Digital Specialist for the Regional Project for the Africa Minigrids Program (AMP) - IPSA 10

Office/Unit/Project Description

UNDP and the Sustainable Energy Hub

UNDP is the knowledge frontier organization for sustainable development in the UN Development System and serves as the integrator for collective action to realize the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). UNDP’s policy work carried out at Headquarters (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.

Energy is one of UNDP’s six signature solutions – alongside poverty and inequality, governance, resilience, environment, and gender equality - to support countries towards three directions of change: structural transformation, leaving no one behind and resilience.

As per UNDP’s new Strategic Plan 2022-2025, the first objective of UNDP is increasing energy access for those furthest behind. By speeding up investment in distributed renewable energy solutions, especially for those hardest to reach and in crisis contexts, it aims to increase access to clean and affordable energy for 500 million people. The Africa Minigrids Program (AMP), for example, is improving the financial viability of renewable energy minigrids in 18 countries, encouraging private investment, lower tariffs and expanded service. Second, UNDP will work to accelerate the transition to renewable energy through systems changes that support inclusive, green economies, particularly in countries with low levels of renewable energy generation or poor energy-efficiency improvement rates. This work will capitalize on technological gains, clean energy innovations and new business models in the energy sector.

The newly established UNDP Sustainable Energy Hub (hereafter, the ‘Sustainable Energy Hub’) will be the arrowhead of UNDP’s new Strategic Plan objectives. The Sustainable Energy Hub will build on UNDP’s existing Energy Portfolio, covering over 100 countries to harness clean energy and support the energy transition as well as on UNDP’s Climate Promise, UNDP’s Sustainable Finance Hub and UNDP’s Digital offer. The Sustainable Energy Hub will develop and operationalize, policies, programmes and partnerships to support UNDP Energy Compact, a commitment to help increasing access to clean and affordable energy for 500 million people; and accelerating and supporting the transition to renewable energy. Recognizing that change will be disruptive, UNDP will work to ensure that such transitions are just, and that their impact on vulnerable people is understood and duly mitigated.

As a Global Environment Facility (GEF) Implementing Agency and a Green Climate Fund (GCF) Accredited Entity (together, GEF and GCF are considered by UNDP ‘vertical funds’), UNDP supports countries in addressing development, climate, and ecosystem sustainability in an integrated manner. UNDP’s offer builds on UNDP’s growing portfolio of innovative interventions and projects at the country, regional and global levels – funded both by the GEF and by other donors – for which UNDP provides oversight, quality assurance, and policy and technical advisory services.

Overview of the Africa Minigrids Program (AMP)

The Africa Minigrids Program (AMP) is a new technical assistance program for minigrids, developed by UNDP with initial funding from the Global Environment Facility (GEF), and executed in partnership with the African Development Bank (AFDB) and the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI).

The program’s objective is to increase access to electricity by improving the financial viability and promoting scaled-up commercial investment in renewable energy minigrids (‘minigrids’). The programmatic approach aims to achieve greater impact by creating new minigrid markets across the continent, which, in aggregate, will create scale and momentum, attracting private sector interest and investment.

The program has been approved by key donors, and will now enter execution starting in the second or third quarter of 2022.

The program architecture has two main elements:

A cohort of AMP National Projects (2022-2027), each with a set of tailored activities structured across four components: (i) policy and regulations, (ii) business model innovation with private sector, (iii) scaled-up financing and (iv) digital, knowledge management, and monitoring and evaluation (M&E).
The AMP Regional Project (2022-2026), acting as the knowledge, advocacy and coordinating platform of the Africa Minigrids Program. The regional project is structured across five components: (i) knowledge tools for both public and private actors; (ii) tailored technical and operational assistance to countries; (iii) communities of practice, (iv) digitalization for minigrid cost-reduction, and (v) M&E.

The program is initially supporting two rounds of AMP National Projects, totaling 18 in number, which will be implemented over the course of four years. The first round (2022 – 2026) includes 11 national projects: Angola, Burkina Faso, Comoros, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eswatini, Madagascar, Malawi, Nigeria, Somalia and Sudan; The second round (2023 – 2027) includes 7 national projects: Benin, Chad, Niger, Mali, Mauritania, Sao Tome & Principe, and Zambia.

The AMP offers a pivotal opportunity for knowledge to emerge from, and be shared among the initial 18 participant countries and the diverse implementation environments they represent. At the same time it creates economies of scale for providing program services. To seize this opportunity the AMP Regional Project will augment the AMP by providing technical, operational, and knowledge support to the AMP National Projects, while also serving as a knowledge platform for AMP and the wider African minigrids ecosystem. The AMP regional project will aggregate and systematically disseminate lessons learned and experiences from AMP National Projects’ implementation, as well as from collaboration with other national stakeholders, that can help foster enabling conditions for minigrid cost-reduction and the development of minigrid markets across Africa.

The AMP Regional Project’s activities will be structured through the following components:

Component 1 – Knowledge Tools. This component will ensure that the latest developments, cutting-edge guidance and good practice in minigrids are captured and made available to relevant stakeholders, leveraging existing partner minigrid programs and knowledge tools where possible.

Component 2 – Tailored Technical and Operational Assistance to National Project Implementation. This component will ensure that AMP National Project countries benefit from rapidly-deployable technical and operational expertise.

Component 3 – Communities of Practice. Will support knowledge sharing and facilitate the development of solutions to common challenges within the African minigrid sector. It will strengthen South-South cooperation and learning, drawing on the experiences of participating countries in minigrid cost reduction and deployment.

Component 4 – Digital tools and solutions for minigrid cost-reduction. Will curate and promote the use of specialized digital tools and solutions for the minigrids sectors and develop a data aggregation platform as a regional public good that will enable the aggregation of data collected by AMP National Projects on minigrid pilots receiving project support.

Component 5 – Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E). Will put in place an efficient and effective system of reporting and adaptive management that will allow the AMP Regional Project to achieve its objectives, and aggregate and coordinate reporting of M&E results for all AMP National Projects.

Project Management Unit (PMU): On behalf of UNDP, the Project will be managed by the AMP Regional Project Management Unit (PMU), in charge of daily project coordination/execution and monitoring of the project activities. The PMU will consist of: (i) A Project Manager (PM); (ii) A Digital Specialist; and (iii) An Administrative Assistant.

Institutional Arrangement

The consultant will work closely with: (i) other AMP Regional Project PMU team members, including the Project Manager and the Administrative Assistant; (ii) staff at UNDP’s BPPS/Nature, Climate and Energy Unit; (iii) staff with the UNDP Sustainable Energy Hub; (iv) UNDP country offices; (v) RMI as repsonisble party for the project; (vi) the respective implementing partners and project management units of the AMP National Projects (National Project PMUs); and (vii) other project consultants. The consultant will report to the Project Manager

Duties and Responsibilities

Scope of Work

The Digital Specialist will support the successful execution of the AMP Regional Project by leading on the implementation of project activities related to data and digital tools and solutions and their applications to advance energy access goals and accelerate minigrid market development.

The Digital Specialist will have the following responsibilities:

Provide strategic direction and lead implementation of project activities related to data and digitalization;
Work closely with the program’s initial 18 national projects, and any additional projects joining the program thereafter, to ensure projects harness digital and data opportunities in support of climate change mitigation and energy access objectives;
Develop and maintain partnerships with key stakeholders working at the intersection of digitalization, climate change and energy access in Africa;
Promote collaboration, knowledge sharing, and digital best practices between AMP national projects, partners and colleagues to help drive digitalization for energy access;
Lead the development of a digital strategy for the project to facilitate the adoption and use of data and digital tools for enabling off-grid electrification and minigrid cost-reduction in the participating countries;
Identify new data and digital tools and solutions that can support, enhance and improve the program’s contributions to off-grid electrification;
Implement a data management platform to aggregate data from minigrid pilots and enable monitoring and evaluation of program results;
Provide technical inputs for developing common reporting data protocols and standardized approaches for data analytics to systematically draw insights from program data;
Lead UNDP’s analysis and development of systematic insights and learnings from data collected from all AMP minigrids pilots/countries and harness it for knowledge creation and dissemination;
Design and implement pilot initiatives to test digitalization and data value add at various stages of the mini-grid development cycle;

Competencies

Competencies

Core

Achieve Results:

LEVEL 3: Set and align challenging, achievable objectives for multiple projects, have lasting impact

Think Innovatively:

LEVEL 3: Proactively mitigate potential risks, develop new ideas to solve complex problems

Learn Continuously:

LEVEL 3: Create and act 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: Think beyond immediate task/barriers and take action to 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

Thematic Area

Name

Definition

Business Direction & Strategy

Entrepreneurial Thinking

Ability to create clarity around UNDP value proposition to beneficiaries and partners and to develop service offers responding to client needs based on UNDP’s organizational priorities and mandate

Business Development

Knowledge Generation

Ability to research and turn information into useful knowledge, relevant for context, or responsive to a stated need

Collective Intelligence Design

Ability to bring together diverse groups of people, data, information or ideas, and technology to design services or solutions

UNDP Representation

Ability to represent UNDP and productively share UNDP knowledge and activities; advocate for UNDP, its values, mission and work with various constituencies

Business Management

Digital Awareness and Literacy

Ability and inclination to rapidly adopt new technologies, either through skilfully grasping their usage or through understanding their impact and empowering others to use them as needed

Working with Evidence and Data

Ability to inspect, cleanse, transform and model data with the goal of discovering useful information, informing conclusions and supporting decision-making

Monitoring

Ability to provide managers and key stakeholders with regular feedback on the consistency or discrepancy between planned and actual activities and programme performance and results

Required Skills and Experience

Minimum Qualifications of the Successful IPSA

Min. Education requirements

Master’s degree in business, finance, science, engineering, mathematics, economics, or other relevant field

Min. years of relevant work experience

A minimum of 5 years of relevant professional experience, including at least 3 years in the areas of digital solutions, data analytics, information technology, information systems or similar field is required;

Required skills

Experience working in developing country contexts is required;

Desired skills in addition to the competencies covered in the Competencies section

Experience with digital solutions for advancing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is an advantage; and experience with digital solutions for energy access (e.g. mobile money, remote monitoring, GIS mapping, digital payments, Machine Learning, data management, IoT) is a further advantage;
Experience with implementation of data management platforms/systems is an advantage;
Experince with monitoring and evaluation of development projects is an advantage;
Experience in Sub-Saharan Africa is an asset;
Excellent knowledge (written and spoken) of French is an advantage;

Required Language(s)

Excellent knowledge (written and spoken) of English;