF process which provides a broader picture of the development finance landscape and identifies related shortcomings and opportunities to inform enhancement of development finance and strategies for delivery of long-term development results in the country. In that regard, the DFA Sierra Leone has assessed the government’s existing financing strategies, policies and institutional structures and identified specific roles and responsibilities of key stakeholders for implementation of the DFA recommendations (INFF road map). The DFA has identified challenges in Mobilisation and management of public financial sources which include over-reliance in traditional and unstainable sources of development finance such as limited private sector participation, resulting from lack of incentives to encourage private investment and financing flows towards national development priorities and the SDGs. These challenges to development financing have resulted in a financing gap, which the MTNDP financing strategy estimates a shortfall of $1.55billion throughout the MTNDP implementation period. The situation has been worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic and the increase in oil prices and the government needs to implement deliberate strategies to ensure mobilization of alternative sources of development finance, specifically private capital. The entire process aims to facilitate private investments in the key sectors for economic growth and sustainable job creation and match those with related public investments to improve productivity in the productive sectors.

The overall exercise will be a collaborative work between Government, led by the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development (MoPED), UNDP, private sector networks and partners. The process is intended to identify investment opportunities and determine the conditions for promoting private investments for mobilizing development financing.

Application Process

Applicants are requested to apply online at http://jobs.undp.org by 2nd August 2022. The application document can be accessed on https://procurement-notices.undp.org. Candidates are invited to submit applications together with their CV for these positions. UNDP applies a fair and transparent selection process that will consider the competencies/skills of the applicants as well as their financial proposals. Qualified women and members of social minorities are encouraged to apply. Interested applicants should send an email to: [email protected] for any inquiries

Duties and Responsibilities

The work will be an iterative research-intensive process with close interaction and cooperation with multiple public and private sector stakeholders. The SDG Investor Map process entails undertaking secondary data research (on existing development needs, policy priorities, and market opportunities) and conducting in-depth consultations with public and private sector stakeholders to verify findings and contribute new insights in line with steps defined in the SDG Investor Map Handbook. The process follows an 8-step process outlined in the Handbook, which filters down from national priorities based on sectors, subsectors, and districts. The data will then be analyzed to distil Investment Opportunity Areas (IOAs) and data-backed business models. The standard SDG Investor Map steps are:

•  Collect information on national sustainable development needs and policy priorities
•  Synthesize needs and policies into a set of national priority sectors
•  For each sector, collect information on sectoral SDG needs and sectoral investment policies
•  Synthesize needs and policies into a set of priority subsectors
•  Identify the subregions most aligned to each subsector
•  Synthesize information into a set of priority subregions
•  With this context, identify potential business models that could tackle sub-sectoral and subregional SDG needs whilst capitalizing on policy and investment momentum
•  For each business model, add a range of supporting information that can help investors to perform due diligence and eventually shape impactful deals.

The findings of the SDG Investor Map will be synthesized in an Excel template and uploaded into the SDG Investor Platform where investors can search for the market intelligence on investment opportunities in the Country. Prospective applicants are encouraged to review the SDG Investor Map methodology and study in-depth the results from other countries’ SDG Investor Maps to appreciate the methodology, approach, process and final results prior to submitting the application, which must firmly build on the global methodology.

Overall, building on the findings of the INFF approach and other previous efforts, the key responsibilities of the consultant team, composed of an International Lead Consultant and a National Consultant, are:

•  Conduct the research and synthesis of the SDG Investor Map according the 8-step methodology in the SDG Investor Map Handbook and propose a specific methodology for the rapid assessment of private sector capacities, building on the below direction
•  Contribute to identify key documents and data sources
•  Organize and conduct interviews and consultations with public sector stakeholders
•  Organize and conduct interviews and consultations with private sector for fact-finding and to verify findings
•  Identify a long- and shortlist of Investment Opportunity Areas (IOAs) through co-organizing and co-leading the workshops required in steps 7-8 of the SDG Investor Map Handbook
•  Facilitate and produce the SDG Investor Map Excel spreadsheet with comprehensive data points that will eventually be uploaded to the SDG Investor Platform
•  Produce the final narrative report on the Sierra Leone SDG Investor Map and the integrated rapid assessment on private sector capabilities.

The specific responsibilities of the National Consultant are as follows. He / she will work together and under the guidance of an International Lead Consultant:

• •  Under the guidance of the International Lead Consultant, undertake in-depth analysis of public and donor development statistics (e.g., human development databases, ease-of-doing-business data, private investment flows) at subsector and subregion levels.
  •  Support the International Lead Consultant in key desk research activities (e.g., reviewing national, subnational, and ministerial development plans; and assessing investment promotion strategies).

•  Support the International Lead Consultant in consultation with UNDP to prepare investor interviews and consultations (e.g., shaping interviewee longlist and performing background research on interviewees).
•  Support the International Lead Consultant in undertaking structured interviews and carrying out consultations with national, regional and international investors to deepen learnings from desk research and collect relevant data.
•  Support the collation of insights from multiple research sources into a master document, ensuring that data collected is of comparable breadth and depth (testing for the mutual exclusiveness of datapoints).

Competencies

Corporate:

•  Demonstrates integrity and fairness, by modeling the UN/UNDP’s values and ethical standards;
•  Promotes the vision, mission, and strategic goals of the UN and UNDP;
•  Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality, and age sensitivity and adaptability
•  Treats all people fairly;
•  Fulfils all obligations to gender sensitivity and has zero tolerance for sexual harassment.

Functional

•  Strong local networks: within the financial and corporate industries (banks, non-bank financial institutions, impact funds, HNWI, relevant philanthropies, development finance institutions), with relevant businesses, investment promotion agencies etc.
•  Strong ongoing knowledge of market context, of national development needs, and economic/ political priorities
•  Knowledge of the SDGs
•  Knowledge of the local investment landscape, and close familiarity with needs of global investors
•  Expertise in gathering and comprehensively analyzing country-level data as basis for identifying investment opportunities and developing data analytics on market sizing and defining key country hotspots
•  Data analysis expertise, ideally with extensive expertise in research and an understanding of statistics
•  Excellent advocacy skills relating to finance, business climate.
•  Excellent analytical skills
•  Ability to facilitate multi-stakeholder sessions
•  Ability to navigate sensitive political environments
•  Strong communication skills, including ability to produce high quality practical advisory reports and knowledge products

Client Orientation and Communication

•  Strong oral and written communication skills;
•  Excellent interpersonal and networking skills and the ability to establish and maintain effective working relations;
•  Supports and encourages open communication and responds positively to critical feedback and differing points of view;
•  Facilitating and encouraging open communication in the team, communicating effectively
•  Ability to work in a multi-cultural environment and to communicate sensitively across different constituencies and awareness of political sensitivities;
•  Builds strong relationships with clients and external actors

Required Skills and Experience

Master’s degree in the field of Statistics, Finance, Economics, Business studies or other relevant fields (PhD will be added advantage)

Job Identification : 4669

Locations : Freetown, Sierra Leone

Posting Date : 07/26/2022, 05:55 PM

Apply Before : 08/03/2022, 03:59 AM

Job Schedule : Full time

Agency : UNDP

Grade : NOB

Vacancy Type : Fixed Term

Practice Area : Crisis management / Country Management Support

Bureau : Regional Bureau for Africa

Contract Duration : 1 Year with Possibility for extension

Education & Work Experience : Master's Degree - 2 year(s) experience

Required Languages : Proficiency in written and spoken English

Vacancy Timeline

2 Weeks

Mobility required/no mobility

no mobility required

Job Description

Background

UNDP is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence.

UNDP does not tolerate sexual exploitation and abuse, any kind of harassment, including sexual harassment, and discrimination. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks.

Background and Organizational Context

The UNDP Strategic Plan embraces the complexity of development and commits the organization to helping countries find faster, more durable solutions to achieve Agenda 2030. Important development trends like urbanization, climate change, and rising inequalities pose significant challenges on our path to achieve the 2030 agenda of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

UNDP has begun incubating a number of strategic initiatives aimed at ensuring UNDP is ‘fit for purpose’ to deliver a new generation of solutions in line with the challenges the world faces. One such key strategic initiatives is the UNDP Accelerator Lab Network which operates as part of UNDP’s sustainable development offering.

Position Purpose

You are capable and excited about starting, designing and managing activities, direct engagement with local communities and collaboration across global networks. You are driven by learning new things, figuring out how they work and translating them across sectors. You tell stories of emergent solutions and you gravitate to solving global development challenges.

You have a natural inclination to interdisciplinarity, cross cultural mindset and cross sectoral experience with the cosmopolitan attraction for diversity. You are driven by a strong sense of purpose and commitment to make change happen and a keen eye to identify emerging opportunities and ‘at the edge’ trends. You are open to discovery and exploration, capable of articulating insights and ideas through visual thinking, open to serendipity and discovery yet are pragmatic and constructive working with public sector authorities. You are comfortable with ambiquity, capable of zooming out for context and zooming in for content and execution- sharp in pursuit of objectives, fast at adapting and changing course when needed. You have superb compentencies in program and portfolio management, are at ease with decision-making processes and dynamics of different models of governance.

You are curious, a natural strategic thinker and a talented do-er. You understand systems, the good, the bad and the ugly, and are capable of working within bureaucracies to make change, leverage technology to extend, enhance and multiply exploration, discovery and execution. You are digitally savy, you hack tools, and you are keen to be a part of a large global organization exhibiting United Nations values.

* The Accelerator Labs will be comprised of a core team with niche capabilities that focus on exploration, experimentation and grassroots innovation. Within the first 6-8 months of the Lab fully functioning, each member of the Core team will take the lead on one of the following functions:

•  Coordination
•  Training
•  Communications

The Core team of the Accelerator lab will have capabilities in:

•  Experimentation (instituting rapid learning about emerging challenges through design and running of a portfolio of experiments that is coherent with the type of challenges that are part of UNDP’s strategic plan, and
•  Mapping Solutions: ethnographic methods and immersion in community dynamics, identification of and work with lead users, and implications of bottom up solutions for the policy design
•  Exploration: The exploration function focuses on discovery and sensemaking of emerging trends, implications for systemic impacts and risks, and their potential for accelerating progress toward SDGs. Its work feeds into the portfolio of experiments ensuring its coherence with the emerging risks and opportunities and connects local dynamics and solutions into the broader national and international ecosystem of potential funders, partners, and allies thereby increasing the chances for acceleration. While critical for the functioning of the Accelerator Lab, the exploration function will also service the Country Office as determined and agreed with the UNDP senior management.

Duties and Responsibilities

Lead lab efforts in deep community immersion, collective intelligence and solutions mapping

•  Developing and sustaining positive relationships with a range of local community and citizen groups
•  Identifying and training local volunteers, recruiting Universities and think tanks for sustaining long term community outreach and engagement and identification of lead users, providing training and mentoring
•  Translation of ethnographic and field research findings into learning and action for the Accelerator Lab activities
•  Design specific field research and participatory methods to focus on the most vulnerable populations and those not usually engaged in public policy debates on development methods
•  Explore, document and increase understanding on emerging methods of tapping into bottom up solutions, lead users and grassroots innovations related to sustainable development
•  Convene a broad range of new partners with UNDP including artists, community organizers and emergent movements to explore areas for collaboration on sustainable development
•  Proactively manage risks with using ethnograpic tools and methods, including those related to ethics and privacy

Convene the processes of solution intake, assessment and designing prototypes for diffusion

•  Design and implement methods for sensing and building on indigenous knowledge and local solutions, consolidating, screening and describing incoming
•  Design criteria for consolidating incoming local solutions
•  Conduct field research to determine best methods fo making solutions transferable, design methods to test and stretch ideas for their applicability and diffusion as part of a portfolio approach.
•  Test the solutions and potential ideas in real life context to understand potential channels of spreading (including identifying private and public sector venues for uptake)
•  Analyse system level issues that local solutions address (and those that they don’t address, therefore creating insights on the gaps)
•  Design ‘things and tools’ needed to successful scale indigenous knowledge, lead user solutions, turning its insights into systemic change.
•  Advise on the accelerator lab’s experiment portfolio to ensure experiments are designed based on people’s knowledge, behaviors and peer to peer methods of managing and diffusing knowledge about sustainable development issues.
•  Design methods for integrating collective intellengence into UNDP programmes and engage with programme and project managers to translate ideas into concrete practice

Working out loud

•  Lead communication efforts and proactively use blog and social media to share findings from field research
•  Ensure UNDP’s communication efforts respect privacy and ethics considerations
•  Liaise with the broader Accelerator Lab network and the support team to share learnings and insights from the country-specific experience
•  Jointly with the CO, support lab partners to develop an emerging pipeline of new initiatives, support other activities related to the design and operation of the Lab
•  Proactively use blog posts and social media to share insights, attract partners and help position Accelerator Lab at the forefront of the exploration of new trends.

Advocacy, Organizational learning and interface with the core business of UNDP

•  Help embed solutions mapping and lead user methodology within the CO portfolio, design and provide trainings that include various methodologies and steps to identify and work with lead users
•  Provide technical consultation and training for national partners and the CO through various phases including asset mapping, developing a strategic portfolio logic, experiment design, prototype testing, and evaluation;
•  Develop communication and other tools to transform field research into actionaable intelligence
•  Work together with your Accelerator Lab colleagues and experts to codify and advance the Accelerator Lab practice and solutions mapping in particular.
•  Lead other activities related to the design and operations of the Accelerator Lab
•  Design and deliver engaging and meaningful methods for reflection on learning from field research and grassroots innovation.

Supervisory/Managerial Responsibilities: N/A

Competencies

Core

•  Achieve Results:-LEVEL 2: Scale up solutions and simplifies processes, balances speed and accuracy in doing work
•  Think Innovatively:-LEVEL 2: Offer new ideas/open to new approaches, demonstrate systemic/integrated thinking
•  Learn Continuously:-LEVEL 2: Go outside comfort zone, learn from others and support their learning
•  Adapt with Agility :-LEVEL 2: Adapt processes/approaches to new situations, involve others in change process
•  Act with Determination LEVEL 2: Able to persevere and deal with multiple sources of pressure simultaneously
•  Engage and Partner:-LEVEL 2: Is facilitator/integrator, bring people together, build/maintain coalitions/partnerships
•  Enable Diversity and Inclusion:-LEVEL 2: Facilitate conversations to bridge differences, considers in decision making

People Management

UNDP People Management Competencies can be found in the dedicated site.

Cross-Functional & Technical competencies

• •  Business Direction and Strategy System Thinking-Ability to use objective problem analysis and judgement to understand how interrelated elements coexist within an overall process or system, and to consider how altering one element can impact on other parts of the system
  •  Business Development-Knowledge Generation-Ability to research and turn information into useful knowledge, relevant for context, or responsive to a stated need
  •  Digital and Innovation-Story Telling-Ability to empathise with people's perceptions, motivations, feelings and mental models and craft narratives to build an emotive argument for change accordingly.
  •  Ability to present data, insights or information in compelling ways to mobilise resources, talent or action.
  •  Ability to choose media and channels that is fit for purpose to reach specific target audiences.
  •  Digital & Innovation-Solutions Mapping-Ability to engage and build rapport with vulnerable communities and get consent, facilitate participatory processes and navigate intricate power relations and cultural dynamics.
  •  Having the sensitivity and ability to identify grassroots solutions, capacities, assets, coping strategies that impacted communities have developed or used to address (emerging) development challenges.
  •  Being able to understand these solutions from a people's perspective and learn about the conditions that enable or prevent communities from developing such grassroots solutions or coping mechanisms.
  •  Understand how solutions and needs are paired, and how grassroots solutions can be used as an entry point to identify unaddressed or unmet development challenges and how to use these insights to inform policy design.
  •  Ability to reverse engineer solutions, understanding what aspects (artefactual, principles, conditions, configuration) can be scaled and how, being able to assess their potential to be transferred to other domains, regions or contexts and build a case for that.
  •  Ability to appreciate and integrate various sources of knowledge (academic, experiential, observational, traditional, indigenous) in problem solving processes.
  •  Set up structures and processes to collect ideas, solutions and facilitate matchmaking between supply and demand of solutions."
  •  Digital and Innovation Collective Intelligence Design Ability to design, lead or manage processes that help a collective to become smarter together by bringing together diverse groups of people, data, and technology.
  •  Ability to define and articulate why and how collective intelligence can add value to development programming (understanding problems; finding solutions; decision making and mobilising action; monitoring progress in real time, learning and adapting)
  •  Being able to integrate different types of data (realtime, ‘ground-truth’ and novel data) to unlock fresh insights. Understand guidelines and principles around data privacy, ethics and protection.

•  Increase diversity of inputs - and look beyond the 'usual suspects', ability to navigate and manage a variety of actors, appreciate the diversity in perspectives, opinions, expertise.
•  Ability to facilitate platforms or sessions where people can contribute by providing their views and ideas independently and freely.
•  Being people-centred: ensure people understand and can determine how their data is used. Feed back inputs and insights to empower people, don’t extract data.
•  Digital and Innovation Ethnography Ability to build rapport and empathy with people and vulnerable communities to learn about their everyday lives, experiences and context. Being able to identify and understand patterns of relations, and their meaning, between different entities (i.e. of people, objects, animals, etc.)
•  Being able to immerse deeply in the context of a community and look at it from an ""insiders perspective"" to understand how realities are socially constructed and understand and appreciated these realities; explore perceptions, motivations, preferences, needs, rituals to understand ""why people do things the way they do"".
•  Being inclusive when using digital tools engaging with communities; have a thorough understanding of ethical guidelines when engaging with vulnerable communities.
•  Ability to translate observations into compelling insights for community empowerment or to inform decision making, problem solving and policy design.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

•  Master’s degree in Anthropology, Sociology, Behavioral psychology, Design, Architecture, Communications or related field and minimum of 2 years of professional experience in development programming or policy; social innovation; partnership building; engagement (public and private sector) and/or resource mobilization

OR

•  Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology, Sociology, Behavioral psychology, Design, Architecture, Communications or related field and minimum of 4 years of professional experience in development programming or policy; social innovation; partnership building; engagement (public and private sector) and/or resource mobilization

Experience:

Experience, Knowledge, and Skills

•  Demonstrated ability to undertake field research in remote communities and document ethnographic evidence and honor expertise in unusual places
•  Demonstrate ability to work in participatory methods, follow the lead of people as experts in their own sustainable development
•  Proficiency in written and spoken English

Experience in following areas is desirable but not necessary:

•  Professional experience in development programming or policy and social innovation.
•  Proven professional knowledge and experience in approaches such as Ethnography, Systems Thinking, Behavioral Insights, Co-creation, Qualitative and Quantitative User Research, Positive Deviance, Community Asset Mapping, Service Design or Human Centered Design
•  Demonstrated ability to work with partners to help surface unarticulated needs
•  Proven ability to engage with remote and/or vulnerable communities through action research and other engagement means

Please note that continuance of appointment beyond the initial 12 months is contingent upon the successful completion of a probationary period.

Note: UNDP reserves the right to select one or more candidates from this vacancy announcement. We may also retain applications and consider candidates applying to this post for other similar positions with UNDP at the same grade level and with similar job description, experience and educational requirements.

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Job Identification : 4664

Locations : Freetown, Sierra Leone

Posting Date : 07/26/2022, 05:56 PM

Apply Before : 08/03/2022, 03:59 AM

Job Schedule : Full time

Agency : UNDP

Grade : NOB

Vacancy Type : Fixed Term

Practice Area : Crisis management / Country Management Support

Bureau : Regional Bureau for Africa

Contract Duration : 1 Year with Possibility for extension

Education & Work Experience : Master's Degree - 2 year(s) experience

Required Languages : Proficiency in written and spoken English

Vacancy Timeline

2 Weeks

Mobility required/no mobility

no mobility required

Job Description

Background

UNDP is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence.

UNDP does not tolerate sexual exploitation and abuse, any kind of harassment, including sexual harassment, and discrimination. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks.

Background and Organizational Context

The UNDP Strategic Plan embraces the complexity of development and commits the organization to helping countries find faster, more durable solutions to achieve Agenda 2030. Important development trends like urbanization, climate change, and rising inequalities pose significant challenges on our path to achieve the 2030 agenda of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

UNDP has begun incubating a number of strategic initiatives aimed at ensuring UNDP is ‘fit for purpose’ to deliver a new generation of solutions in line with the challenges the world faces. One such key strategic initiatives is the UNDP Accelerator Lab Network which operates as part of UNDP’s sustainable development offering.

Position Purpose

You are capable and excited about starting, designing and managing activities, direct engagement with local communities and collaboration across global networks. You are driven by learning new things, figuring out how they work and translating them across sectors. You tell stories of emergent solutions and you gravitate to solving global development challenges.

You have a natural inclination to interdisciplinarity, cross cultural mindset and cross sectoral experience with the cosmopolitan attraction for diversity. You are driven by a strong sense of purpose and commitment to make change happen and a keen eye to identify emerging opportunities and ‘at the edge’ trends. You are open to discovery and exploration, capable of articulating insights and ideas through visual thinking, open to serendipity and discovery yet are pragmatic and constructive working with public sector authorities. You are comfortable with ambiquity, capable of zooming out for context and zooming in for content and execution- sharp in pursuit of objectives, fast at adapting and changing course when needed. You have superb compentencies in program and portfolio management, are at ease with decision-making processes and dynamics of different models of governance.

You are curious, a natural strategic thinker and a talented do-er. You understand systems, the good, the bad and the ugly, and are capable of working within bureaucracies to make change, leverage technology to extend, enhance and multiply exploration, discovery and execution. You are digitally savy, you hack tools, and you are keen to be a part of a large global organization exhibiting United Nations values.

The Accelerator Labs will be comprised of a core team with niche capabilities that focus on exploration, experimentation and grassroots innovation. Within the first 6-8 months of the Lab fully functioning, each member of the Core team will take the lead on one of the following functions:

•  Coordination
•  Training
•  Communications

The Core team of the Accelerator lab will have capabilities in:

•  Experimentation (instituting rapid learning about emerging challenges through design and running of a portfolio of experiments that is coherent with the type of challenges that are part of UNDP’s strategic plan, and
•  Mapping Solutions: ethnographic methods and immersion in community dynamics, identification of and work with lead users, and implications of bottom up solutions for the policy design
•  Exploration: The exploration function focuses on discovery and sensemaking of emerging trends, implications for systemic impacts and risks, and their potential for accelerating progress toward SDGs. Its work feeds into the portfolio of experiments ensuring its coherence with the emerging risks and opportunities and connects local dynamics and solutions into the broader national and international ecosystem of potential funders, partners, and allies thereby increasing the chances for acceleration. While critical for the functioning of the Accelerator Lab, the exploration function will also service the Country Office as determined and agreed with the UNDP senior management

Duties and Responsibilities

Experiment portfolio design

•  Works with UNDP and partners in mapping the context and nature of development challenges, with a particular focus on understanding systemic issues beyond traditional silos and classifications and identifying drivers of change, and levers for intervention
•  Mapping systems and assets, identifying levers and logic for intervention, building hypotheses of change that are a fit to the system level challenges identified
•  Identify logic against which to asses fit and coherence of the individual portfolios with the frontier challenges on which they are meant to generate learning
•  Together with UNDP and development partners, coordinate portfolios of experiments to target multiple domains of complex problems.

Management of tests and experiments for sustainable development challenges

•  Collaborate with UNDP colleagues and stakeholders on the design of experiments across to validate the hypotheses and test the effectiveness of identified prototypes, including (but not limit to) defining variables, formulating hypotheses, and coordinating experimental protocols
•  Develop a framework to capture the learning from the experiments in such a way that it favours critical reflection and rapid adaptation over static reporting
•  Provide technical guidance for experiment design, roll-out and validation based on the experiment conditions, resources available, and requirements
•  Proactively manage risks within experiments including those related to ethics and privacy
•  Examine the results from the testing of prototypes and translate them into proposals informing programmatic decisions on next steps and implications for improvement, spin offs and scaling-up, where warrented.

Working out Loud

•  Proactively use blog and social media to share findings from the experiments and portfolio implementation
•  Help UNDP and partners disseminate insights from Accelerator lab experiments via social media platforms as a way to regularly reflect and engage with external audiences.
•  Liaise with UNDP’s global Accelerator Lab network and share learnings and insights from the country-specific experience
•  Jointly with the CO, support lab partners to develop an emerging pipeline of new initiatives, support other activities related to the design and operation of the Lab
•  Design and deliver engaging and meaningful methods for reflection on learning from experiments
•  Proactively use blog posts and social media to share insights, attract partners and help position Accelerator Lab at the forefront of the exploration of new trends.
•  Lead other activities related to the design and operations of the Accelerator Lab

Organizational learning and interface with the core business of UNDP

•  Help embed a portfolio logic in clients’ work including the existing UNDP Country Programme (as determined and agreed with the senior management)
•  Working with clients to encourage reflection and capturing of insights from individual experiments, as they related to the overall portfolio logic
•  Work together with your Accelerator Lab colleagues and experts to codify and advance the Accelerator Lab practice and portfolio design in particular.
•  Provide technical consultation and training for national partners and the CO through various phases including asset mapping, developing a strategic portfolio logic, experiment design, prototype testing, and evaluation;
•  Design and deliver engaging and meaningful methods for reflection on learning from experiments
•  Lead other activities related to the design and operations of the Accelerator Lab

Supervisory/Managerial Responsibilities: N/A

Competencies

Core

•  Achieve Results:-LEVEL 2: Scale up solutions and simplifies processes, balances speed and accuracy in doing work
•  Think Innovatively:-LEVEL 2: Offer new ideas/open to new approaches, demonstrate systemic/integrated thinking
•  Learn Continuously:-LEVEL 2: Go outside comfort zone, learn from others and support their learning
•  Adapt with Agility :-LEVEL 2: Adapt processes/approaches to new situations, involve others in change process
•  Act with Determination LEVEL 2: -Able to persevere and deal with multiple sources of pressure simultaneously
•  Engage and Partner:-LEVEL 2: Is facilitator/integrator, bring people together, build/maintain coalitions/partnerships
•  Enable Diversity and Inclusion:-LEVEL 2: Facilitate conversations to bridge differences, considers in decision making
•  People Management
•  UNDP People Management Competencies can be found in the dedicated site.

Cross-Functional & Technical competencies

•  Business Direction and Strategy System Thinking-Ability to use objective problem analysis and judgement to understand how interrelated elements coexist within an overall process or system, and to consider how altering one element can impact on other parts of the system
•  Business Development-Knowledge Generation-Ability to research and turn information into useful knowledge, relevant for context, or responsive to a stated need
•  Business Development-Human-centered Design-Ability to develop solutions to problems by involving the human perspective in all steps of the problem-solving process
•  Digital & Innovation-Experimentation-Ability to design, run and manage tests to evaluate ideas, solutions, or interventions to address development challenges, observe and learn about (system-wide) effects and implications.
•  Selecting appropriate experimentation methods, tools to fit with specific learning purposes (probe, trail & error, validate), conditions and constraints; being able to assess their potential risks, trade-offs and ethical ramifications.
•  Ability to turn test results into recommendations, document and present them in compelling ways to inform further improvements, iterative development cycles, planning and decision making.
•  Digital and Innovation Collective Intelligence Design Ability to design, lead or manage processes that help a collective to become smarter together by bringing together diverse groups of people, data, and technology.
•  Ability to define and articulate why and how collective intelligence can add value to development programming (understanding problems; finding solutions; decision making and mobilising action; monitoring progress in real time, learning and adapting)
•  Being able to integrate different types of data (realtime, ‘ground-truth’ and novel data) to unlock fresh insights. Understand guidelines and principles around data privacy, ethics and protection.
•  Increase diversity of inputs - and look beyond the 'usual suspects', ability to navigate and manage a variety of actors, appreciate the diversity in perspectives, opinions, expertise.
•  Ability to facilitate platforms or sessions where people can contribute by providing their views and ideas independently and freely.
•  Being people-centred: ensure people understand and can determine how their data is used. Feed back inputs and insights to empower people, don’t extract data.
•  Digital and Innovation Story Telling Ability to empathise with people's perceptions, motivations, feelings and mental models and craft narratives to build an emotive argument for change accordingly.
•  Ability to present data, insights or information in compelling ways to mobilise resources, talent or action.
•  Ability to choose media and channels that is fit for purpose to reach specific target audiences.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

•  Master’s degree in Social Science, International Development, Environmental Science, Transition or Complexity Science, Engineering, Design (e.g. industrial or service design, architecture, urban planning), Psychology or a related area and minimum of 2 years of professional experience in development programming or policy; social innovation; partnership building; engagement (public and private sector) and/or resource mobilization

OR

•  Bachelor’s degree in Social Science, International Development, Environment Science, Engineering, Design (e.g. industrial or service design, architecture, urban planning), Psychology or related area and minimum of 4 years of professional experience in development programming or policy; social innovation; partnership building; engagement (public and private sector) and/or resource mobilization

Experience:

Experience, Knowledge, and Skills

•  Demonstrated ability to design experiments, validate hypotheses and test prototypes;
•  Professional experience in development programming or policy and social innovation.
•  Proficiency in written and spoken English.

Experience in following areas is desirable but not necessary:

•  Proven professional knowledge and experience in social innovation approaches such as Systems Thinking, Behavioral Insights, Qualitative and Quantitative User Research, Co-creation, Prototyping, Lean Startup, Design Thinking, Data Empowerment, and Collective Intelligence
•  Demonstrated ability to work with clients to help surface unarticulated needs
•  Demonstrated ability to apply a portfolio logic to experiments
•  Demonstrated ability in running co-design sessions and capacity-building in experimental design, lean iteration and impact evaluation.

Please note that continuance of appointment beyond the initial 12 months is contingent upon the successful completion of a probationary period.

Disclaimer

Important information for US Permanent Residents ('Green Card' holders)

Under US immigration law, acceptance of a staff position with UNDP, an international organization, may have significant implications for US Permanent Residents. UNDP advises applicants for all professional level posts that they must relinquish their US Permanent Resident status and accept a G-4 visa, or have submitted a valid application for US citizenship prior to commencement of employment.

UNDP is not in a position to provide advice or assistance on applying for US citizenship and therefore applicants are advised to seek the advice of competent immigration lawyers regarding any applications.

Applicant information about UNDP rosters

Note: UNDP reserves the right to select one or more candidates from this vacancy announcement. We may also retain applications and consider candidates applying to this post for other similar positions with UNDP at the same grade level and with similar job description, experience and educational requirements.

Scam warning

The United Nations does not charge any application, processing, training, interviewing, testing or other fee in connection with the application or recruitment process. Should you receive a solicitation for the payment of a fee, please disregard it. Furthermore, please note that emblems, logos, names and addresses are easily copied and reproduced. Therefore, you are advised to apply particular care when submitting personal information on the web.

Job Identification : 4671

Locations : Freetown, Sierra Leone

Posting Date : 07/26/2022, 05:54 PM

Apply Before : 08/03/2022, 03:59 AM

Job Schedule : Full time

Agency : UNDP

Grade : NOB

Vacancy Type : Fixed Term

Practice Area : Crisis management / Country Management Support

Bureau : Regional Bureau for Africa

Contract Duration : 1 Year with Possibility for extension

Education & Work Experience : Master's Degree - 2 year(s) experience

Required Languages : Proficiency in written and spoken English

Vacancy Timeline

2 Weeks

Mobility required/no mobility

no mobility required

Job Description

Background

UNDP is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence.

UNDP does not tolerate sexual exploitation and abuse, any kind of harassment, including sexual harassment, and discrimination. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks.

The UNDP Strategic Plan embraces the complexity of development and commits the organization to helping countries find faster, more durable solutions to achieve Agenda 2030. Important development trends like urbanization, climate change, and rising inequalities pose significant challenges on our path to achieve the 2030 agenda of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

UNDP has begun incubating a number of strategic initiatives aimed at ensuring UNDP is ‘fit for purpose’ to deliver a new generation of solutions in line with the challenges the world faces. One such key strategic initiatives is the UNDP Accelerator Lab Network which operates as part of UNDP’s sustainable development offering.

Position Purpose

You are excited about starting, designing and managing activities, direct engagement with local communities and collaboration across global networks. You are driven by learning new things, figuring out how they work and translating them across sectors. You tell stories of emergent solutions and you gravitate to solving global development challenges.

You have a natural inclination to interdisciplinarity, cross cultural mindset and cross sectoral experience with the cosmopolitan attraction for diversity. You are driven by a strong sense of purpose and commitment to make change happen and a keen eye to identify emerging opportunities and ‘at the edge’ trends. You are open to discovery and exploration, capable of articulating insights and ideas through visual thinking, open to serendipity and discovery yet are pragmatic and constructive working with public sector authorities. You are comfortable with ambiquity, capable of zooming out for context and zooming in for content and execution- sharp in pursuit of objectives, fast at adapting and changing course when needed. You have superb compentencies in program and portfolio management, are at ease with decision-making processes and dynamics of different models of governance.

You are curious, a natural strategic thinker and a talented do-er. You understand systems, the good, the bad and the ugly, and are capable of working within bureaucracies to make change, leverage technology to extend, enhance and multiply exploration, discovery and execution. You are digitally savy, you hack tools, and you are keen to be a part of a large global organization exhibiting United Nations values.

* The Accelerator Labs will be comprised of a core team with niche capabilities that focus on exploration, experimentation and grassroots innovation. Within the first 6-8 months of the Lab fully functioning, each member of the Core team will take the lead on one of the following functions:

•  Coordination
•  Training
•  Communications

The Core team of the Accelerator lab will have capabilities in:

•  Experimentation (instituting rapid learning about emerging challenges through design and running of a portfolio of experiments that is coherent with the type of challenges that are part of UNDP’s strategic plan, and
•  Mapping Solutions: ethnographic methods and immersion in community dynamics, identification of and work with lead users, and implications of bottom up solutions for the policy design
•  Exploration: The exploration function focuses on discovery and sensemaking of emerging trends, implications for systemic impacts and risks, and their potential for accelerating progress toward SDGs. Its work feeds into the portfolio of experiments ensuring its coherence with the emerging risks and opportunities and connects local dynamics and solutions into the broader national and international ecosystem of potential funders, partners, and allies thereby increasing the chances for acceleration. While critical for the functioning of the Accelerator Lab, the exploration function will also service the Country Office as determined and agreed with the UNDP senior management.

Duties and Responsibilities

Horizon scanning and intelligence for the Accelerator Lab

•  Identify, visualize and communicate emerging development trends, data, technologies and issues with a particular focus on the edges and “below the radar screen” events, opportunities and players, and systemically map their impacts on economy, environment, society, and livelihoods of the poorest.
•  Identify new sources of evidence and insights, analyze and visualize patterns in unstructured sources of data, present new insights in accessible and comprehensive ways to enable sensemaking and analysis
•  Proactively explore and identify the new methods/approaches and frontier knowledge to tackle development challenges, collaborate with the Experimentation lead to turn these into learning options for addressing specific policy issues in the country
•  Provide technical guidance for horizon scanning, foresight and data analysis for colleagues and partners.
•  Contribute to the formulation of the Accelerator Lab service lines to the UNDP Country Programme based on findings from horizon scanning, systems’ mapping, and local knowledge

Tapping into new data sources

•  Set up partnerships with private sector companies including mobile network operators among others to gain access to anonymized data sets that can be used for sustainable development.
•  Demonstrate through exploratory tests the utility of new data sources for UNDP’s development work
•  Create partnerships for analyses of real time and other data to better inform decisions and policies
•  Design and deliver workshops, tools, or platforms that tap into the collective intelligence of communities and mobilise action.
•  Proactively manage risks with using data and technology, including those related to ethics and privacy
•  Transform unstructured data sets into insights for UNDP and partners

Working out loud

•  Share findings from the exploration on future trends, new methodologies/approaches, potential partnership, and others within UNDP and with partners;
•  Proactively use blog posts and social media to share insights, attract partners and help position Accelerator Lab at the forefront of the exploration of new trends.
•  Liaise with UNDP’s global Accelerator Lab network and share learnings and insights from the country-specific experience
•  Jointly with the CO, support lab partners to develop an emerging pipeline of new initiatives, support other activities related to the design and operation of the Lab

Organizational learning and interface with the core business of UNDP

•  Set up tools and partnerships to ransform information into actionable intelligence
•  Design and deliver horizon scanning trainings for partners and UNDP, help embed horizon scanning and attention to the ‘edge’ activities in the CO and with the partners
•  Work together with your Accelerator Lab colleagues and experts to codify and advance the Accelerator Lab practice and exploration in particular.
•  Organize and implement knowledge sharing and network events;
•  Lead other activities related to the design and operations of the Accelerator Lab
•  Design and deliver engaging and meaningful methods for reflection on learning from explorations

Competencies

Core

•  Achieve Results:-LEVEL 2: Scale up solutions and simplifies processes, balances speed and accuracy in doing work
•  Think Innovatively:-LEVEL 2: Offer new ideas/open to new approaches, demonstrate systemic/integrated thinking
•  Learn Continuously:-LEVEL 2: Go outside comfort zone, learn from others and support their learning
•  Adapt with Agility :-LEVEL 2: Adapt processes/approaches to new situations, involve others in change process
•  Act with Determination LEVEL 2: Able to persevere and deal with multiple sources of pressure simultaneously
•  Engage and Partner:-LEVEL 2: Is facilitator/integrator, bring people together, build/maintain coalitions/partnerships
•  Enable Diversity and Inclusion:-LEVEL 2: Facilitate conversations to bridge differences, considers in decision making
•  People Management
•  UNDP People Management Competencies can be found in the dedicated site.

Cross-Functional & Technical competencies

•  Business Direction and Strategy System Thinking-Ability to use objective problem analysis and judgement to understand how interrelated elements coexist within an overall process or system, and to consider how altering one element can impact on other parts of the system
•  Business Development-Knowledge Generation-Ability to research and turn information into useful knowledge, relevant for context, or responsive to a stated need
•  Digital and Innovation-Story Telling-Ability to empathise with people's perceptions, motivations, feelings and mental models and craft narratives to build an emotive argument for change accordingly.
•  Ability to present data, insights or information in compelling ways to mobilise resources, talent or action.
•  Ability to choose media and channels that is fit for purpose to reach specific target audiences.
•  Digital and Innovation-Data Analysis- Ability to extract, analyse and visualize data (including
•  Real-Time Data) to form meaningful insights and aid effective decision making
•  Digital and Innovation-Collective Intelligence Design-Ability to design, lead or manage processes that help a collective to become smarter together by bringing together diverse groups of people, data, and technology.
•  Ability to define and articulate why and how collective intelligence can add value to development programming (understanding problems; finding solutions; decision making and mobilising action; monitoring progress in real time, learning and adapting)
•  Being able to integrate different types of data (realtime, ‘ground-truth’ and novel data) to unlock fresh insights. Understand guidelines and principles around data privacy, ethics and protection.
•  Increase diversity of inputs - and look beyond the 'usual suspects', ability to navigate and manage a variety of actors, appreciate the diversity in perspectives, opinions, expertise.
•  Ability to facilitate platforms or sessions where people can contribute by providing their views and ideas independently and freely.
•  Being people-centred: ensure people understand and can determine how their data is used. Feed back inputs and insights to empower people, don’t extract data.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

•  Master’s degree in Social sciences, Data science, Statistics, Physics, Computer Science, Business Intelligence, or related field and minimum of 2 years of professional experience in development programming or policy; social innovation; partnership building; engagement (public and private sector) and/or resource mobilization

OR

•  Bachelor’s degree in Social sciences, Data science, Statistics, Physics, Computer Science, Business Intelligence, or related field and minimum of 4 years of professional experience in development programming or policy; social innovation; partnership building; engagement (public and private sector) and/or resource mobilization

Experience:

Experience, Knowledge, and Skills

•  Professional experience in development programming or policy and social innovation;
•  Demonstrated capacity in horizon scanning;
•  Demonstrated capacity in data analysis and visualization.
•  Proficiency in written and spoken English.

Experience in following areas is desirable but not necessary:

•  Proven professional knowledge and experience in social innovation approaches such as Systems Thinking, Ethnography, Crowdsourcing, Collective Intelligence Design, Citizen Science, Positive Deviance, Social Network Analysis, Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning
•  Professional experience in partnership building and engagement (public and private sector)
•  Demonstrated capacity to use open data, mobile data, geospatial data, drone & satellite data, citizen data for informing policy making, strategic planning, or programme design.
•  Proven professional knowledge and experience in at least one of the following: Future thinking and Foresight, Design Research, and Systems Mapping;
•  Key awareness of key global and regional trends;
•  Demonstrated access to networks of edge innovators.

Please note that continuance of appointment beyond the initial 12 months is contingent upon the successful completion of a probationary period.

Applicant information about UNDP rosters

Note: UNDP reserves the right to select one or more candidates from this vacancy announcement. We may also retain applications and consider candidates applying to this post for other similar positions with UNDP at the same grade level and with similar job description, experience and educational requirements.

Scam warning

The United Nations does not charge any application, processing, training, interviewing, testing or other fee in connection with the application or recruitment process. Should you receive a solicitation for the payment of a fee, please disregard it. Furthermore, please note that emblems, logos, names and addresses are easily copied and reproduced. Therefore, you are advised to apply particular care when submitting personal information on the web.