Agriculture Sector Expert – Nigeria’s NDC 3.0 Implementation and Investment plans

The expert delivers government-validated technical inputs to the agriculture substantial component of Nigeria’s NDC 3.0 Implementation Strategy and Action Plan, and a prioritized, investment-ready agriculture pipeline, screened from the full set of NDC 3.0 agriculture measures and narrowed to the priority key categories and investment archetypes selected through the screening gate, comprising: a screened long-list, a government-validated short-list, pre-feasibility and business-model analyses, and investor-ready concept notes/project profiles for three (3) priority agriculture projects, subject to an agreed investment-readiness threshold, prepared and delivered jointly with the Financial Engineering, Structuring and Modelling Expert.

Home-based, with missions to Abuja, Nigeria

From 25 September 2026 to 25 September 2027 (120 working days over 12 months)

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is the United Nations system's designated entity for addressing environmental issues at the global and regional level. Its mandate is to coordinate the development of environmental policy consensus by keeping the global environment under review and bringing emerging issues to the attention of governments and the international community for action. The NDC Act & Invest is a global project led by UNEP and currently funded by the International Climate Initiative (IKI) and the NDC Partnership’s Partnership Action Fund (PAF) multi-donor trust fund. It is designed to support countries raise their climate ambition and translate their new Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs 3.0) submitted in 2025 into actionable, investable plans. Structured around three interconnected workstreams: 1/fostering G20+ ambition and action, 2/piloting policy and planning alignment, and 3/providing deep-dive support to enhance NDCs 3.0 investability, the project aims to bridge the gap between climate commitments and tangible implementation. By aligning national strategies, strengthening enabling environments, and working collaboratively with key partners, including the NDC Partnership, GIZ, UNDP’s Climate Promise, UNFCCC, multilateral development banks (MDBs), development finance institutions (DFIs), and private sector actors, NDC Act & Invest aims to make the next generation of NDCs both more ambitious and more achievable, accelerating progress toward the 1.5°C goal and enhancing global resilience. The NDC Act & Invest team, based within the Mitigation Branch in Paris, is responsible for the global management and overall coordination of the project across partner countries, in line with UNEP’s delivery model. The team also acts as the main liaison between UNEP and the NDC Partnership, coordinating UNEP’s responses to country support requests shared through the Partnership, identifying and applying for additional funding where appropriate, and consolidating implementation and progress reporting. In addition, the team maintains close coordination with related projects under the IKI framework to ensure coherence and synergies across initiatives. Nigeria submitted its Third Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC 3.0) to the UNFCCC in September 2025, committing to economy-wide absolute emissions reductions of 29% by 2030 and 32.2% by 2035 relative to the recalculated 2018 baseline of 573.5 Mt CO2e, on a pathway to net-zero emissions by 2060. Nigeria estimates that US$337 billion will be required over 2026–2035 to implement the NDC 3.0 (US$195 billion for mitigation and US$141.5 billion for adaptation), with 80 per cent conditional on international support. The NDC 3.0 foresees the preparation of an Implementation Strategy and Action Plan (ISAP) and an NDC Investment Plan, while the Net Zero Investment Plan (NZIP, endorsed in May 2026), prepared under the auspices of the National Council on Climate Change (NCCC), estimates total investment needs of approximately US$2.04 trillion to 2060, around US$38 billion per year to 2030, against tracked climate finance flows of only about US$2.5 billion per year in 2021/2022. Following the Government of Nigeria’s request channeled through the NDC Partnership, UNEP, through Workstream 3 of NDC Act & Invest project, has agreed with the NCCC to provide support structured around two complementary components: (i) technical assistance to the development of a comprehensive, inclusive and actionable Implementation Strategy and Action Plan (ISAP) for NDC 3.0, translating NDC targets into costed, monitorable and implementation-ready interventions; and (ii) targeted deep-dive support to advance priority measures towards investability and bankability, through feasibility work, business model design, financial structuring and investor engagement, in the two priority sectors confirmed with the NCCC: agriculture and transport. The implementation timeline for this support was validated by the NCCC in June 2026. Institutional ownership, coordination and decision-making rest with the NCCC and the relevant federal and state Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs); UNEP and its experts mobilized for Nigeria provide technical inputs and analysis in support of this Government-led process. The support is delivered by a team of three experts: an agriculture sector expert, a transport sector expert, and a financial engineering, structuring and modelling expert, working under UNEP’s coordination and in close collaboration with each other. Agriculture is central to Nigeria’s NDC 3.0, primarily as an adaptation agenda and with a smaller but strategically important mitigation component (agriculture measures account for under 1% of the 2035 reductions, with additional soil-carbon gains accounted under LULUCF, while the 2019 National SLCP Action Plan sets more ambitious agriculture methane targets not yet carried into the NDC): 1/mitigation measures include upscaling ranching to 15% of the cattle population by 2035, improved manure management for biogas production, Systems of Rice Intensification on 40% of irrigated rice production, and circular-economy climate-smart agriculture practices on 20% of cropland, while 2/adaptation measures and actions include expanding climate-resilient crops and climate-smart agriculture by 1,000,000 ha each, agroforestry through the planting of 5 million trees annually, adoption of improved climate-resilient livestock breeds by 370,000 farmers, development of 3,700 integrated livestock farms, improved production facilities across the 114 grazing reserves, a 50% reduction of pre- and post-harvest food losses, and the establishment of 3,000 fisheries clusters. The Net Zero Investment Plan estimates AFOLU investment needs at roughly 6% of the national total, with the sector currently around 60% publicly financed, implying a deliberate effort to crowd in private capital, for which climate-smart agriculture value chains show the strongest commercial interest. The NDC 3.0 itself provides no agriculture or AFOLU breakdown of the US$337 billion finance need and its adaptation targets remain uncosted, while a partner-financed pipeline of well over US$4 billion (World Bank ACReSAL, L-PRES, AGROW and SPIN, AfDB SAPZ and NAGS-AP, IFAD VCN, EU/EIB credit lines, GIZ TASRED) carries climate-smart components that map onto the NDC adaptation targets but is not tagged or tracked against the NDC. Linking this pipeline and the NASIP to the NDC measures, costing the residual gap, and embedding the available agriculture methane evidence (CCAC-supported Tier 2 inventory) in measure design and MRV are therefore the principal gaps this support is positioned to address. The expert will map and build on the dense landscape of ongoing programmes and reforms, including the National Agri-Food Systems Investment Plan (NASIP 2026–2035) under the CAADP Kampala Declaration, the National Agricultural Technology and Innovation Policy (NATIP 2022–2027), the creation of the Federal Ministry of Livestock Development, the National Livestock Transformation Plan and the National Livestock Growth Acceleration Strategy (NL-GAS 2025–2035), the World Bank-financed ACReSAL (climate-smart agriculture and farmer-led irrigation across 19 northern states and the FCT) , L-PRES, AGROW (climate-resilient value chains) and SPIN (irrigation) projects, the AfDB-co-financed Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones programme (over US$500 million mobilized, targeting US$1 billion by 2027), NAGS-AP input and climate-resilient seed packages, NIRSAL risk-sharing facilities, IFAD value chain programmes (VCDP, VCN), FAO programmes (FOLUR, GEF-8 Food Systems, SURAGGWA), EU/EIB climate-smart agriculture credit lines, GIZ TASRED and low-methane rice work, and partner initiatives on livestock and climate finance (e.g. AGNES/GIZ, ILRI, CCAC). Key barriers to be addressed include land tenure insecurity, limited access to affordable credit (particularly for women farmers), the mismatch between financing products and agricultural cycles, storage, cold chain and logistics deficits, and rising input costs. The purpose of this mapping is not to describe what exists but to identify which residual investment gaps justify a new deep dive, it will be delivered as a concise programme-to-project gap matrix (sponsor, location, target beneficiaries, financing status, existing preparation, corresponding NDC measure/key category, remaining bottleneck and the specific incremental value of this support, etc), and only gaps that are material to transaction readiness will be carried forward into the pipeline. o Excellent command of project technical preparation methodologies, value chain analysis, multi-criteria prioritization and results-based frameworks. o Strong analytical and drafting skills, with proven ability to produce policy and technical documents of publishable quality for government endorsement and investor audiences. o Ability to design and facilitate participatory workshops and validation processes, transferring technical knowledge to sectoral government counterparts. o Solid capacity to deliver multi-output assignments in a team setting, working hand-in-hand with financial specialists. o Rigour, ability to work under pressure, and strict respect of deadlines. o Proficiency in MS Office, electronic communication tools and online research. The expert will contribute directly to the achievement of the objectives of the NDC Act & Invest support to Nigeria agreed with the NCCC, as described in section 1 above. The expected results outlined below correspond to the main milestones of the work plan and are accompanied by performance indicators to assess their achievement. Result 1: Government-validated sectoral analysis and technical inputs to the agriculture component of the NDC 3.0 Implementation Strategy and Action Plan (ISAP). o Activity 1.1: Review the NDC 3.0 agriculture mitigation measures and Food and Agriculture adaptation measures and actions, the Net Zero Investment Plan, the NDC costing work, and relevant national policies and plans (NATIP 2022–2027, NASIP 2026–2035, National Livestock Transformation Plan, National Dairy Policy, National Rice Development Strategy II, Renewed Hope National Development Plan 2026–2030, NL-GAS 2025–2035, the National Adaptation Plan validated in 2025, the National SLCP Action Plan (2019) and the CCAC-supported Tier 2 agriculture GHG inventory, among others), and prepare a concise agriculture sector baseline and gap analysis. As part of this review, assess the agriculture key categories (3.A Enteric fermentation, 3.C Rice cultivation and 3.D Agricultural soils, with 3.B Manure management considered alongside 3.A), linking each to the corresponding NDC 3.0 measures (measures 15 to 18), available activity data, mitigation potential, MRV readiness and investability constraints, as the evidence base for the screening under Result 2. o Activity 1.2: Map ongoing and planned government and partner programmes and investments in the sector (including ACReSAL, L-PRES, SAPZ, NIRSAL and CBN facilities, IFAD, FAO, FCDO and other partner initiatives) to identify complementarities, map them against the NDC 3.0 agriculture measures and adaptation targets, estimate the residual financing gap, and propose an approach to NDC tagging of agriculture investments with FMAFS, FMLD, the NCCC and the Budget Office. This activity is to be managed as an anti-duplication and additionality control for the pipeline rather than a broad donor mapping exercise: its output is a duplication/additionality register (for each relevant programme: existing preparation, financing commitments, geography, implementation status and unresolved gap), which populates the programme-to-project gap matrix and is applied as a screening criterion under Result 2. o Activity 1.3: Provide technical inputs translating the NDC 3.0 agriculture measures into implementation-ready actions, with indicative responsibilities across federal MDAs (FMAFS, FMLD) and states, timelines, cost estimates building on the NZIP and NDC costing, monitorable indicators, and the policy, regulatory and institutional enabling measures required for delivery, identifying gaps and reforms needed, for integration by the NCCC into the ISAP. o Activity 1.4: Prepare technical content for, and support the facilitation of, sector consultations convened by the NCCC and line ministries, ensuring the inclusion of state governments, the private sector, farmer, pastoralist and fisherfolk organizations, and women and youth groups. Result 2: Prioritized agriculture investment pipeline validated by government counterparts. o Activity 2.1: Working with the NCCC, FMAFS, FMLD and the financial engineering, structuring and modelling expert, to develop and apply transparent screening and prioritization criteria (mitigation and adaptation impact, alignment with NDC 3.0 and national plans, technical and commercial maturity, implementation ownership, additionality and non-duplication with ongoing partner-financed programmes, gender equality, social inclusion and just transition considerations, financing prospects, etc). o Activity 2.2: prepare a long-list of candidate investments drawn from the NDC 3.0, the NZIP, national plans and stakeholder proposals (e.g. climate-smart crop value chains, solar-powered irrigation, ranching and dairy modernization, feed and fodder systems, agroforestry, post-harvest and cold-chain infrastructure, rice intensification, etc), and support the Government-led selection of a short-list of three (3) priority projects for deep-dive support, subject to an agreed investment-readiness threshold. Result 3: Deep-dive investability package prepared for the prioritized agriculture projects. o Activity 3.1: Conduct pre-feasibility level technical analyses for each short-listed project, covering technical options and design parameters, market and demand assessment, regulatory implications, delivery and business models (including aggregation, offtake, out-grower and public-private partnership arrangements), institutional and implementation arrangements, environmental and social considerations and gender equality and social inclusion. As a minimum, the pre-feasibility assessment for each project shall document location/site or production system, beneficiaries/users, technical configuration, demand and offtake, production/yield assumptions, capex/opex, implementation schedule, land tenure and permits, sponsor/owner, procurement or PPP route, environmental, social and climate-risk screening, MRV and data plan, and principal risks and mitigations. o Activity 3.2: Provide technical inputs (capex/opex estimates, production and revenue assumptions, risk registers) to the financial models and structuring options developed by the financial engineering, structuring and modelling expert. Cost inputs shall be documented in a cost assumption register recording, for each major capex/opex item, the source, unit basis, sizing logic, date, geographic adjustment, contingency, uncertainty range and sensitivity case, this register is maintained jointly with, and used as the single reference by, the financial engineering, structuring and modelling expert. o Activity 3.3: Prepare investor-ready concept notes/project profiles aligned with the requirements of prospective financiers (e.g. GCF, including through Nigeria’s accredited direct access entities (DBN, NSIA, AFC), the Adaptation Fund, AfDB, World Bank, IFAD, IFC, commercial and impact investors) and support their review and validation by government counterparts. o Activity 3.4: Prepare technical content for, and support, investor engagement events convened under the project, and consolidate a final report with lessons and recommendations, handing over all materials to the NCCC and line ministries. Expected deliverables: o 1.a Inception report with methodology, detailed work plan, and stakeholder map. o 1.b Agriculture sector baseline, policy and partner mapping, completed and existing support and gap analysis report, delivered as a concise decision document (indicatively no more than 25 pages, excluding annexes) containing only the data, policy and financing evidence needed to select and prepare the priority projects, with the programme-to-project gap matrix as a structured annex. o 1.c Technical inputs to the ISAP agriculture component covering the full set of NDC 3.0 agriculture measures (implementation-ready actions, detailed costing and indicators), reflecting sector consultations, delivered as a concise main document (indicatively no more than 30 pages) with costing, indicator and responsibility tables in a decision-oriented annex structure. o 2.a Pipeline prioritization document (criteria, theory of change, detailed component and activities of projects, long-list and government-validated short-list of priority projects). o 3.a Draft technical pre-feasibility and business model analyses for the priority projects. o 3.b Complete pre-feasibility and business model package and draft concept notes/project profiles for all short-listed projects. o 3.c Final consolidated report, validated investor-ready concept notes and handover presentation to the NCCC and line ministries. Specific tasks and responsibilities See above. Across all tasks, the consultant will: • Provide the substantive technical inputs and analysis for the agriculture dimension of the support across the whole value chain (from inputs and primary production through irrigation, agroforestry, aggregation, storage and cold chain, processing and market access, etc), ensuring coherence with the NDC 3.0, the NZIP, NASIP/CAADP and sectoral policies, and full alignment with the Government-led ISAP process under the NCCC. • Lead the sectoral baseline, partner mapping and gap analysis, and translate NDC 3.0 agriculture measures into implementation-ready, costed and monitorable actions for consideration by the NCCC and line ministries. • Lead the technical screening, prioritization, pre-feasibility and business-model work for the agriculture pipeline, working jointly with the financial engineering, structuring and modelling expert on all cost, revenue and structuring inputs. • Prepare technical content for consultations, validation workshops and investor engagement events convened by the NCCC and line ministries and integrate government and stakeholder feedback into all deliverables. • Mainstream gender equality and social inclusion, just transition and environmental and social safeguards considerations across all analyses and project documents. • Coordinate closely with the transport sector expert to ensure methodological consistency across the two sector pipelines, and with the NDC Partnership in-country facilitation to avoid duplication with other partner support. • Transfer knowledge and materials to the NCCC, FMAFS, FMLD and other counterparts throughout the assignment.

o An advanced university degree (master’s or equivalent) in agricultural economics, agronomy, agribusiness, natural resource management, rural development, environmental sciences, or a related field is required. A PhD is desirable. o At least twelve (12) years of experience in agriculture and food systems development, climate-smart agriculture, agricultural value chains or agribusiness investment, including in Sub-Saharan Africa. o Demonstrated experience preparing bankable agricultural and agri-food projects, including pre-feasibility/feasibility studies, business model design, cost-benefit analysis, and project concept notes or funding proposals for climate and development financiers (e.g. GCF, GEF, Adaptation Fund, World Bank, AfDB, IFAD, IFC, commercial and impact investors). o Strong knowledge of climate change mitigation and adaptation in agriculture, livestock and fisheries (climate-smart agriculture, rice intensification and water management, enteric fermentation and manure management, agroforestry, irrigation, post-harvest loss reduction, etc), and of NDC 3.0 processes, costing and MRV. o Familiarity with Nigeria’s agricultural policy and programme landscape (e.g. NATIP, NASIP/CAADP, National Livestock Transformation Plan, ACReSAL, L-PRES, SAPZ, NIRSAL) is highly desirable, prior work in Nigeria or West Africa is a competitive advantage. o Proven experience in multi-stakeholder engagement involving federal and state governments, the private sector, farmer, pastoralist and fisherfolk organizations, and in designing gender-responsive and socially inclusive interventions.

o Fluency in written and spoken English is mandatory.

Not available.

THE UNITED NATIONS DOES NOT CHARGE A FEE AT ANY STAGE OF THE RECRUITMENT PROCESS (APPLICATION, INTERVIEW MEETING, PROCESSING, OR TRAINING). THE UNITED NATIONS DOES NOT CONCERN ITSELF WITH INFORMATION ON APPLICANTS’ BANK ACCOUNTS.