The Position:

The Regional Innovations Specialist post is placed in the West and Central Africa Regional Office (WCARO). S/He is part of an interdisciplinary team with a focus on support for initiation, stimulation and incubation of ideas; design thinking and prototype development; and monitoring, robust evaluation and scaleup of innovative approaches across the regional programme initiatives and in support of the country offices in the West and Central Africa Region. 

S/He will work under the overall guidance and supervision of the Regional Director and under the direct supervision of the Deputy Regional Director and in close collaboration with the other units of the Regional Office, which operates along broad thematic areas designed to stimulate and strengthen UNFPA programmes and results in the West and Central Africa region.

How you can make a difference:

UNFPA is the lead UN agency for delivering a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person's potential is fulfilled.  UNFPA’s strategic plan (2022-2025), reaffirms the relevance of the current strategic direction of UNFPA and focuses on three transformative results: to end preventable maternal deaths; end unmet need for family planning; and end gender-based violence and harmful practices. These results capture our strategic commitments on accelerating progress towards realizing the ICPD and SDGs in the Decade of Action leading up to 2030. Our strategic plan calls upon UN Member States, organizations and individuals to “build forward better”, while addressing the negative impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on women’s and girls’ access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights, recover lost gains and realize our goals.

In a world where fundamental human rights are at risk, we need principled and ethical staff, who embody these international norms and standards, and who will defend them courageously and with full conviction.

UNFPA is seeking candidates that transform, inspire and deliver high impact and sustained results; we need staff who are transparent, exceptional in how they manage the resources entrusted to them and who commit to deliver excellence in programme results.

Job Purpose:

Innovation is positioned as an accelerator to help UNFPA deliver its ambitious Strategic Plan 2022-2025. The Innovation Specialist provides high quality innovation guidance and integrated knowledge management and programmatic support within a systems strengthening approach fundamental to UNFPA’s overall strategy. S/He will support the innovation portfolio and mainstream innovation within the country offices of the West and Central Africa Region.

The primary roles of the Innovation Specialist are to support initiation, facilitate, capture and monitor innovation strategies and practices in the region for review and scaleup; and to provide capacity development to UNFPA staff and implementing partners and knowledge management support for innovative approaches to policy and programme development, implementation and operations.

You would be responsible for:

Management of the Regional Innovation Strategy In close consultation with the WCARO management and country offices, develop, implement and manage a regional innovation strategy to advance UNFPA’s mission and regional priorities through a coordinated, creative and evidence-informed innovative approach; Establish a strategy for building innovation skills and competencies, including creative thinking, in staff in the region and find ways to nurture innovative thinking across the regional programme focus areas; Contribute to the definition of a methodology on how impact can be measured and how the value of new innovations can be demonstrated; Global and Regional Scanning  Monitor latest trends and developments in innovation globally and in the region related to UNFPA mandate and identify projects with potential for scaling up and replicating successful projects; Work with all units of WCARO to identify and capture, for each thematic area, innovative initiatives that enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of UNFPA support, including technological advances, processes and approaches; Work with country offices to document stories, lessons learned and materials on promising innovation practices to support global and regional information sharing and scale up; Provide input into the UNFPA’s regional website, ensuring timely, accurate and comprehensive content related to innovation and based on innovative approaches provided by regional and country offices; Promote UNFPA publications/reports to position UNFPA as a regional knowledge leader of innovation for our core issues to advance innovation objectives; Support to Country Offices and Capacity Development Identify gaps and challenges in UNFPA programming and operations where innovative solutions are needed; Provide overall strategic and technical guidance and support to country offices in planning and implementing country-level innovations, from incubation of ideas to design thinking and prototype development; and implementation, monitoring, robust evaluation and scaleup of innovations; Identify innovation capacity building needs of the country offices and identify existing corporate capacity building activities or other learning programmes with a focus on stimulating innovative thinking and approaches at all levels of the organization; With partners, develop strong and innovative concepts for new products, tools and resources for a more vibrant and innovative approach towards delivering results and achievements, and assist country offices in the development and implementation of innovative prototypes; Identify and maintain a network of external technical resources to assist country offices in the development and implementation of innovation activities; Support country offices in identifying and implementing innovative approaches to internal and external communications, resource mobilization, and partnership building; Engagement in Global Innovation Activities and Partnerships Support and engage in key corporate innovation initiatives (e.g. Innovation Challenge, development of corporate tools and mechanisms, corporate innovation capacity building, Innovation Fair and Award, others); Promote, facilitate and support the UNFPA Ideas Bank - an innovation community space for shared innovation ideas across the organization, including Knowledge Exchange Hub, to nurture the culture of knowledge sharing and exchange across geographic locations and portfolios; Coordinate engagement of the regional community of innovators in technical discussions around accelerating the achievement of the transformative results, ICPD PoA and the 2030 Agenda;

This vacancy is archived.

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