UNDP’s Strategic Plan 2022–2025 is grounded in UNDP’s continued commitment to eradicating poverty, accompanying countries in their pathways towards the SDGs and working towards the Paris Agreement. It envisions bold goals, making a difference to millions of lives through Six Signature Solutions, namely: 1. Poverty and inequality; 2. Governance; 3. Resilience; 4. Environment; 5. Energy; and 6. Gender Equality. These six signature solutions are powered by digitalization, innovation, and development financing. The Renewed Strategic Offer in Africa by UNDP’s Regional Bureau for Africa (RBA) is organized around six strategic impact areas, namely Structural economic transformation, Peace and security, Natural resource governance, Climate change mitigation and adaptation, Women and youth empowerment, and Affordable sustainable energy. These rely on six foundational enablers, namely 1) governance of things; 2) digital transformation; 3) sustainable/innovative financing; 4) strategic communication and partnerships; 5) South-South cooperation; and 6) development intelligence.

Around the world access to technology has increased and the costs of starting and running a business have declined increasing the number of and the speed of growth of tech and tech-enabled start-ups across the world. Start-ups, distinguished from traditional micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), are defined as ventures that are innovation-based, tech enabled and scalable, with potential for high impact in terms of job creation and positive disruption of traditional ways of doing things. As the world transitions from the industrial age to the information age, start-ups are penetrating and reinventing every aspect of human activity. These range from government, finance, defence, media and culture, to communication, health and even education, agriculture, energy and fashion. Start-ups generate employment. Among the insights generated by a Kauffman Foundation study was the finding that start-ups were responsible for all net new jobs created in the United States between 1986 and 2014. In South Africa, the National Development Plan predicts that by 2030, 11 million new jobs will be generated by small businesses. Some of the companies that will drive the global economy by 2035 may not even exist today. Against this backdrop, a global start-up revolution has begun and UNDP seeks to support this sector’s growth by enhancing the support ecosystem for innovative entrepreneurs.

UNDP has launched several programmes in the recent years to support innovation entrepreneurship across the world, including its accelerator programme and the timbuktoo programme. The timbuktoo initiative in particular aims to directly advance the achievement of the SDGs through the results of its “technology for good” offer in Africa. Of particular relevance in this regard is the potential for supporting innovations at scale in fintech, agritech, health tech, climate and energy, waste, logistics, commerce, trade, smart cities, mobility, tourism, the creative industry, mine tech and education. Timbuktoo seeks to provide a platform to support innovators to 1) convert their ideas into prototypes and minimum viable products, and 2) convert these prototypes into business ventures opportunities. Timbuktoo is integrally aligned to the Strategic Plan 2022–2025 and its three major enablers—digitalization, innovation, and financing  ( , and is a bold and ambitious programme set to impact the outcomes for youth tech and tech-enabled start-ups in Africa.

As part of the global UNDP Sustainable Finance Hub (SFH), UNDP established the Africa Sustainable Finance Hub (ASFH) in 2019, which has been operating to support Sub-Saharan African countries through the implementation of various strategic interventions that seek solutions to assist governments and partners in addressing development financing gaps, and counter challenges threatening the achievement of sustainable development. In doing so, ASFH aims to strengthen the SDG financing ecosystems at regional and country levels to help unlock public and private capital to accelerate achievement of SDG targets and the AU Agenda 2063 across the African region. Accordingly, the ASFH engages different actors in the financing for sustainable development landscape and promotes an array of financial resources as guided by the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA), including innovative financing instruments such as carbon markets, to increase financing available to support the Africa region to recover from COVID-19 and build back better over the long-term.

The purpose of this role is to drive UNDP’s efforts to support tech and tech enabled start-ups in Africa, leveraging the organisation’s Strategic Plan and the Timbuktoo initiative. The role focuses on fostering innovation, scaling high-impact ventures, and strengthening the entrepreneurial ecosystem across Africa, with a particular emphasis on youth-led start-ups. This position will contribute to achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs) by advancing technology-based solutions in sectors such as fin-tech, agri-tech, health-tech, and climate action, while addressing key challenges in scaling early-stage ventures.

Situated within RBA and focused on the above-outlined initiatives above, the Regional Innovation Analyst will be integrated into UNDP ASFH and will work closely with their teams to leverage on their capacities to use financing as an enabler towards innovation and Africa’s development progress. The position will directly support innovative initiatives by African Startups and SMEs ventures through concerted acceleration programs and matching partnerships with various ecosystem players.

UNDP adopts a portfolio approach to accommodate changing business needs and leverage linkages across interventions to achieve its strategic goals. Therefore, UNDP personnel are expected to work across units, functions, teams, and projects in multidisciplinary teams in order to enhance and enable horizontal collaboration.

• Support the establishment of the African Shapers for Innovation Programme, focusing on amplifying African voices in global innovation trends, including AI, machine learning, and digital governance systems.
• Drive the African Creatives and Creative-tech Support Programme to nurture the African creative economy by supporting creative-tech start-ups with resources for skills development, business growth, and funding.
• Strengthen and scale UNDP’s innovation-entrepreneurship ecosystem in Africa, aligning with the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCTA) and addressing regional strengths and weaknesses.
• Assist with the establishment and scale up mechanisms to identify, pilot, and expand local innovations that accelerate the achievement of the SDGs.

• Embed UNDP’s global strategy and Africa’s priorities into programme design, ensuring relevance to global innovation trends and local development needs.
• Assist UNDP Country Offices and partners in developing and strengthening creative hubs and innovation ecosystems by providing direct support, guidance, and technical expertise.
• Help to oversee the entire programme lifecycle, from design to implementation, monitoring, evidence-based reporting and evaluation, ensuring risk management, stakeholder co-ordination and social/environmental compliance.
• Use cutting-edge research and innovative methods to shape and improve the future of development, including linkages to UNDP ASFH work especially around private sector development, ecosystem support, green financing and inclusive growth.

• Develop and execute strategies for partnerships and resource mobilisation to support key programmes, engaging with venture capitalists, local innovators, and development agencies.
• Expand financial and technical resources by fostering new partnerships and exploring innovative financing mechanisms.
• Leverage UNDP’s partnership management systems to identify global opportunities that can be applied regionally.

• Enhance UNDP’s global profile by translating programme results into communication assets such as online articles, media interviews, and international dialogues.
• Capture and share lessons learned to guide future innovation strategies and contribute to knowledge building within the UNDP community.
• Actively participate in global and regional forums to ensure UNDP remains at the forefront of innovation and development practices.

• Core Competencies:

Achieve Results: LEVEL 1: Plans and monitors own work, pays attention to details, delivers quality work by deadline.

Think Innovatively: LEVEL 1: Open to creative ideas/known risks, is pragmatic problem solver, makes improvements.

Learn Continuously: LEVEL 1: Open minded and curious, shares knowledge, learns from mistakes, asks for feedback.

Adapt with Agility: LEVEL 1: Adapts to change, constructively handles ambiguity/uncertainty, is flexible.

Act with Determination: LEVEL 1: Shows drive and motivation, able to deliver calmly in face of adversity, confident.

Engage and Partner: LEVEL 1: Demonstrates compassion/understanding towards others, forms positive relationships.

Enable Diversity and Inclusion: LEVEL 1: Appreciate/respect differences, aware of unconscious bias, confront discrimination.

• Cross Functional and  Technical Competencies:

Business Direction & Strategy – System Thinking: Ability to use objective problem analysis and judgement to understand how interrelated elements coexist within an overall process or system, and to consider how altering one element can impact on other parts of the system.

Business Direction & Strategy – Entrepreneurial Thinking: Ability to identify and seize opportunities to service and add value to clients, create clarity around UNDP value proposition to beneficiaries and partners, develop clear service offers responding to client needs in line with UNDP’s organizational priorities and mandate.

Business Development – Knowledge generation: Ability to research information and to turn it into useful knowledge, relevant for context, or responsive to a stated need. Ability to apply existing concepts to new situations, and to develop new concepts to generate workable solutions and new approaches. Knowledge of relevant concepts, conceptual models, and theories that can be useful in addressing new situations.

Business Management – Portfolio Management: Ability to select, prioritise and control the organization’s programmes and projects in line with its strategic objectives and capacity Ability to balance the implementation of change initiatives with regular activities for optimal return on investment. Knowledge and understanding of key principles of project, programme, and portfolio management.

Digital – Innovation ecosystem curation: Ability to identify key players in an ecosystem, engage with them and mobilise them to build a community and over time a movement around a common mission that can bring about changes at the system level. Ability to give sense of purpose and build trust, develop programmes of activities and platforms to build and strengthen relationships.

Partnership management – Multi-stakeholder engagement and funding: Knowledge and ability to forge multi-stakeholder partnerships, and remove any obstacles to resource mobilization and multi-stakeholder funding platforms.

Partnership management – Strategic engagement: Ability to capture and sustain attention, interest and agreement of high-level, influential policy and decision makers and secure their buy-in of high-level vision and objectives. 

Level of Education: Bachelor Degree

Work Hours: 8

Experience in Months: No requirements