RBA SDG Investor Map Experts

Background

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is a global organization with 17,000 staff working in approximately 170 offices globally towards supporting governments in developing strong policies, institutions and partnerships to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

UNDP's policy work carried out at HQ, Regional and Country Office levels, forms a contiguous spectrum of deep local knowledge to cutting-edge global perspectives and advocacy. In this context, UNDP invests in the Global Policy Network (GPN), a network of field- based and global technical expertise across a wide range of knowledge domains and in support of the signature solutions and organizational capabilities envisioned in the Strategic Plan. Within the GPN, the Bureau for Policy and Programme Support (BPPS) has the responsibility for developing all relevant policy and guidance to support the results of UNDP's Strategic Plan.

In order to streamline its financial and investment engagement, UNDP launched the Finance Sector Hub (FSH), a finance and innovation platform, that draws on a critical mass of UNDP expertise, initiatives, and partnerships to support the mobilization and leveraging of resources for the SDGs and lead the implementation of the new UNDP private sector strategy and other initiatives. The Hub is an integral part of both the Bureau for Policy and Programme Support (BPPS) and the Bureau of External Relations and Advocacy (BERA), as well as part of the GPN.

To address the challenges of sustainable development financing, countries will need to develop new, more effective and integrated approaches to manage public and attract private finance. The changing landscape of finance and governments’ demand for integrated solutions to financing national priorities are opportunities for UNDP. Having been identified to support country platforms for SDG integration, UNDP country offices are now uniquely placed to offer strategic services based on an integrated and holistic approach to mapping, managing, mobilizing and channeling financing for SDGs in the public and private sectors. UNDP country offices provide these services tailored to diverse development contexts including middle- and low-income context, crisis affected contexts, disaster prone and Small Island Development States and Landlocked Countries for examples.

The purpose of this procurement exercise is to establish a pool of pre-vetted experts for the development of SDG Investor Maps in the Regional Bureau of Africa (RBA) region. Successful candidates will be invited to join UNDP’s GPN ExpRes ONE Roster under the SDG Finance profile and SDG oriented private investment sub-profile and may be considered for the development SDG Investor Maps in RBA countries and similar assignments with UNDP.

The GPN ExpRes Roster is a recruitment and deployment mechanism which maintains pre-vetted consultants and offers the ability to contract them quickly for support by UNDP offices worldwide. It currently provides pre-selected and technically vetted consultants across 28 profiles and 144 sub-profiles across all technical areas supported by the Global Policy Network of UNDP. Following the successful review for the roster, candidates may be considered for various short-term assignments with UNDP in this technical area. Retention on the Roster of selected experts will be contingent on continuous delivery of satisfactory services.

Duties and Responsibilities

To support governments in the region to take initial steps and plan sequenced strategies for mobilizing and aligning public and private resources to the 2030 Agenda, UNDP has established the FSH, which brings together a corporate approach to offering services across public and private finance to countries around the world and to support countries to finance the SDGs.

As a service offered by SDG Impact, a FSH flagship initiative, the SDG Investor Maps are a piece of market intelligence to help private investors (funds, financiers, corporations) identify investment opportunities and business models that advance the SDGs. The SDG Investor Maps provide the insight and tools needed to increase private investments towards the SDGs. They can make a significant contribution to filling the financing gap by mobilizing private capital for the SDGs. SDG Investor Maps are created using an established methodology which combines secondary data research (on existing development needs, policy priorities, and market opportunities) with interviews with public and private sector stakeholders to verify findings and contribute new insights. The data are analyzed to distill Investment Opportunity Areas (IOAs) and data-backed business models.

The findings of the SDG Investor Maps are synthesized in an Excel template and uploaded onto the SDG Investor Platform, which was soft-launched in partnership with the Global Investors for Sustainable Development (GISD) Alliance in April 2021, where investors can search for the market intelligence on investment opportunities by a variety of functionalities, including sectors, regions, SDGs as well as indicative returns, market size and timeframes of investments that most interest them.

The consultants recruited to the GPN ExpRes roster will lead and support the development of SDG Investor Maps across UNDP’s RBA region[1], as per upcoming country needs. To complete SDG Investor Maps, consultants follow a standardised methodology (see an introduction here) that 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 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. The standard SDG Investor Map steps are:

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

Successful applicants will join the UNDP’s GPN ExpRes roster of experts and be contacted based on arising country needs. Consultants recruited to the GPN ExpRes roster under this call may also support SDG Investor Maps in other regions and conduct similar assignment, if competencies and experiences align and needs arise.

[1] Covering Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo (Dem. Republic of), Congo (Republic of), Co^te d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius and Seychelles Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sa~o Tome´ and Pri´ncipe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

Competencies

Corporate competencies

• Demonstrates integrity by modeling the UN’s values and ethical standards.
• Promotes the vision, mission, and strategic goals of UNDP.
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability; Treats all people fairly without favoritism.
• Fulfils all obligations to gender sensitivity and zero tolerance for sexual harassment.

Functional competencies

• Strategic vision, strong technical and analytical capabilities on development finance.
• Field experience with UNDP/UN an asset.
• Strong research, reporting, communications and writing abilities. Ability to effectively summarize and present information. Strong interpersonal and communication skills, resourcefulness, initiative, maturity of judgment, tact, and negotiating skills, and the ability to cope with situations which may pose conflict.
• Openness to change and ability to receive/integrate feedback.
• Ability to accommodate additional demands on short notice.
• Ability to work under pressure and stressful situations.
• Ability to manage heavy workload and solve complex problems.

Required Skills and Experience

Education

• A Master’s degree or higher in the field of Finance, Economics, Business Studies, Development Studies or related field.

Work experience

• 5-10 years of relevant professional experience.
• Demonstrated experience of 5 years working directly with or in support of governments in the area of development finance and public institutional governance improvement and capacity building OR demonstrated experience of five years working directly with or in support of the private sector in the area of sustainable development and capacity building.
• Extensive experience in Sub-Saharan Africa, ideally with UNDP, other development organizations and/or private sector.
• Knowledge of investment ecosystem.

Languages

• Fluency in English.
• Working proficiency in other relevant languages for the RBA region, especially French and Portuguese (and Arabic and Spanish, and local languages, if applicable), are major assets.

General SDG Finance Profile Experience

• Supporting policy and regulatory reforms to enable private sector capital to flow to SDG related investment.
• Working with the private sector to educate investors in sustainable development impacts and convening private sector investors with development actors.
• Identifying investment opportunities with sustainable development impacts and designing projects and putting together project pipelines to leverage private capital for sustainable development.
• Supporting to measuring, reporting of impacts of private equity, bonds and or enterprise impacts on sustainable development and the SDGs.
• Supporting to developing impact management framework for enterprises and investors which includes the design of the framework, monitoring and reporting processes.
• Support for MSME development and establishing access to credit.

Specific SDG Investor Map Consultant Experience

• Experience in strategy consulting and/or economic research, with a focus on developing country contexts and the private sector.
• Knowledge of the Sustainable Development Goals and of different approaches driven by the United Nations Development System (UNDS) to accelerate private sector participation in the 2030 Agenda.
• Strong knowledge of market context, of national development needs, and economic/ political priorities in Sub-Saharan African countries.
• Deep knowledge of the local, regional, and international investment landscape in in Sub-Saharan African countries, and close familiarity with needs of global investors.
• Ability to undertake mixed methods research, particularly stakeholder interviews (government and private sector) and the navigation of statistical databases.
• Ability to engage senior officials and senior private sector leaders and facilitate multi-stakeholder sessions.
• Familiarity and knowledge with SDG Impact of their other activities undertaken in parallel to SDG Investor Maps (e.g. Impact Management, Impact Intelligence, and Impact Facilitation).