Latest Vacancies at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

Additional Category: Crisis Response
Type of Contract: Individual Contract
Post Level: National Consultant
Required Languages: English
Starting Date: 01-May-2022
Duration of Initial Contract: Initial 6 months with possibility for Extension
Expected Duration of Assignment: Initial 6 months with possibility for Extension

Background

• Insecurity in the North-west region of Nigeria – especially Katsina, Zamfara and Sokoto is characterized by a complex blending of communal conflicts, farmer-herder conflict, armed banditry and organized crime.
• These conflict drivers are further amplified by demographic pressure, relative deprivation, perceptions of economic exclusion and climate-induced risks. While numerous peace agreements including in Sokoto and Zamfara and amnesties provided some short-term stability, violence that resurged in the North West, especially in 2020 poses a significant stability risk to the region and country as a whole.
• In Katsina and Kaduna States for example, organized communal violence and banditry attacks tripled from April to June 2021 and at least 80,150 and 67,192 people respectively are now in IDP camps with many more urbanely displaced.  
• A UN mission to the region identified a combined number of 193 hotspot communities in Kaduna; 194 in Katsina; 106 in Zamfara and 40 in Sokoto – indicating the urgent need to mobilise urgent response and peacebuilding support to the region.
• UNDP has also been on the forefront of shaping the analytics on changing security dynamics in the region. Using sentiment analysis, this assessment conducted in Jan/March 2021 provided the basis upon which the Peace and Stability Outlook below was produced. A series of complimentary conflict analysis were undertaken by the EU, FCDO.
• Related assessments on the socio-economic context was carried out by UNICEF; while Humanitarian actors undertook rapid review of the evolving humanitarian situation in the country. The organisation also produced jointly by UNDP and FCDO as a framework for understanding the changing dynamics of instability in the North West.
• This note presented to the first North West Likeminded Group set the tone for high level advocacy and engagement in the region. 
• In terms of field engagement, UNDP convened both technical and high-level inter-agency mission to the three states with the objective of mapping possible entry points for UN and International support to the region. This mission had a focus on prevention.
• Therefore, UNDP Nigeria is looking for a driver to support the field coordinator in delivering UNDP’s programmatic support in the North West Region.
• Under the direct supervision of the field coordinator, the driver provides reliable and safe driving services to the UNDP Sokoto field office team ensuring the highest standards of discretion and integrity, sense of responsibility, and excellent knowledge of protocol and security issues.
• The Driver also demonstrates a client-oriented approach, courtesy, confidentiality, tact and ability to work with people of different national and cultural backgrounds.

Duties and Responsibilities
Summary of Key Functions:

• Provision of reliable and secure driving services
• Proper use of vehicle
• Day-to-day maintenance of the assigned vehicle
• Availability of documents/ supplies
• Ensures provision of reliable and safe driving services by a) driving office vehicles for the transport of UNDP personnel, visitors and other authorized personnel and delivery and collection of mail, documents and other items and b) meeting official personnel and visitors at the airport and other tasks as required.
• Ensures cost-savings through proper use of vehicle through accurate maintenance of daily vehicle logs, provision of inputs to preparation of the vehicle maintenance plans and reports.
• Ensures proper day-to-day maintenance of the assigned vehicle through timely minor repairs, arrangements for major repairs, timely changes of oil, check of tires, brakes, car washing, etc.
• Ensures availability of all the required documents/supplies including vehicle insurance, vehicle logs, office directory, and map of the city/country, first aid kit, and necessary spare parts.
• Ensures that all immediate actions required by rules and regulations are taken in case of involvement in accidents.
• Impact of Results
• The key results have an impact on the accurate, safe and timely execution of the CO services.

Managing Data:

• Collects and compiles data with speed and accuracy identifying what is relevant and discarding what is not, records it in an accessible manner and maintains data bases
• Thoroughly and methodically collects, verifies and records data demonstrating attention to detail and identifying and correcting errors on own initiative
• Transmits file data; creates and generate queries, reports and documents utilizing databases, spreadsheets, communications and other software packages with speed and accuracy
• Interprets data, draws conclusions and/or identifies patterns which support the work of others

Managing Documents, Correspondence and Reports:

• Creates, edits and presents information (queries, reports, documents) in visually pleasing, clear and presentable formats such as tables, forms, presentations, briefing notes/books and reports using advanced word processing and presentation functions and basic database and spreadsheet software
• Ability to produce accurate and well documented records conforming to the required standard

Planning, Organizing and Multi-Tasking:

• Organises and accurately completes multiple tasks by establishing priorities while taking into consideration special assignments, frequent interruptions, deadlines, available resources and multiple reporting relationships
• Plans, coordinates and organises workload while remaining aware of changing priorities and competing deadlines
• Demonstrates ability to quickly shift from one task to another to meet multiple support needs
• Establishes, builds and maintains effective working relationships with staff and clients to facilitate the provision of support.

Required Skills and Experience
Education:

• Secondary Education. 
• Valid Driver’s license.

Experience:

• 3 years’ work experience as a driver; safe driving record; knowledge of driving rules and regulations and skills in minor vehicle repair.
• Excellent knowledge of geographical architecture of North West
• Experience working in Sokoto and other parts of the North west

Language Requirements:

• Oral and written English, working knowledge of Hausa language

Criteria for Selection of the Best Offer:
Education:

• Master's in Political Sciences, Social Sciences, International development, Public Administration, or related fields.- Complies or Not

Relevant Experience: 

• 3 years’ work experience as a driver; safe driving record; knowledge of driving rules and regulations and skills in minor vehicle repair - 20 Points
• Valid Driver’s license - 20 Points
• Excellent knowledge of the evolving peace and security dynamics in Sokoto / Katsina / Zamfara states - 20 Points
• Ability to work under pressure in a multicultural and complex environment - 20 Points
• Experience of working in Sokoto / Katsina / Zamfara states - 10 Points
• Previous working experience with UN agencies or national government is an asset -10 points.

Competencies:
Functional Competencies:

• Demonstrates commitment to UNDP’s mission, vision and values.
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability.
• Knowledge of UNDP administrative policies and procedures.
• Organizational, planning and prioritizing skills and abilities.
• Ability to deal patiently and tactfully with visitors.
• Sense of initiative and good judgment.
• Ability to work in a team environment to achieve common goals

Corporate Competencies:
Operational Effectiveness:

• Ability to perform a variety of repetitive and routine tasks and duties
• Ability to review data, identify and adjust discrepancies
• Ability to handle a large volume of work possibly under time constraints
• Good knowledge of administrative rules and regulations
• Ability to operate and maintain a variety of computerized business machines and office equipment in order to provide efficient delivery of service
• Ability to organize and complete multiple tasks by establishing priorities
• Demonstrates excellent knowledge of driving rules and regulations and skills in minor vehicle repair (for Drivers)
• Demonstrates excellent knowledge of protocol (for Drivers)
• Demonstrates excellent knowledge of security issues (for Drivers)

Criteria for Selection:

• The offer will be evaluated by using the best value for money approach (combined scoring method).
• Technical proposal will be evaluated on 70%. Whereas budget proposed will be evaluated on 30% based on sufficiency for applying the data gathering techniques and for obtaining reliable data for the evaluation in the timeframe indicated.
• Below is the breakdown of technical proposal on 100% which will be brought to 70%:
• National Consultant (Associate) technical evaluation criteria:(Weight; 100% and Max Point; 100).

go to method of application »

Job Identification: 3027
Location: Lagos, Nigeria
Grade: NOB
Job Schedule: Full time
Vacancy Type: Fixed Term
Practice Area: Management
Bureau: Regional Bureau for Africa
Contract Duration: 1 Year with Possibility for extension

Background
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 ambiguity, 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 competencies 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 sense making 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

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 warranted.

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 

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; OR 
• Bachelor's Degree with additional two years in the related areas will be given due consideration.

Experience:

• Minimum 2 years (with Masters) or 4 years (with Bachelor degree) of professional experience in development programming or policy; social innovation; partnership building; engagement (public and private sector) and/or resource mobilization
• Demonstrated ability to design experiments, validate hypotheses and test prototypes;
• Professional experience in development programming or policy and social innovation.
• 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.

Competencies:

• 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 (real time, ‘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.

Language:

• Proficiency in written and spoken English.