National Consultant - Outcome Evaluation of UNDP Early Recovery Programme at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is the United Nations' global development network. It advocates for change and connects countries to knowledge, experience and resources to help people build a better life for themselves. It provides expert advice, training and grants support to developing countries, with increasing emphasis on assistance to the least developed countries. It promotes technical and investment cooperation among nations.

Headquartered in New York City, the status of UNDP is that of an executive board within the United Nations General Assembly. The UNDP is funded entirely by voluntary contributions from UN member states. The organization operates in 177 countries, where it works with local governments to meet development challenges and develop local capacity.

We are recruiting to fill the position of:

Job Title: National Consultant for Outcome Evaluation of UNDP Early Recovery Programme

Location: Maiduguri, Borno
Additional Category: Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction
Type of Contract: Individual Contract
Languages Required : English
Post Level: National Consultant
Starting Date: 19-Jan-2022
Duration of Initial Contract: 30 Working Days
Expected Duration of Assignment: 30 Working Days (Within Two Months)

Background

• The Country Programme Document (CPD) for Nigeria (2018-2022) was formally adopted by the Executive Board in September 2017, signaling the formal start of a new programme cycle. The UNDP country programme, 2018-2022, is based on the premise of ‘leaving no one behind’ and ‘reaching those furthest behind first’. The programme includes integrated solutions to complex, interconnected development challenges.
• Three interconnected priorities define the 2018-2022 programme: (a) governance, peace and security, (b) inclusive growth, and (c) environmental sustainability and resilience.
• The components of those three priority areas are based on the assumption that (i) transparent, inclusive, accountable and credible governance institutions are the foundations for robust and inclusive economic development; (ii) effective public sector reforms are driven by an enabling legal and regulatory environment; iii) violent and armed conflicts thrive on development deficits and inequalities; (iii) application of the humanitarian-development nexus requires a resilience-based  approach for durable solutions; (iv) issues at the federal, state and local levels impede the effectiveness of service delivery and require both policy advisory and substantive programmatic interventions, and (v) research, analysis and evidence-based planning are critical to effective and risk-informed policy decisions.
• Within the governance, peace and security, UNDP assistance includes the following elements. On security and conflict management, UNDP will support the formulation of legal and regulatory frameworks for peacebuilding, prevention of conflicts, and small arms proliferation.
• Programmatic state / local level interventions will target communities affected by violence and conflict, strengthen capacities for mediation and reconciliation through the establishment of early warning mechanisms / responses, and fortify the national peace architecture. Integrated strategies of disarmament and reintegration, early recovery and livelihood support include empowering victims of violence and using “arms for development” approaches when implementing cross-border activities, and community policing and social cohesion measures.
• UNDP’s early recovery and livelihoods work supports national and state government priorities on multidimensional processes of recovery that begins in the early days of a humanitarian response.
• UNDP does so by focusing on strengthening resilience, re-building or strengthening capacity. This contributes to addressing long standing challenges linked to conflict driven crisis, enabling sustainable transitions from humanitarian contexts to more sustainable development orientations.
• In view of the Insurgency driven conflict in the North-East of Nigeria, UNDP has been implementation of the supporting the North-East State Governments (Borno, Yobe and Adamawa) in implementing Early Recovery and livelihoods interventions but also participates in sectoral coordination in line with the Humanitarian Response Plan. This early recovery work, aligned with the ‘New Way of Working’ principles has supported the catalysis of sustainable development opportunities, through locally owned measures aimed at: restoration of basic services, rebuilding livelihoods systems, enhancing access to shelter, strengthening local governance, deepening options for security and rule of law, improvements in environment and social dimensions, including the reintegration of displaced populations. 

Evaluation Purpose

• UNDP commissions outcome level evaluations to capture and demonstrate evaluative evidence of its contributions to development results at the country level as articulated in both the UN Sustainable Development Partnership Frameworks (UNSDPF) and UNDP Country Programme Document (CPD). These are evaluations carried out within the overall provisions contained in the UNDP Evaluation Policy.
• In line with the Evaluation Plan of Nigeria, this outcome evaluation was planned to assess the impact of UNDP’s early recovery and livelihoods assistance in the course of implementation of the CPDs outcome on governance, peace and security.
• The UNDP Office in Nigeria is commissioning this evaluation to capture evaluative evidence of the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency and sustainability of current programming, which can be used to strengthen existing activities and to set the stage for new initiatives, including in the new CPD.
• The evaluation serves an important accountability function, providing national stakeholders and partners with an impartial assessment of the results of UNDP governance, peace and security support.
• The evaluation will also provide the Country Office with insights as relates for needs for strategic re-alignments and prioritization with a specific focus within its recovery sphere of work.

Description of Responsibilities

• The outcome evaluation will be conducted during the months of January to February 2022, with a view to enhancing programmes while providing strategic direction and inputs to the evaluation of the UNDP country programme and the UNSDPF both which started in 2018.

Specifically, the outcome evaluation will assess:

• The relevance and strategic positioning of UNDP support to Nigeria in general but North East of Nigeria specifically on early recovery and livelihoods.
• The progress made towards achieving accelerated community recovery and transitions from humanitarian to non-humanitarian contexts for the vulnerable communities, through specific projects, coordination and advisory services, and including contributing factors and constraints.
• The progress to date under these areas and what can be derived in terms of lessons learned for future UNDP early recovery and livelihoods support to Nigeria.
• During the CPD period, UNDP Nigeria country office has implemented a variety of projects (Completed) and continues implementing other active projects (See Annex) that reside within this outcome. An analysis of achievements across these projects is expected.

Evaluation Questions:

• The outcome evaluation seeks to answer the following questions, focused on the evaluation criteria of relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, and sustainability:

Relevance:

• To what extent is UNDP’s engagement in early recovery and livelihoods supporting a reflection of strategic considerations, including UNDP’s role in the humanitarian, development peacebuilding nexus context in Nigeria and its comparative advantage vis-a-vis other partners?
  • To what extent has UNDP’s selected method of delivery been appropriate to the context?
  • Has UNDP been influential in national/state debates and or actions on early recovery and livelihoods for vulnerable groups?
  • To what extent have UN reforms influenced the relevance of UNDP support to Nigeria in the early recovery and livelihoods sector?

Effectiveness:

• What evidence is there that UNDP support has contributed towards an improvement in national/state government capacity for early recovery and livelihoods?
• Has UNDP worked effectively with other UN Agencies and other international and national delivery partners to deliver early recovery and livelihoods strategies?
• How effective has UNDP been in partnering with civil society and the private sector to promote early recovery and livelihoods in Nigeria?
• Has UNDP utilised innovative techniques and best practices in its early recovery and livelihoods programming?
• Is UNDP perceived by stakeholders as a strong advocate for improving government effectiveness and integrity in early recovery and livelihoods in Nigeria?
• Considering the technical capacity and institutional arrangements of the UNDP country office, is UNDP well suited to providing early recovery and livelihoods support to national and state governments in Nigeria?
• What contributing factors and impediments enhance or impede UNDP performance in this area?

Efficiency:

• Are UNDP approaches, resources, models, conceptual framework relevant to achieve the planned outcome? Are they sufficiently sensitive to the political and development constraints of the country (Conflict and crisis situations, etc)?
• Has UNDP’s early recovery and livelihoods strategy and execution been efficient and cost effective?
• Has there been an economical use of financial and human resources?
• Are the monitoring and evaluation systems that UNDP has in place helping to ensure that projects are managed efficiently and effectively?
• Were alternative approaches considered in designing the Projects?

Sustainability:

• What is the likelihood that UNDP early recovery and livelihoods interventions are sustainable?
• What mechanisms have been set in place by UNDP to support the government of Nigeria to sustain improvements made through these early recovery and livelihoods interventions?
• How should the early recovery and livelihoods portfolio be enhanced to support governments (federal/state) authorities, local communities and civil society in improving service delivery over the long term?
• What changes should be made in the current set of partnerships to promote long term sustainability?

Partnership strategy:

• Has the partnership strategy in the early recovery and livelihoods sector been appropriate and effective?
• Are there current or potential complementarities or overlaps with existing federal/state partners’ programmes?
• How have partnerships affected the progress towards achieving the outputs
• Has UNDP worked effectively with other international delivery partners to deliver on good early recovery and livelihoods?
• How effective has UNDP been in partnering with civil society (where applicable) and the private sector to promote good and sound early recovery and livelihoods?
• The evaluation should also include an assessment of the extent to which programme design, implementation and monitoring have taken the following cross cutting issues into consideration:

Human Rights:

• To what extent have poor, indigenous and tribal peoples, youth, persons with disabilities, women and other disadvantaged and marginalized groups benefited from UNDPs work in support of economic management and inclusive growth?

Gender Equality:

• The assignment will require the consultant/s to do a gender assessment of the outcome and show how gender sensitive in planning implementation and sharing of benefits specifically investigate the following:
  • To what extent has gender been addressed in the design, implementation and monitoring of economic management and inclusive growth projects.
  • Is gender marker data assigned to projects representative of reality (focus should be placed on gender marker 2 and 3 projects);
  • To what extent has UNDP early recovery and livelihoods support promoted positive changes in gender equality? Were there any unintended effects
• Based on the above analysis, the evaluators are expected to provide overarching conclusions on UNDP results in this area of support, as well as recommendations on how the UNDP Nigeria Country Office could adjust its programming, partnership arrangements, resource mobilization strategies, and capacities to ensure that the early recovery and livelihoods portfolio fully achieves current planned outcomes and is positioned for sustainable results in the future. The evaluation is additionally expected to offer wider lessons for UNDP support in Nigeria NE and elsewhere based on this analysis.

Methodology:

• As of 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a global pandemic as the new coronavirus rapidly spread to all regions of the world. Travel to the Nigeria has been managed in accordance with national policies. If it is not possible to travel to or within the country for the evaluation then the evaluation team should develop a methodology that takes this into account the conduct of the evaluation virtually and remotely, including the use of remote interview methods and extended desk reviews, data analysis, surveys and evaluation questionnaires. This should be detailed in the Inception report and agreed with the Evaluation Manager.
• If all or part of the evaluation is to be carried out virtually then consideration should be taken for stakeholder availability, ability or willingness to be interviewed remotely. In addition, their accessibility to the internet/ computer may be an issue as many government, national counterparts and community members may be particularly challenged with access. These limitations must be reflected in the evaluation report.
• The outcome evaluation is expected to take a “theory of change’’ (TOC) approach to determining causal links between the interventions that UNDP has supported and observe progress in early recovery and livelihoods at national and state levels in Nigeria. The evaluator will develop a logic model of how UNDP early recovery and livelihoods interventions are expected to lead to improved national and state government management and service delivery. The evaluators are expected to construct a theory of change for the outcome, based against stated objectives and anticipated results, and more generally from UNDPs early recovery and livelihoods strategies and techniques.
• Evidence obtained and used to assess the results of UNDP support should be triangulated from a variety of sources, including verifiable data on indicator achievement, existing reports, evaluations and technical papers and virtual meetings with stakeholder interviews, focus groups, surveys.

Competencies:

• The evaluation will be conducted by a team of two independent consultants. The team will be comprised of one international evaluation expert (Team Leader) who will work remotely and one national evaluation expert (Associate) who will physically be on ground. Both the international and national consultants must have high levels of technical, sectoral and policy expertise; rigorous research and drafting skills; and the capacity to conduct an independent and quality analysis extensive experience. The required expertise, qualifications and competencies are listed below:

Corporate Competencies:

• Demonstrates commitment to UNDP´s mission, vision and values.
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability.
• Highest standards of integrity, discretion and loyalty.

Functional Competencies:

• Strong working knowledge of the UN and its mandate in Nigeria, and more specifically the work of UNDP in support of government, private sector and civil society in Nigeria.
• Sound knowledge of results-based management systems, and monitoring and evaluation methodologies; including experience in applying SMART (S-Specific; M-Measurable; A- Achievable; R-Relevant; T-Time-bound) indicators.
• Excellent reporting, good interpersonal and communication skills, an ability to communicate with various stakeholders, and an ability to express ideas and concepts concisely and clearly.
• Strong team leadership and management track record.
• Demonstrates integrity by modelling 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 favouritism.
• work under pressure against strict deadlines,

Required Skills and Experience
Education:

• Minimum of a Master's Degree in Development Management, Public Administration, Regional Development / Planning, or other Social Science.

Experience:

• Minimum of 7 years of professional experience in fragility issues, community resilience; community security, peace and cohesion, planning, regional development, gender equality and social services.
• At least seven (7) years' experience in conducting external project evaluations using different approaches and these will include non- traditional and innovative evaluation methods.
• At least 5 years of experience in conducting evaluations of United Nations, government and international aid organizations, preferably with direct experience with civil service capacity building.
• Demonstrated knowledge of the UN and its mandate in Nigeria, and more specifically the work of UNDP in support of government, private sector and civil society in Nigeria.
• Experience in implementing evaluations remotely.
• Knowledge of results-based management systems, and monitoring and evaluation methodologies; including experience in applying indicators and excellent reporting skills
• Working knowledge of humanitarian, development, peace nexus is an advantage.

Application Closing Date
17th December, 2021.

How to Apply
Interested and qualified candidates should:
Click here to apply online

Note

• UNDP is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence.
• 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.