Individual Consultant to Support the Implementation of Projects on Training of Youth in ICT and Digital Technology Entrepreneurship and Facilitate Centers of Excellence (CoEs) for e-Skills Development at Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)

Reference No.1-ECW/ADM-PROC-DITS/6-11/kik
Location: Abuja
Venue: ECOWAS Commission

Overview

• The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), in the framework of the execution of its 2020 Budget, intends to apply a portion of the budgeted funds for the Selection of an Individual Consultant to support the Implementation of Projects on Training of Youth in ICT and Digital Technology Entrepreneurship and Facilitate Centers of Excellence (CoEs) for e-Skills Development.
• The overall objective of this programme is primarily to promote digital entrepreneurship, create jobs, alleviate poverty, promote an enabling environment for employment and spur economic growth through youth digital capacity building and enterprise support. In addition to job creation, this programme seeks to encourage and support youths to fulfil tomorrow’s job requirements through e-skills development.
• The consulting services (“the Services”) include the deliverables listed under item 4. below and the duration of the contract shall be for a period of one (1) year renewable.

Duties and Responsibilities of the Consultants

• Conduct, comprehensive assessment of Center of Excellence (CoEs) (inventory of existing facilities, level and quality of trainers in the institutions, costs for individual/group of trainee and modality of payment, location and easy accessibility to the trainee participants, on-site and online training capability, training languages, etc);
• Analyze Center of Excellence (CoEs) offers/packages on job creation training/capacity building that they can provide for the youths and women in the different sphere identified in the programme and totally complying with the objective of the programme and eventually propose new appropriate trainings;
• For the assignments i) and ii) the consultant will use as inputs the questionnaire of ECOWAS filled by CoEs and complete by online consultative with those CoEs who did not respond or not identified in the initial list establish by ECOWAS for consultation.
• Assess and analyze the current status of the ecosystem of youth entrepreneurship in Member States (training, various practices and incentives, etc.);
• Take stock of what Member States are doing as well as the priority actions they plan to undertake to promote youth entrepreneurship over the next 3 to 4 years;
• For the assignment iv) and v) the consultant may use as input the questionnaire filled by Member States and complete by online consultative with Member States who did not respond to the questionnaire;
• From proposals of CoEs and other specialized institutions and outcomes from Members States entrepreneurship ecosystem analysis, propose the content of the ECOWAS regional training programme for youth on Digital Entrepreneurship which ECOWAS will implement in two phases (first phase of two years priority programme, second phase which implementation is totally owned by member states through their national center of excellence) in line with the job creation objective and e-skills development; and
• Evaluate the total cost of the Programme to be considerate in the financing plan and the financing mobilization documents taking into consideration various potential contributions.

Requirements
Educational Qualification:

• Advanced university degree (Master's degree or equivalent) in Telecommunications / ICT, Computer Science, Information Systems Management, or any related field from a recognized university;

Experience:

• Shall justify at least fifteen (15) years progressively responsible experience in project management, planning, design, development, implementation of information systems and telecommunications and 5 years at a supervisory level;
• Candidates shall justify of having executed at least one (1) similar assignment (large nationals or international projects) organized and successfully executed with International Organization or Public Body or Government or Donors funded project;
• Candidates shall justify Knowledge of ICT industry benchmarks for performance, enhance services and performance management with demonstrated ability to lead a programme transformation (Proof of 1 similar assignment);
• Shall demonstrate Strong knowledge of Information Systems and Telecommunications Technologies for large and complex geographically dispersed organizational environments and knowledge of relevant software related to Strategic Planning / MS Project / Training etc.

Language:

• The individual consultants shall be fluent in English, French and Portuguese Languages (reading, writing, speaking) and the practical knowledge (reading, writing, speaking) of the others of the ECOWAS Official languages (English, French or Portuguese) would be an advantage.