The Position:

The Regional Supply Chain Management Specialist is located in the West and Central Africa Regional Office (WCARO) and reports directly to the Regional Commodity Management Team Lead (P5), WCARO, with a dotted reporting line to Head of Country Support and Monitoring in Supply Chain Management Unit (SCMU). You will work closely with the colleagues in SCMU, Technical Division/ Commodity Security Branch, the UNFPA Supplies Partnership, the Humanitarian Office, and the Country Offices in WCARO.

You are tasked with supporting the Regional Commodity Management Team Lead on regional efforts to strengthen national forecasting/ quantification, procurement planning, introduction of new products, and strengthening downstream supply chain management, ensuring  “end-to-end” visibility and effective distribution of UNFPA donated commodities, and identifying, troubleshooting, and implementing remedial action plans from the Last Mile Assurance (LMA) process recommendations for the countries in the Region. You will apply an integrated, coordinated, and systems strengthening approach to support governments and other implementing partners, which is fundamental to UNFPA’s overall strategy of building a ready, responsive, and resilient supply chain required for sustained and equitable access to and delivery of Sexual Reproductive Health (SRH) commodities.

How you can make a difference:

UNFPA occupies a unique position in the Reproductive Health Commodity ecosystem as a critical player in supply chain management, a leading public procurer of reproductive health commodities, a trusted partner to national governments, and one of the few organizations with the scale and partnerships necessary to build accountability for last mile delivery. Additionally, in humanitarian settings, UNFPA is responsible for ensuring the availability of lifesaving sexual and reproductive health and gender-based violence prevention and response commodities to those hardest to reach, and commodities to enable operational programme implementation in the hardest to operate settings.

The Supply Chain Management Unit, which was established in January 2022, ensures that UNFPA is able to support the delivery of life-saving reproductive health products and other programme supplies effectively and efficiently to the end user when and where they are needed. To do so, it provides enabling services to Regional Offices and Country Offices and ensures coordination, end-to-end visibility, and accountability on all supply-chain-management related activities, across all UNFPA Programmes.

Job Purpose:

As Regional Supply Chain Management Specialist, you will support the Regional Commodity Management Team Lead on regional efforts on oversight for sexual and reproductive health supply chain initiatives in the West and Central Africa Region, providing advice and support to ensure all member states have access to quality assured contraceptives, essential, lifesaving maternal health commodities, and other related core reproductive health commodities. You will support the provision of technical and programmatic guidance to governments, implementing partners and UNFPA Country Offices to develop and implement supply chain management strategies applicable in development and humanitarian settings, and to ensure programme supplies are effectively managed and safeguarded in accordance with the applicable supply-chain management and procurement policies, procedures, and related guidelines.

In the broadest definition, this role is multi-sectoral and crosscutting, engaging in all issues affecting commodity security, health system strengthening, supply management and quality assurance, as well as promoting availability, accessibility, and sustainability of SRH commodities. The role will also contribute to relevant data collection and consolidation processes, developing guidelines and tools, and ensuring interagency coordination and maintaining relevant partnerships and facilitating/monitoring compliance with policies. You will support the provision of relevant advice and capacity building in the forecasting/quantification as well as development and validation of national supply plans, procurement plans for countries in the Region, and guidance on distribution, inventory, and warehouse management, in line with good storage practices for health products.

You will work in close collaboration with the Technical Division, UNFPA Supplies Partnership, Supply Chain Management Unit, Humanitarian Office, Country Offices in the Region, and key Third Party-Procurement clients, ensuring timeliness, adequacy and relevance and quality of substantive outputs.

You would be responsible for:

You will support the Regional Commodity Management Team Lead on regional efforts to:

A. Strategic Technical Oversight and Leadership

• Advise Governments, Implementing Partners, and Country Offices across the functional areas of SCM covering forecasting and supply planning, regular and emergency procurement, national logistics management – including medical logistics, inventory accounting and control, warehousing, and good storage practices, LMA, and data collection and monitoring.
• In close collaboration with the Humanitarian Office and SCMU Emergency & Logistics Team, advise  Governments, Implementing Partners, and Country Offices on timely coordination of delivery of supplies for humanitarian response, including prepositioning.
• Guide UNFPA Country Offices, including those in humanitarian settings, to implement SCM practices, logistics preparedness and contingency planning, including prepositioning where required, to enable continuity and scale up of lifesaving services, including in humanitarian crises, when needed.
• Provide technical guidance on pharmaceutical management in accordance with the World Health Organization (WHO) policies (Good Storage Practices/Good Distribution Practices and the Model Quality Assurance System) as well as national policy frameworks and support the update of national guidelines.
• Identify and analyse global and regional trends, threats, and risks in Reproductive Health Commodity Security (RHCS) that may have an impact on the SDGs, 2030 Agenda and UNFPA’s work and guide countries in mitigating them.
• Identify regional priority areas in RHCS and develop UNFPA strategic positions and related policies, frameworks, evidence-based arguments, and operational strategies, in collaboration and coordination with other branches, for overall system strengthening.
• Lead UNFPA’s contribution to technical assistance efforts with regional partners such as the West African Health Organization (WAHO), United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and other technical agencies and foundations and develop joint RHCS initiatives and approaches for UNFPA regional leadership in this area.
• Provide strategic technical oversight and capacity building to Governments, Implementing Partners and Country Offices in consensus-driven national RH commodity forecasting with all local stakeholders, including government ministries, bilateral donors, major non-government organizations and other development partners having presence in-country, as well as partners using UNFPA’s Partner Supply Chain Services.
• Ensure Country Offices in the Region produce technically sound and expeditious procurement plans supported by consensus-based quantification, national supply plans and distribution plans, and regularly monitor procurement plans and distribution plans to ensure they are up to date.
• Establish a mechanism for tracking commodity procurement pre-commitments, budgets and expenditures from all stakeholders involved in national supply plans, and coordinate with  Technical Division (TD) for processing of any applicable Match Fund.
• Monitor Country Office management of core commodity transactions, including ordering, receipt, inspection, storage, issuance, and distribution of these items, so as to be fully compliant with UNFPA policies.
• Oversee Country Offices to ensure adequate levels of assurance are obtained on whether programme supplies: (i) are adequately managed and safeguarded by the Implementing Partners to which they are entrusted, preventing, or minimizing waste and fraud; (ii) timely and effectively reach the “last mile”, i.e., the service delivery points where beneficiaries can access them.
• Anticipate and respond to the needs of Governments and Implementing Partners, in developing and updating policies, frameworks, guidance, standards, instruments/systems and tools.
• Provide technical guidance to and assure quality of supply chain related work of the RHCS country focal points in the Region.

B. Capacity Development

• Provide technical guidance for countries to draft/adapt relevant national supply chain management training materials and manuals and use them for capacity development at various levels.
• Develop a capacity building plan for the Region and coordinate structured training programmes to build capacity of staff in governments and implementing partner organizations  responsible for supply chain management
• Implement relevant policies, guidelines, and procedures applicable to UNFPA donated commodities.
• Coach and manage staff and consultants engaged in supply chain management activities at the Regional Office and country levels.
• Contribute to substantive technical capacity development of supply chain and commodity management institutions in the Region, including integration of RHCS into training curricula for various health professionals.

C. Knowledge Management

• Lead UNFPA’s regional analytic work on the subject area to ascertain lessons-learned from implementation and to refine methodologies for effective quantification and forecasting within a decentralized planning and budgeting context. Package knowledge products and promote UNFPA learning programmes with internal and external audiences.
• Contribute to and review material for both internal and external audiences, including presentations, talking points, briefing material and background documents for Senior Management within UNFPA’s participation in high level external meetings.
• Provide quantitative, qualitative, and narrative input and participation to donor reports, audit responses, and stakeholder meetings – including those with high-level visibility and impact
• Act as regional expert on all technical and implementation issues that relate to supply chain management and last mile assurance.
• Contribute to promoting UNFPA’s strategic role in the changing development agenda.
• Establish and facilitate a Regional Supply Chain Community of Practice among staff and consultants engaged in supply chain management activities in the Region, to share best practices and overcome common bottlenecks affecting supply chain management, logistics, inventory control and LMA activities, leveraging and sharing knowledge with other Implementing Partner assurance activities, where relevant.

D. Technical Representation

• Represent UNFPA in regional commodity security working groups e.g., West African Health Organization (WAHO), Ouagadougou Partnership, or similar regional and cross-organizational initiatives.
• Represent UNFPA in meetings with regional development partners on issues and initiatives related to supply chain management coordination.
• Actively participate in technical working group/steering committee meetings of the UNFPA Supplies Partnership and bring regional issues to the attention of UNFPA Supplies management.
• Work with the Head, Country Support and Monitoring at SCMU in Copenhagen to coordinate collaboration with UN agencies, academia, research, training institutions and professional societies, and act as focal point for regional inter-agency working groups in the substantive area.

E. Carry out any other duties as may be required by UNFPA SCMU leadership

Qualifications and Experience: 

Education:  

Advanced university degree in Medical Science, Pharmacy, Supply Chain Management, Business Administration, Logistics or equivalent field is required. A first level university degree combined with a professional Supply Chain Management certification such as CIPS at Level 5 Advanced Diploma and/or CILT at any of the Level 5 qualification may be accepted in lieu of an advanced university degree.Knowledge and Experience: 

• A minimum of five years of relevant progressively responsible professional experience, including management experience of managing people and/or health projects at the international level, with ideally at least two years spent in low resource or humanitarian settings.
• Minimum of three years of substantive experience in health commodity quantification, forecasting, supply management, warehousing, distribution, logistics information systems.
• Demonstrated experience and successful track record in public health SCM strategy and network design creation and implementation.
• Experience providing direct and successful country support on public health SCM in development and ideally complex humanitarian operating environments.
• Experience in developing analytical tools for management reporting and performance metrics in supply chain.
• Basic knowledge of the principles and operational aspects of integrated SRH health care in the global development and humanitarian community is an additional asset.
• Demonstrated expertise in family planning method mix, contraceptive technology and humanitarian preparedness and prepositioning.
• Professional written and spoken presentation skills, including for the development of reports, presentations, and the ability to synthesize complex technical documents for both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Strong interpersonal skills and capability to develop and maintain broad diversified partnerships.
• Familiarity with UN agencies procurement and supply chain management policies, and guidelines is an asset.

Languages: 

Fluency in English and French is required. Working knowledge of Portuguese is an asset.

Required Competencies: 

Values:

• Exemplifying integrity,
• Demonstrating commitment to UNFPA and the UN system,
• Embracing cultural diversity,
• Embracing change

Core Competencies: 

• Achieving results,
• Being accountable,
• Developing and applying professional expertise/business acumen,
• Thinking analytically and strategically,
• Working in teams/managing ourselves and our relationships

Functional Competencies:

• Strategically positioning UNFPA programme,
• Delivering results-based programmes,
• Strengthening the programming capacity of Country Offices,
• Facilitating quality programmatic results,
• Generating, managing, and promoting the use of knowledge and information,
• Providing conceptual innovation to support programme effectiveness

Managerial Competencies:

• Providing strategic focus,
• Engaging staff and partners,
• Leading, developing, and empowering people/creating a culture of performance,
• Making decisions and exercising judgment.

Compensation and Benefits:

This position offers an attractive remuneration package including a competitive net salary plus health insurance and other benefits as applicable.

Disclaimer: 

UNFPA does not charge any application, processing, training, interviewing, testing or other fee in connection with the application or recruitment process. Fraudulent notices, letters or offers may be submitted to the UNFPA fraud hotline http://www.unfpa.org/help/hotline.cfm

In accordance with the Staff Regulations and Rules of the United Nations, persons applying to posts in the international Professional category, who hold permanent resident status in a country other than their country of nationality, may be required to renounce such status upon their appointment.