Background
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion are core principles at UNDP: we value diversity as an expression of the multiplicity of nations and cultures where we operate, we foster inclusion as a way of ensuring all personnel are empowered to contribute to our mission, and we ensure equity and fairness in all our actions. Taking a ‘leave no one behind’ approach to our diversity efforts means increasing representation of underserved populations. People who identify as belonging to marginalized or excluded populations are strongly encouraged to apply. Learn more about working at UNDP including our values and inspiring stories. UNDP does not tolerate sexual exploitation and abuse, any kind of harassment, including sexual harassment, and discrimination. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks.
Office/Unit/Project Description
United Nations CapitalDevelopment Fund (UNCDF) is the UN’s capital investment agency for the world’s least developed countries (LDCs). It creates new opportunities for poor peopleand their communities by increasing access to inclusive finance and investment capital. Established by the General Assembly in 1966 and with headquarters in New York, UNCDF is an autonomous UN organization affiliated with UNDP.
With its secretariat hosted by UNCDF,the Better Than Cash Alliance(BTCA) is a partnership of 80 governments, companies, and international organizations that accelerates the transition from cash to advancing the Sustainable Development Goals by:
- Advocating for the transition from cash to digital payments in a way that advances financial inclusion and promotes responsible digital finance.
- Catalyzing the development of inclusive digital payments ecosystems in member countries to reduce costs, increasetransparency, advance financial inclusion– particularly for women– and drive inclusive growth; and
- Conducting research and sharingthe knowledge and experiences of our membersto inform strategies for making the transition.
Billions of dollars in cash payments and transfers are made daily in emerging and developing economies, includingpayment of salaries, social welfare, relief,payments to suppliers, remittances, etc. The problems with these cash payments include a lack of transparency, accountability, and security, as well as inefficiency. Individuals who receive cash payments are often part of the 1.7 billion excluded from the formal financial sector. This means they are excluded from access to a range of appropriate and affordable financialservices to help them save safely, take advantage of economic opportunities and reduce their vulnerability to risk.
Shifting these payments from cash to digital has the potential to improve the lives of people on low-income, particularly women, while giving governments, the development community, and the private sector a more transparent, time and cost-efficient, and often safer means of disbursing payments.
The Better Than Cash AllianceTeam’s Core Valuesare the following:
- Achieving together
- Striving for excellence
- Service-oriented
- Results oriented more information on BTCA, please visit the website: http://www.betterthancash.org/
The Better Than Cash Alliance is looking to hire an Africa Regional Digital Payment Specialist to work under the supervision of the Head of Agriculture & Anglophone Africa Region on the delivery of member services to African anglophone members.
Duties and Responsibilities
Under the supervision of the Head of Agriculture & Anglophone Africa Region, the Specialist will collaborate on the implementation of the regionalstrategy initiatives in the Anglophone member countries which includes the following duties:
1. Regional AdvisoryServices, Africa
- Provide technical advise and supportin designing and delivering of advisory servicesto catalyze priority regional member efforts to responsibly digitize payments, ensuring that they are efficiently implemented, managed, monitored and evaluated, meeting or exceeding all targets. Services may include: technical advisory for specific member initiatives; carrying out digital payments ecosystem diagnostics; policy and strategies development; training workshops for key government officials or business executives with strategic responsibility for payments;
- Ensure partnership with the Regional Head in the design of the Alliance Secretariat priority country strategies incorporating input from the Private Sector and the Africa Advocacy Policy and Partnership Lead ensuring alignment to the overall Alliance African Regional Advocacy Strategy;
- Drive and support the implementation of priority countries strategies, ensuring all priority members: Ethiopia, Rwanda, Ghana, Malawi receive high-quality services in their priority areas and the UN Principles for Responsible Digital Paymentsare disseminated and embedded in member initiatives and policies;
- Draft, develop and deliverstrategy briefings, presentations and communication documents during internal and external meetings, including for Members Services Committee, Editorial and Publication Committee, Executive Committee and Team Meetings when needed;
- Drive successful project management in full compliance of all UNCDF/UNDP rules and regulations in close partnership with the operations and procurement teams to ensure delivery of project milestones;
- Provide advisory support in monitoring of key performance indicators of the overall Anglophone Africa initiatives and strategy, including keeping the Alliance team abreast of their status, achievements, challenges, opportunities and learnings.
2. In-Country Researchand Knowledge Management
- Conduct in-depth research on topics related to digital payments, digital financial services, financial inclusion, digital public infrastructure with a focus on specific markets to inform the regional strategy and the drafting of concept notes for in-country initiatives and engagements of new members;
- Contribute to the development of knowledge products (Alliance’s research and advocacy documents and publications) that support the capacity enhancement of members in the Anglophone Africa region and the wider digital payments sector including for companies and business payment streams;
- Guide the whole Africa team, and the Communications team to ensure lessonsand achievements from digitization initiatives are regularly distilledand documented from all in-country initiatives and initiatives done by partners;
- Keep abreast of members’ information needs to identify future knowledge and research products that will fill in a gap and provide useful information for members in the region.
3. Global, Regionaland In-country Advocacy:G20 and RegionalOrganizations:
- In view of the upcoming G20 presidency of the Republic of South Africa, develop and deepen relevant relationships with the Government of RSA, in particular, the Reserve Bank and the Ministry of Finance;
- Co-lead globalmissions to South Africa and develop an engagement strategyfor RSA;
- In partnership with the Asia and Latin American Leads, develop a G20 strategy in support of the RSA Presidency under the Global Partnership for Financial Inclusionand the Anti-corruption Working Group tha builds on the work of the Better Than Cash Alliance with the Brazlian and India presidencies;
- In partnership with the Head of Agricultue and Anglophone Africa and the Africa Policy, Partnerships and Advocacy Lead, grow relationship with Alliance’s members and partners in Africa. Support engagement, development and execution of regional and in-country advocacy initiatives aiming at driving responsible digitization of payments in Africa and the national and regional level;
- Work with the countrymembers and partnersof the Alliance to developcommitments, key messages and sharing of learnings opportunities to scale responsible digitization of payments in Africa;
- Undertake speaking engagements for the Better Than Cash Alliance at the requestof the supervisor. .
4. Communications
- Work closelywith the Communication Lead for Africaand the Head of Agriculture and Anglophone Africa Region, regional and countryteams, including communications colleagues, to identifyand seize advocacy and communication opportunities for the Alliance, including conferences, UN, regional and national events;
- Collaborate in organization of events, webinars, conferences and specialized workshops and other knowledge sharing events as directed by the Head of Agriculture and Anglphopne Africa region;
- Draft comment pieces, share news and stories from Alliance members on social media and other communications channels, as appropriate.
Institutional Arrangement
The successful candidate will be home-based and work under the supervision of the Head of Agriculture & Anglophone Africa Regionof the Better Than Cash Alliance. The expected candidate should have the ability to travel frequently to different Alliance members as directed by the supervisor.
Competencies
| Core |
| Achieve Results: | LEVEL 3: Set and align challenging, achievable objectives for multiple projects, have lastingimpact |
| Think Innovatively: | LEVEL 3: Proactively mitigate potential risks, develop new ideas to solve complex problems |
| Learn Continuously: | LEVEL 3: Create andact on opportunities to expand horizons, diversify experiences |
| Adapt with Agility: | LEVEL 3: Proactively initiate and champion change, manage multiple competing demands |
| Act with Determination: | LEVEL 3: Thinkbeyond immediate task/barriers and take actionto achieve greater results |
| Engage and Partner: | LEVEL 3: Political savvy, navigate complex landscape, champion inter-agency collaboration |
| Enable Diversity and Inclusion: | LEVEL 3: Appreciate benefits of diverse workforce and champion inclusivity |
| Cross-Functional &Technical competencies (insert up to 7 competencies) |
| Thematic Area | Name | Definition | |
| Business Direction & 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 Management | Portfolio Management | Ability to select, prioritize and control the organization’s programmes and projects, in line with its strategic objectives and capacity; ability to balance the implementation of change initiatives and the maintenance of business-as-usual, while optimizing return on investment | |
| Business Management | Digital Awareness and Literacy | Ability and inclination to rapidly adopt new technologies, either through skillfully grasping their usage or through understanding their impact and empowering others to use them as needed | |
| Partnership management | Relationship Management | Ability to engage with wide range of public and private partners, build,sustain and/or strengthen working relations, trust and mutual understanding | |
| Communications | Creative Direction and copywriting | Ability to creatively communicate concepts in an engaging and simple way. | |
| Digital & Innovation | Portfolio Design & Management | Ability to design processes that extract learning on an ongoing basis from existing portfolios, so that learning accrues over time and new options for action are continuously generated. Build a learning ecosystem around a complex development challenge: beingable to mobilize a variety of stakeholders and help themlearn and work together. | |
| Business Management | Project Management | Ability to plan, organize, prioritize and control resources, procedures and protocols to achieve specific goals | |
Travel:
- UNCDF will cover the cost of travel of the individual to the duty station, as well as their return to their home upon completion of their services. Travel costs are covered only in the event that the function will be undertaken physically in the duty station and excludes working from home arrangements.
- The incumbent may be expected to travel to any of the 11 countries in which UNCDF is implementing project activities in the Pacific.
Required Skills and Experience
| Minimum education requirements | - Advanced university degree (Master’s degree or equivalent) in economics, finance, international relations, publicpolicy or business administration. Or
- A first level university degree (Bachelor’s degree) with additional 2 years of experience can be accepted in lieu of a Master’s degree.
|
| Min. years of relevant work experience | - Minimum of 5 years (with Master’s degree) or 7 years (with Bachelor’s degree) of progressively responsible professional experience, , in the digital financial services or digital financial inclusion is a requirement.
- Minimum of 3 years with Master’s degree or 5 years with Bachelor’s degree working with governments across Africa at high-level, particularly in supporting governments to execute their national agenda for digital payments and managing government relations for the digital payments agenda is required.
|
| Required skills and competencies | - Experience working on driving payment digitization at the national level in at least two of the following countries: Ethiopia, Ghana and Rwanda, is required.
- Experience working with regional organizations, in particular AfCFTA, Smart Africa, AfDB and the AU Commission, is required.
- Strong knowledge on the challenges and opportunities in driving responsible digitization of payments in agriculture in Africa is required.
|
| Desired skills in addition to the competencies covered in the Competencies section | - Experience in engaging with senior executives and officials from the public, private and international development sectors in Africa is highly desirable.
- Experience in conducting research on digital payments, digital financial services, financial inclusion, digital economy and knowledge of the main research sources and development partners working on digital payments, financial inclusion, digital economy is highly desirable.
- Demonstrated experience in project management and/or multi- stakeholder engagement for project implementation, an advantage;
- Analytical proficiency in the challenges and opportunities in the agriculture sector in Africa, an advantage.
|
| Required Language(s) | - Fluency in English, both oral and written, is mandatory.
- Proficiency and fluency in another official UN language(s) is an added advantage.
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Disclaimer
Under US immigration law, acceptance of a staff position with UNDP, an international organization, may have significant implications for US Permanent Residents. UNDP advises applicants for all professional level posts that they must relinquish their US Permanent Resident status and accept a G-4 visa, or have submitted a valid application for US citizenship prior to commencement of employment.
UNDP is not in a position to provide advice or assistance on applying for US citizenship and therefore applicants are advised to seek the advice of competent immigration lawyers regarding any applications.
Applicant information about UNDP rosters
Note: UNDP reserves the right to select one or more candidates from this vacancy announcement. We may also retain applications and consider candidates applying to this post for other similar positions with UNDP at the same grade level and with similar job description, experience and educational requirements.
Non-discrimination
UNDP has a zero-tolerance policy towards sexual exploitation and misconduct, sexual harassment, and abuse of authority. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks, and will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles.
UNDP is an equal opportunity and inclusive employer that does not discriminate based on race, sex, gender identity, religion, nationality, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy, age, language, social origin or other status.
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