Supply Chain Officer (Project Manager) Nigeria, P4 at World Food Programme (WFP)

Requisition No: 102163
Location: Abuja

Background and Organisational Context

• The World Food Programme (WFP) is the world's largest humanitarian agency, fighting hunger worldwide. WFP and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) signed an agreement in September 2017 that seeks to accelerate on-the-shelf availability of health commodities through sustainable solutions across 17 countries over 3.5 years.
• SOLVE (Supply Optimization through Logistics Visibility and Evolution) is a new and innovative approach to strengthening health supply chains and directly responds to the clarion call made through Agenda 2030, SDG 17 ‘Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development’.
• This initiative provides a unique value proposition uniting WFP’s global supply chain talent, knowledge and global network with the BMGF’s expertise in health and private sector supply chains.

Job Context

• As the Supply Chain Officer (Project Manager), you are responsible for determining the strategic direction and implementation of SOLVE project in Nigeria for WFP. You will develop country-specific frameworks to increase supply chain maturity across the health supply chain by directing evaluations, proposing solutions and leading the implementation of solution-based interventions in three core areas:
  • Private sector retail
  • Public sector health
  • Technical markets
• You will be based in Abuja, Nigeria, and will report to the Head of Supply Chain in the WFP Nigeria Country Office. To ensure consistency of the implementation of SOLVE across the 17 countries, you will coordinate on technical matters with the Global SOLVE Cell in HQ, and the Global Project Coordinator of SOLVE will provide input to your performance evaluation.

Key Accountabilities (not all-inclusive)

• Lead and oversee health supply chain mapping across Nigeria, including identifying and analyzing key (private, public, institutional and operational) strategic partners.
• Lead the development and implementation of work plans to increase supply chain maturity across priority areas, which includes identifying interventions and overcoming critical supply chain constraints.
• Lead a team of supply chain experts, ensuring appropriate development and enabling high performance.
• Coordinate with global workstream leads to identify the current processes, needs and gaps of health supply chains across Nigeria, and participate in the country's supply chain maturity evaluations, technical market assessments and retail assessments.
• Foster relationships with key health supply chain actors and SOLVE partners to ensure a global cohesion and contribution towards health supply chain maturity.
• Analyze  country context and lead the design and management of end-to-end operational supply chain and retail networks, to proactively mitigate and/or address dynamic supply chain challenges and obtain operational optimization.
• Drive continuous improvement and innovative initiatives through analyzing best practices from the humanitarian and development fields, academia and private sector.
• Represent the SOLVE project at key meetings with diverse stakeholders ensuring messages are delivered in the appropriate technical language. Be the catalyst to rally stakeholders for action on common supply chain issues.
• Drive continuous improvements by leading and facilitating workshops which are platforms for advocating change.
• Nurture a culture of innovation within the health supply chain.
• Ensure the effective achievement of key performance targets.
• Deploy supply chain training plans and initiatives.
• Any other duties as required.

Standard Minimum Qualifications
Education:

• Advanced University degree preferably in Supply Chain Management, Engineering, Economics, Business Administration, Logistics, or other related field, or First University degree with additional years of related work experience and/or training/courses.

Languages:

• Fluency (level C) in English. Intermediate knowledge (level B) of another official UN language: Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, Spanish, and/or WFP’s working language, Portuguese.

Professional Experience:

• Minimum 8 years of relevant post-graduate professional experience in supply chain and project management.

Desired Experiences, Knowledge and Skills for Entry into the Role
Experiences:

• Experience in managing supply chain operations, including coordination with internal and external stakeholders and supporting emergency programmes.
• Experience in shaping and implementing operational supply chain strategies in a country, preferably in a humanitarian health supply chain setting.
• Experience in designing and implementing supply chain, retail and partnership networks.
• Experience in developing and nurturing relationships and national capacity-building initiatives with UN agencies, NGOs, the private sector and/or government organisations.
• Experience in collaborating with diverse stakeholders and teams, including government officials, public health specialists and programme implementers.
• Experience in implementing/setting-up supply chain improvement and optimization initiatives to achieve cost efficiency, improved agility, reliability and quality.
• Experience in delivering maturity models with diverse stakeholders, identifying the least performing areas and tailoring coaching plans to increase maturity standing.
• Experience supervising a team with staff members from diverse and multi-cultural backgrounds.

Knowledge and Skills:

• Solid understanding of humanitarian and/or global health supply chain space, including actors, networks and strategies, with a track record for establishing and sustaining high-level relationships.
• Established ability to communicate a clear vision and inspire, motivate and coach a team to achieve extraordinary performance.
• Solid project leadership skills combined with strong in-depth analytical skills.
• Demonstrated excellent project management skills and multi-tasking abilities.
• Ability to rapidly grasp and engage team members at different levels of interventions, adjusting to different cultural requirements and managerial needs.
• Fully conversant in the concepts of maturity models and Visibility Analytics Network (control towers).
• Takes initiative to understand and resolve unstructured problems with high energy and persistence.
• Effective communication, stakeholder managing and influencing skills.

Terms and Conditions

• This is a fixed-term appointment (which expires 31 December 2020) locked specifically to the position with TORs specified above. WFP’s policies regarding mobility, promotion, and conversion will not apply to this appointment.
• The appointment may be extended beyond the expiry specified conditioned upon, but not limited to, performance, the continuing need for the post, and the availability of funding for the post.