Procurement Services Manager at From: UNICEF

From: UNICEF

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Position: Procurement Services Manager

Job Time: Full-Time

Job Type: Contract

Place of Work: Addis Ababa, Addis Abeba, Ethiopia

Posted date: 4 months ago

Deadline: Submition date is over

UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.

And we never give up.

For every child, Essential Supplies

How can you make a difference?

Under the supervision of the Senior Advisor in the Supply Chain Hub and the Procurement Services Manager, UNICEF Supply Division, The incumbent, will lead the financial sustainability and supply financing activities with related Supply Division centers including the Procurement Services Center (PSC), Regional Offices (RO) and Country Offices (CO), the UNICEF’s African Union (AU) and Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) Liaison Office (LO), or AU-ECA LO, Program Group (PG) immunization team as well as with other centers in Head Quarters (HQ) Divisions.

Strategic Context and Purpose for the Job

The fundamental mission of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is to promote the rights of every child, everywhere, in everything the organization does — in programs, in advocacy and in operations. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) commit all governments to comprehensive, integrated, and universal transformations by 2030. Countries are required to mobilize efforts to end all forms of poverty, fight inequalities and tackle climate change while ensuring that no one is left behind. Without adequate and sustained investments in health, the SDGs will not be realized.

One way of doing this is to influence the size, equity, efficiency, effectiveness, and transparency of public spending at national and sub-national levels. In UNICEF, this is done through the Public Finance for Children (PF4C) stream of work, which is central to UNICEF’s work globally. Many of the obstacles to improving child outcomes can be directly traced to Public Financial Management (PFM) challenges, which makes it relevant to all programmatic pillars. Countries are at different stages in their trajectory towards self-financing sustainability and Public Finance Management (PFM) obstacles often impact their ability to mobilize required resources and/or maximize investments for children.

UNICEF is committed to influencing the mobilization, allocation, and utilization of domestic public financial resources, for greater, more equitable and sustainable results for children. As financial sustainability is one of the cornerstones to achieving durable and efficient systems of public programmes, UNICEF engages with governments to influence the mobilization, allocation, and utilization of domestic financial resources, for greater, more equitable results for children.

UNICEF Supply Division’s Financing Partnerships and Solutions Strategy specifically supports governments’ transition towards sustainable self-financing of essential supplies to increase domestically mobilized financing and improve access to essential commodities for children (and their families).

Supply Chain Hub Job context:

The rising cost to governments and partners of health products (medical devices, medicines, and vaccines) has attracted public concern across the globe along with the inequities elucidated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Access to safe, effective, quality-assured, and affordable essential products for children and their families through public health services is instrumental to improving the health of children and families, improving health coverage without incurring financial depredation and achieving meaningful change.

The long-lasting impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the world economy is expected to materially influence both the domestic fiscal space in programme countries, as well as the global health and development financing architecture for country programmes and other development priorities, going forward. Therefore, UNICEF's procurement service function including pre-financing support to governments and supply and logistics operations will continue to be a strategic element in sustaining and expanding access to essential supplies for children and their families in many programme countries.

Many of the Supply Division’s approaches and solutions used in the 2018-2021 strategic period for supporting the adequate financing of supplies will continue to be expanded. However, there is also a need to identify, build and strengthen new and current partnerships and supply and logistics solutions to support the provision of essential supplies and accelerate results for children, while also mitigating COVID-19 risks, in a post-pandemic “new normal”. 

In view of the recent development and of the UNICEF Supply Division's vision to move services closer to where they are most needed, used, and have the greatest impact, a Supply Chain Hub is part of the Supply Division created and outposts to Addis Ababa (Ethiopia). The Supply Chain Hub’s mandates remain a global mandate.

Through strong collaboration with UNICEF Supply Division centers, Regional and Country Offices, the Supply Chain Hub will support strategic procurement services for governments’ efforts to strengthen their supply chains, contribute to the digitalization of the health sector including the supply chains, increase domestic and domestically mobilized financing and support improved market dynamics, including a strengthened local supplier base which complements domestic sources and further enables improved access.

This position is based in Supply Division and outposts to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and will support the implementation of the UNICEF Supply Division’s Financing Partnerships and Solutions Strategy. This position will report to the Senior Advisor, Supply, Addis Ababa with a dotted line to the Procurement Services Manager, UNICEF Supply Division.

Purpose of the Job:

Ensuring adequate and predictable financing for health and immunization often places pressure on limited public resources. The COVID-19 pandemic further increased the fiscal pressures on countries, that are now facing several overlapping crises that have slowed down the pace of recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic making it even more important the need to strengthen domestic financing given the risks to children if core social services are not sustained. Under tight domestic fiscal constraints, and when most countries’ revenue has declined, many countries are looking for ways to achieve efficiency savings and ensure health spending represents good Value For Money (VFM).

Under the supervision of the Senior Advisor in the Supply Chain Hub and the Procurement Services Manager, UNICEF Supply Division, The incumbent, will lead the financial sustainability and supply financing activities with related Supply Division centers including the Procurement Services Center (PSC), Regional Offices (RO) and Country Offices (CO), the UNICEF’s African Union (AU) and Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) Liaison Office (LO), or AU-ECA LO, Program Group (PG) immunization team as well as with other centers in Head Quarters (HQ) Divisions

Summary of key functions/accountabilities:

Under the overall guidance of Senior Advisor Supply, UNICEF Supply Chain Hub and Procurement Services Manager, UNICEF Supply Division, in collaboration with Supply Division’s related Centers, Regional and Country Offices, the Procurement Services Manager will be expected to:

• Lead day-to-day country financing work, especially focusing on the expansion of countries’ fiscal space for supplies through the increase of domestically mobilized resources.
• Improve the use of public financial resources for immunization supplies
• Strengthen the capacity of the government to plan, budget and monitor spending on immunization supplies.
• Improve data and evidence generation to advocate for greater and better public investments in immunization supplies.
• Engage in the budget process to influence allocation decisions and improve the performance of spending on immunization supplies.
• Strengthen partnerships and advocacy for greater and better public investments in immunization supplies.
• Lead day-to-day country financing work, especially focusing on the expansion of countries’ fiscal space for supplies through optimization of the use of domestically mobilized resources, including advancing value for money agenda to identify pathways to ensuring cost savings from improved efficiency are re-invested to improve access of essential supplies for children.
• Coordinate the day-to-day engagement with governments and partners to advance and implement a value for money agenda in child health procurement to unlock efficiency gains and identify pathways to reinvest resulting efficiency gains back into children’s services.
• Apply UNICEF-developed methodology, to identify the potential procurement efficiency savings in countries, and work with country and regional colleagues/partners towards protecting the savings for future child-related interventions. Planned interventions, among others, will include:
• Value For Money analysis (VFM) and support to policy development,
• Identification of inefficiencies and addressing them to achieve efficiencies,
• Monitoring, measuring, and reporting on efficiency savings.
• Identification of pathways to protect and reinvest savings towards child-related interventions.
• Document the conducted analysis, interventions, and outcomes, including the identification of lessons learned.
• Leads analysis of existing UNICEF data (including procurement data) to track country spending through a child lens perspective.
• Identify and support the collection of internal and external data related to health (and other intervention) financing from various sources.
• Lead analysis of data related to country budgetary (and other) deployment, as well as budgeting spending efficiency. Develops tools to support the monitoring of financing sources and compare to forecasts to identify issues and propose and promote appropriate responses in respect of such issues and concerns.
• Coordinate engagement with other Supply Division units, Partners, ROs, COs to assess anticipated budgetary flows.
• Lead preparation of periodic reports and summary analysis and document work papers relating to areas of responsibility.
• Publish work on financing to be circulated internally and externally (including academic journals).
• Coordinate the partnership engagement with Africa CDC, AU Development Agency (NEPAD) to advance sustainability and value for money agenda and to ensure alignment and complementarity on the support provided to governments.
• Coordinate the normative and technical assistance around sustainable financing within the partnership with Africa CDC, including consultancies commissioned to strengthen the capacity of local governments with the objective to support governments to increase and improve the use of public financial resources for children.
• Collaborate with the Partnerships for African Vaccine Manufacturing (PAVM) on developing a financial plan on how the AU and the Africa CDC could support the achievement of the PAVM objectives.
• Support the PAVM on activities related to the financial mechanism that will be put in place by partners, such as Gavi, the AU’s African Vaccine Acquisition Trust (AVAT), to support both members and potential African vaccine manufacturers.
• Demonstrate how UNICEF’s innovative financing mechanisms could be used by Africa CDC, AVAT and the African Union to mitigate the risks of derailing program activities due to delays in procurement as funding may be a constraint.
• Engage and strengthen the capacity of the governments to plan, forecast and budget to achieve high-quality multi-year forecasting and budgeting of essential supplies to augment the visibility of regional needs, as well as to influence the appropriate budget allocation and optimization of the spending of essential supplies for children.
• Propose a financial plan that will enable the country to achieve a successful transition from donor support and rely increasingly on their own domestic budgets achieving global targets of government health expenditures, the PAVM objectives of 60% of vaccine doses procured from African-based vaccine manufacturers.

Monitoring and Evaluation

• Ensure that quality information is available to assess progress toward expected results established in Programme Funding Agreement (PFA)
• Ensure that the Supply Chain Hub and UNICEF stakeholders and key external partners have timely and accurate information on the implementation of PFA agreed deliverables.

To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…

Education:

• Master’s degree in business, Finance, Public Finance, Public Policy Health Economics or Economics.
• *A first University degree in the above areas combined with additional five relevant years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.

Experience:

• Minimum eight years of progressively responsible professional work experience at national and international levels in health financing, public financial management, finance, accounting, or auditing, including experience with support to Country Ministries of Health and Ministries of Finance in the areas of sustainable financing, public financial management, financing, or commercial issues relating to health products, and forecasting/trend Analysis.
• Firsthand experience with PFM issues is required.
• Experience in budget analysis, health financing, public financial management or other financing mechanisms in key sectors for children such as immunization, nutrition, HIV, water and sanitation and education is highly desirable.

Language: Fluency in English is required. Proficiency in French is considered as an asset. For every Child, you demonstrate...