Programme Manager (Market Influence & Procurement Centre), (P-4), Office of Innovation (Giga), Geneva, Switzerland, #127589 (Temporary Appointment 364 days)

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, hope 

Giga (giga.global) is a partnership between UNICEF (unicef.org) and the ITU (itu.int) working to connect every school in the world. The team (https://giga.global/about-us/) has experience and background in building technology products, finance and investment, design, and infrastructure.  It’s a global team, with two “centers of gravity” (in Barcelona, Spain and Geneva, Switzerland) but with many team members located around the world.

Giga is broken into three main areas: Mapping, Finance, Procurement, supported by cross-cutting support services. The Country Engagement Team supports the initiation and implementation of all three areas of Giga’s support in countries. The Mapping team maps schools and their connectivity, creating a real-time display of access and need on Project Connect (https://projectconnect.unicef.org/map). The Finance team works to create the financing (grant, loan, and investment) for connectivity. The Procurement works closely with UNICEF Supply Division to support governments through public procurement processes for contracting sustainable, high quality and affordable school connectivity. There are also crosscutting teams that support on communications, partnerships, staff wellbeing, operations and finance. 

We aim to have agility and flexibility in how we work, and to be driven by realtime data about what we’re doing.  We also work within the political and global framework of the UN, which means that we can collaborate with policy makers and regulators, governments, civil society, and of course, most closely with our 135 country offices, in everything we do.

How can you make a difference?

Under the guidance of the Senior Adviser (Giga Financing and Market Shaping) the Programme Manager for Market Influence and Procurement Centre plays a pivotal role in achieving Giga’s mission to connect all schools to the internet by 2030. This role provides expert advice to UNICEF Country Offices and their government partners, focusing on efficient, large-scale procurement of school connectivity.

The Programme Manager will also be responsible for the creation and initial setup of the Giga Global Procurement Hub. This hub aims to centralize technical assistance and achieve significant cost savings through strategic market interventions and bulk purchasing.

In collaboration with UNICEF’s Supply Division and ITU, the Programme Manager leads the development and implementation of market influencing strategies to enhance governments’ access to affordable and high-quality school connectivity. These strategies aim to help Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and other potential market actors that can supply connectivity, to scale up their services, particularly in underserved and remote areas.

Another important aspect of the role is to support UNICEF Country Offices, and their government counterparts, to make demand for school connectivity more stable and predictable. Thus, the Programme Manager is responsible for developing tools and providing guidance for countries to aggregate their demand for school connectivity within the country or establishing agreements to do it at a regional or global scale. By engaging both the supply and the demand sides of the school connectivity solutions market, the Programme Manager’s work is intended to support Giga in improving the affordability of school connectivity, expand choice and manage a competitive supplier base, recognizing connectivity as an essential service for the fulfillment of children’s rights.

The role requires agility and adaptability, aligning with Giga’s startup culture. The Programme Manager will work closely with UNICEF’s country offices and ITU teams, as well as other UN agencies. This role demands strong collaboration across various Giga teams, including Mapping, Finance, and Country Engagement, and with UNICEF’s 135 country offices.

Lead Giga’s procurement team: Provide leadership to Giga’s procurement team in delivering technical advice and support to UNICEF Country Offices, and their respective government counterparts for efficient school connectivity contracting:

• Tool development and maintenance: Guide the procurement team to develop and continuously update the necessary tools for providing technical support to UNICEF Regional and Country Offices. This includes procurement documents, technical requirements and standards, model contracts, templates for service-level agreements, among others.
• Needs assessment and strategy development: Evaluate the procurement needs of UNICEF Regional and Country Offices and their respective governments regarding school connectivity. Where necessary conduct market assessment exercises and quantify demand over time. Based on this evaluation, develop a tailored procurement strategy for each region or country, considering their unique characteristics.
• Coordination with UNICEF Supply Division: Collaborate with UNICEF Supply Division teams to ensure Giga’s school connectivity procurement tools and guidance reflect and utilize the knowledge, expertise, and insights from procurement practices across UNICEF.
• Data collection and analysis: Coordinate the collection of data relevant to understand procurement and school connectivity contracting processes in a country, and perform subsequent analysis to inform decision-making processes. Building on UNICEF’s commitment to transparency, utilize market information and intelligence tools to influence local and regional markets and support informed government, supplier and partner decision making.
• Lead school connectivity procurement focal point: Act as the primary contact point for Giga countries in the stage of procuring affordable, high-quality, and sustainable school connectivity solutions.

Set-up the Giga Global Procurement Hub: Lead the establishment and initial operation of the Giga Global Procurement Hub, aimed at centralizing technical assistance and achieving significant cost savings through strategic market interventions.

• Staffing and Expertise: Establish a three-part office within the Procurement Hub to handle market shaping, negotiation blocks, and contract support. Staff the hub with a team of specialists and the broader procurement practice.
• Stakeholder Collaboration: Initiate the process of bringing together key Regional and Country Office teams and other stakeholders to develop platforms for bulk negotiation and other market shaping activities.
• Project Preparation & Execution: Lead the preparation and execution of contracts and bids, ensuring alignment with Giga’s school connectivity standards and KPIs.
• Monitoring and Evaluation: Develop a framework to assess the effectiveness and impact of the Procurement Hub, including estimated savings and improvements in market conditions.
• Knowledge Transfer: Facilitate the sharing of best practices and lessons learned from the Procurement Hub to other parts of Giga and UNICEF, ensuring a cohesive approach to school connectivity procurement.
• Transparency and Reporting: Maintain records of all Procurement Hub activities and report progress to Giga’s senior management, ensuring full transparency and accountability.

Lead the development of a strategy for improved market access: Take the lead in crafting a strategy to enhance market access to affordable, sustainable, and high-quality school connectivity, prioritizing the most disadvantaged and remote areas globally.

• Stakeholder engagement and coordination: Actively engage all key stakeholders including UNICEF, ITU, global and regional organizations, other UN agencies, and governments. Coordinate their efforts in developing comprehensive market assessments of the school connectivity solutions markets and defining interventions to improve access to this essential service for children and youth.
• Support the establishment of agreements to implement the strategy: Lead the processes of formalizing global and regional agreements for the implementation of the market access interventions that have been defined.
• Monitoring and evaluation framework: Guide Giga’s procurement team in designing a monitoring and evaluation framework to assess the effectiveness of the market access interventions.
• Knowledge management: Lead the development of documents and guidelines collecting the lessons learned from these interventions to provide recommendations for scaling up supply and demand of school connectivity and enhancing market access to it.
• Communication: Lead the elaboration of inputs for the Giga communications team to publicize the progress achieved through this strategy.

Provide strategic input as part of the global Giga team: Coordinate with multiple internal teams (Mapping, Finance, Country Engagement, Partnerships, Communications, and other cross-cutting teams) to deliver insights from the school connectivity procurement processes in different countries, which can help enhance Giga’s products.

• Progress tracking and data maintenance: Monitor the progress status of school connectivity procurement processes in each country and region and manage the process of maintaining up-to-date data to inform global decisions.
• Needs identification and strategy adjustment: Identify specific needs at country level, assess lessons from school connectivity procurement processes, and adapt global market access strategies as needed.
• Reporting and accountability: Report progress regularly to Giga’s senior management and be accountable for all responsibilities associated with the role. This includes documenting all activities, decisions, and results, as well as ensuring transparency of all operations.

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

• An advanced university degree (Master’s or higher) in technology, social sciences, development sciences, public administration, business administration and management or related degree is required.
• A minimum of 8 years of relevant professional experience in managing projects and providing strategic guidance to governments at a ministerial level on open-source frontier technology and open social innovation, particularly in addressing inequity challenges in developing countries, is required.
• Demonstrated experience in leading the design and coordinating the implementation of school connectivity prototypes in various developing countries’ contexts is required.
• Experience within government will be necessary for this role. The Candidate has led technology or frontier work, including guidance on organizational and policy frameworks, within a government context, with UNICEF Programme context experience being highly desirable.
• Proven experience in supporting UN supply teams at the country level and formulating strategies for efficient procurement of school connectivity, leveraging elements like economies of scale, demand aggregation, market information, and transparency, among others, is required.
• Experience structuring new frameworks or mechanisms in or with governments for the uptake of new technology. This entails both a deep technical understanding of the fields in which the Candidate has previously worked, but also an ability to engage government regulators in these fields, and experience taking new gov-tech initiatives from startup to scale.
• Extensive experience leading market research and intelligence gathering on school connectivity solutions for developing countries, especially in remote-rural areas, and assessing different markets’ capacity to deliver affordable, sustainable, and high-quality school connectivity is required.
• Relevant experience in a UN system agency or organization is required.
• Knowledge and experience in UNICEF’s programmes, policy, and principles is required.
• Proven ability to convert technical telecommunications infrastructure data and analysis into policy insights for decision-making is required.
• Demonstrated ability to manage relationships with UNICEF programmes and partners, including government agencies, universities, other UN organizations, donors, NGOs, and the private sector is an asset.
• Proven ability to work collaboratively with teams across different locations, within various UNICEF country offices, and across different technical skills sets is essential.
• Fluency in English is required. Knowledge of another official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish) or a local language is an asset.

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF’s Core Values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust and Accountability and Sustainability (CRITAS) underpin everything we do and how we do it. Get acquainted with Our Values Charter: UNICEF Values

UNICEF competencies required for this post are…

(1) Builds and maintains partnerships (2) Demonstrates self-awareness and ethical awareness (3) Drive to achieve results for impact (4) Innovates and embraces change (5) Manages ambiguity and complexity (6) Thinks and acts strategically (7) Works collaboratively with others (8) Nurtures, leads and manages people

During the recruitment process, we test candidates following the competency framework. Familiarize yourself with our competency framework and its different levels: competency framework here.

UNICEF is here to serve the world’s most disadvantaged children and our global workforce must reflect the diversity of those children. The UNICEF family is committed to include everyone, irrespective of their race/ethnicity, age, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socio-economic background, or any other personal characteristic.
We offer a wide range of benefits to our staff, including paid parental leave, breastfeeding breaks and reasonable accommodation for persons with disabilities. UNICEF strongly encourages the use of flexible working arrangements.
UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF is committed to promote the protection and safeguarding of all children. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks, and will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.

Remarks:

UNICEF appointments are subject to medical clearance.  Issuance of a visa by the host country of the duty station, which will be facilitated by UNICEF, is required for IP positions. Appointments are also subject to inoculation (vaccination) requirements, including against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid). Government employees that are considered for employment with UNICEF are normally required to resign from their government before taking up an assignment with UNICEF. UNICEF reserves the right to withdraw an offer of appointment, without compensation, if a visa or medical clearance is not obtained, or necessary inoculation requirements are not met, within a reasonable period for any reason.

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.