The United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) is the UN’s capital investment agency for the world’s least developed countries (LDCs). It creates new opportunities for poor people and 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 the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
With its Secretariat hosted by UNCDF, the Better Than Cash Alliance’s mission is to catalyze a global movement from cash to digital payments to help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
Specific benefits include efficiency, transparency, women’s economic participation and financial inclusion, helping build economies that are digital and inclusive.
The Alliance has 80 members, including national governments from Africa, Asia-Pacific and Latin America, companies and international organizations which have committed to digitizing payments.
The Secretariat works with the Alliance members on their journey to digitize payments by:
- Providing advisory services based on member priorities.
- Sharing action-oriented research and fostering peer learning.
- Conducting advocacy at national, regional and global level.
The Better Than Cash Alliance Team’s Core Values are the following:
- Achieving together;
- Striving for excellence;
- Service oriented;
- Results oriented.
The Better Than Cash Alliance is looking to hire a Program Specialist for Anglophone Africa who will lead on the delivery of member services to African anglophone members and who also lead the Alliance Agriculture workstream (Africa Regional Lead)
For more information about the Better Than Cash Alliance, please visit the website http://www.betterthancash.org
II. Position Purpose
The Programme Specialist will provide leadership in provision of advisory services to Alliance’s Africa Anglophone member countries, championing responsible digital payments, leading in establishing member relationship, advisory services, guide research and knowledge management, as well as provide global leadership on agriculture payments. The Program Specialist will report to the Deputy Managing Director.
III. Duties and Responsibilities
1.) Establish and Manage Member Relationships in Anglophone Member countries
- Lead the development and management of relationships with members: governments, corporates and international organizations in the Anglophone regional portfolio to accelerate their championing of responsible payment digitization.
- Develop the regional and country strategies to address the various needs of different members, assessing and prioritizing each country based on the Alliance’s prioritization matrix.
- Identify the current challenges for Alliance country members and seek opportunities to catalyze each member’s progress appropriately and in a timely manner within the scope of the services offered by the Alliance including for governments.
- In close partnership with the Africa Policy, Advocacy and Partnerships Specialist, understand the regional context – the knowledge, skills and activities of the regional and national players digitizing payments – and seek to make connections and create an active regional network, including of government, and business payment streams;
- Develop pipeline of government and corporate members to benefit from member services;
- In partnership with the Head of Private Sector Digital Payment Innovation manage in-country corporate relationships to drive responsible payments digitization in their value chain with employees, workers, small businesses as well as smallholder farmers;
- In consultation with the Better Than Cash Alliance Global Gender Lead, provide leadership in the region to ensure in-country work prioritizes women and accelerate women’s access and use of responsible digital payments
- Establish and manage complimentary and collaborative relationships, where necessary and possible, with international development organisations, including UNDP, RC and other UN country agencies.
- Liaise closely with the LATAM and Asia Regional teams to co-lead cross-regional learning.
2.) Lead the Region’s Advisory Services
- Lead the design and delivery of advisory services to 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 support to 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;
- Design Alliance Secretariat priority country strategies incorporating input from the Private Sector and the Africa Advocacy Policy and Partnership Specialist ensuring alignment to the overall Alliance African Regional Advocacy Strategy.
- Lead the implementation of priority countries strategies, including hiring, and supervision of in-country digital finance specialists (where necessary) ensuring all priority members receive high-quality services in their priority areas.
- Lead the dissemination and embedment of the UN Principles for Responsible Digital Payments in member initiatives and policies.
- Prepare and present recommendations to appropriate Member Services Subcommittee for award of grants and/or technical assistance to priority countries
- Liaise regularly with other regional leads to ensure cross-learning
- Develop and implement processes for managing delivery of all in-country work and ensuring members are applying learning and assessing member satisfaction;
- Lead the regional M&E, developing and managing quantitative and qualitative monitoring, evaluation and reporting requirements for regional members, including keeping the Alliance team abreast of their status, achievements, challenges, opportunities and learnings.
- Prepare midyear and annual progress reports, achievements narrative as well as financial, and results achieved for the Executive Committee and donors
3.) Lead and Facilitate the Alliance’s Agriculture Payment Stream
- Provide leadership and facilitate the Alliance’s global agriculture payment stream design and implementation, ensuring responsible principles are built into digitizing agriculture payments across different value chains.
- In consultation with Private Sector and Regional Leads, lead in developing the Alliance’s strategy to scale responsible agriculture digitization of payments.
- In partnership with other Leads, lead the implementation and monitoring of the agriculture payment stream, ensuring different initiatives achieve scale.
- Facilitate member learning across the agriculture payment stream.
- Working with the Deputy Managing Director, develop and lead the fundraising efforts to support the agriculture payment stream across the regions.
4.) Guide In-Country Research and Knowledge Management
- Lead the design and implementation of the in-country members learning agenda, integrating knowledge sharing into all aspects of Member Advisory Services
- Develop knowledge products that support the capacity building of members in the anglophone Alliance countries and the wider digital payments sector including for companies and business payment streams;
- Design and implement a peer learning agenda and a dissemination strategy among regional Alliance members,
- Working with the Africa Advocacy and Partnerships Head, and in partnership with regional bodies/partners, scale in-country learnings to regional bodies, and other non-members in the region.
- 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.
5.) Lead In-country Advocacy, Fundraising, Partnerships and Representation
- Provide leadership to the in-country advocacy, fundraising, partnership building and representation efforts for the Better Than Cash Alliance, ensuring members are adequately served, while building support to a range of stakeholders including policy makers and funders.
- Establish and manage relationships with government, corporate and international organization members and with technical partners both diplomatically and effectively;
- Identify potential partners for scale and liaise with to ensure achievements and learning from Alliance in-country initiatives reach scale thanks to partnership with regional and international stakeholders (World Bank, AFDB and bilateral donors);
- Lead the effort to rally stakeholders to support member initiatives as part of the scale of responsible payment digitization;
- Undertake speaking and representation engagements for the Better Than Cash Alliance;
- Working with the Deputy Managing Director, lead in-country fundraising effort by developing strategies and building partnerships to mobilize additional resources at country level to fully implement the in-country and annual work plans
- Work closely with the Private Sector Lead in advocacy to ensure a cohesive strategy and implementation of the work with corporate and international development organization members in the region.
- Backstop the senior management in engaging with high level government officials, donors and C-suite corporate leaders in the region
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
People Management (Insert below standard sentence if the position has direct reports.)
UNDP People Management Competencies can be found in the dedicated site.
Cross-Functional & Technical competencies
Thematic Area Name Definition
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
Private sector engagement
- Ability to identify, conduct outreach, and manage relationships with the private sector
Public Sector Engagement
- Ability to engage and manage relationships with high level government and international organizations officials
- Ability to identify develop and manage partnerships that brings synergies and complementarity to programming.
Communications – Creative direction
- Ability to creatively communicate concepts in an engaging and simple way.
External Relations & Advocacy – Advocacy strategy and implementation
- Ability to create and implement advocacy strategy which lead to impactful change
Research and Knowledge Management – Knowledge Generation
- Ability to research and turn information into useful knowledge, relevant for context, or responsive to a stated need.
- Ability to communicate technical issues to non technical people
Program Management – Project Management
- Ability to manage programmes and projects with a focus at improved performance and demonstrable results.
People Management – Manage Performance and Ensure Accountability
- Ability to achieve high Return on Investment from country DFS experts.
- Ability to increase productivity, by creating a conducive environment for regional staff to maximise their potential.
V. Keywords
- Responsible Payment Digitization.
- Government relations.
- Partnership development.
- Gender equality.
Education:
- An advanced university degree (Master’s or higher) in economics, finance, international relations, public policy or business administration. A mix of a Bachelor’s degree and 9 years of experience can be accepted in lieu of a Masters degree.
Experience and skills
- Minimum of 7 years of progressively responsible professional experience in the digital financial services field- required including a
- Minimum of 5 years working with governments across Africa at high-level, particularly in supporting governments execute their national agenda for digital payments and managing government relations for the digital payments agenda – required;
- Professional experience in private sector across Africa, particularly in in supporting corporates develop and execute their digital payments agenda – required;
- Experience working on digital financial services for poor people and understanding of key issues and international good practice relating to digital financial inclusion; Working knowledge of current developments in payment technologies, including innovative payment methods; – required.
- Strong knowledge on the challenges and opportunities in driving responsible digitization of payments in agriculture in Africa – required.
Additional Experiences regarded as additional merits
- Working knowledge of policy, legal and regulatory issues related to inclusive payment technologies;
- Experience in designing and managing advisory services to government members with evidence of goals achieved;
- Experience in working in and managing a global team spread across different geographies and time zones;
- Experience in managing global projects, corresponding budgets, as well as monitoring and evaluation plans required; experience within the UN system – desirable;
- Extensive networks of senior government officials, IO executives and regulators working in the DFS space in Africa – desirable;
- Experience in analysis of gender disaggregated data and using the analysis for programme planning and implementation – desirable;
- Fluency in spoken and written English is required;
- Fluency in another African language – advantage.
Please note that continuance of appointment beyond the initial 12 months is contingent upon the successful completion of a probationary period.
