Overview : The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted in September 2015 in New York, as the successor to the unfinished business of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The innovative idea of goal oriented planning pioneered, by the UNDP Millennium Project during the implementation of the MDGs, gained traction in Nigeria when MDGs needs assessment and costing was used by Nigeria as a basis for a ten-year development strategy (2006-2015). Across Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) too, SDGs-based planning has become a major plank in the pursuit of pro poor policy initiatives in the fight against poverty. Unlike the MDGs, the integrated focus of the Agenda 2030 and the SDGs require an integrated approach incorporating the cross-sectoral linkages of policies, trade-offs and policy-synergies. This is evidenced in the number of SSA countries, including Nigeria, Malawi, Senegal and Cote d’Ivoire that are currently undertaking integrated SDG policy design as a basis for scaling up public investments in social and physical infrastructure towards achieving the Agenda 2030. This TOR is therefore to help procure the services of an experienced company or institute to develop and customize such an integrated model for Nigeria. Th selected firm will adopt and customise the integrated Sustainable Development Goals (iSDGs) simulation model for use in Nigeria, by building on the work already done in using intervention based costing models for estimating sectoral costing of interventions. The exercise will be done in collaboration with the OSSAP-SDGs, the Ministry of Budget and National Planning (MBNP), the Federal Ministry of Finance (FMoF) and the Budget Office of the Federation, with counterpart funding and technical support from the UNDP. Background: Nigeria is determined to achieve the SDGs. In this regard, the Federal Government of Nigeria is committed to implementing a number of initiatives to achieve the SDGs. These include: - The incorporation of the ideals of the SDGs into the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) 2017-2020, Nigeria’s Medium Term Development Plan, with a focus on inclusive growth, national cohesion and social inclusion.
- The on-going review of the Nigeria Vision 2020 document into Nigeria Vision 2030, having the same end date with the Agenda 2030, and the SDGs as a minimum platform for shaping the country’s national aspirations and strategic choices.
- The channelling of huge financial resources into pro-poor projects and programmes, in a transparent and accountable manner, in line with the on-going Public Expenditure Reforms towards the attainment of the SDGs.
- The development of an SDGs baseline data base for identified indicators, in collaboration with the National Bureau of Statistics; and the on-going national consultative process, for the preparation of the National Voluntary Report, being put together by stakeholders, preparatory to the proposed High Level Political meeting to be held in New York in July, 2017.
- The establishment of a transparent monitoring and evaluation framework, to guide the effective and efficient use of public funds in the attainment of the SDGs.
These initiatives will significantly contribute towards Nigeria’s progress towards achieving the SDGs and reducing poverty, putting the country on the path of sustainable growth. A.Objectives and Expected Benefits of the iSDG. The main objectives of iSDG model are as follows: - To identify public policies and programmes for achieving the SDGs, and assess their impact in isolation and in combination, their synergies, and their cost.
- To estimate the public investment requirements for implementing policy options and interventions needed to achieve the SDGs, and assess the implications of alternative financing strategies towards meeting any funding gaps identified.
- To facilitate the use of the results of the analysis as an advocacy tool for stakeholders’ engagement; and to enrich the policy debate towards SDGs achievement, including other more ambitious development aspirations, if any.
More broadly, the iSDG model will also be functional to support OSSAP-SDG’s/MBNP’s efforts towards the following objectives: - To use the integrated policy analysis and costing exercise as a means for achieving policy coherence by aligning the SDGs to development strategies at the national level.
- To support alignment of subnational development strategies to SDGs and the ERGP, through the presentation of the iSDG model in pilot states, and the analysis of SDG performance across Sates for selected indicators, for which sufficient data at the sub-national level is available.
- To ensure that the costing is used to strengthen planning and budgetary processes by linking plans and budgets both at the Federal and state levels.
- To institutionalise the integrated policy analysis and costing process at the national and sub-national levels; and provide a sound basis for integrating evidence based policy analysis and costing into the planning and budgetary processes of government.
- To strengthen the mechanism for collaboration between the three tiers of government through policy analysis and costing of initiatives; whereby the costing forms the basis for preparing subnational development plans that are used as a condition for accessing Federal Grants.
Implementation Framework To help achieve the above objectives of Government, there is need to identify a firm or institute that will provide technical support to the on-going needs assessment process. In this regard, the identified firm or institute will; - provide technical support by training a team of 25 local costing experts, facilitators, consultants and sector costing team leaders of Ministries, Departments and Agencies in the use of the integrated Sustainable Development Goals (iSDGs) model for policy simulation; including an induction course in systems dynamics.
- The identified firm or Institute, working with the local technical team, will build on the previous work done in Nigeria in the area of sectoral intervention based costing. Specifically, the iSDG model for Nigeria will include the possibility to link the costing models developed in Excel by OSSAP-SDGs/MBNP, to allow for assessing the cross-sector impacts of the planned SDG interventions, their synergies, and to improve the overall policy coherence.
- The identified firm or Institute will provide training at two levels: (1) User Interface (UI) training; and (2) iSDG modelling techniques. The whole team of local experts (“iSDG policy team”) will receive the UI training, which will focus on using and understanding the model through its user interface. The identified firm or Institute will also train a team of a maximum of 10 local experts (“iSDG technical team”) on the iSDGs modelling techniques, which include the ability to understand the model structure in the System Dynamics modelling language, perform advanced simulation analysis, and implement minor modifications to the model (e.g. adding indicators, updating database, fine-tuning calibration).
B.Scope of the Assignment: The identified firm or Institute will work with local costing experts and consultants at the Federal level to domesticate the iSDGs model to Nigeria, as well as customise it, as much as possible, for use in dynamic, integrated costing of projects and programmes towards SDGs attainment. The customised tool, through its UI, will be used to train other local sector experts in the Federal level MDAs and some local consultants, in a “training of trainers”, or TOT fashion. The specific responsibilities include the following: Analytical support The identified firm or Institute will work in collaboration with local officials, sector experts in line ministries and consultants to: - Customise the iSDG model framework to Nigeria, and in conjunction with the iSDG technical team, conduct analysis to identify the set of interventions and the requisite resources needed to achieve the SDGs by 2030.
- Facilitate the optimal use of and harness the benefits the iSDG policy simulation model, by linking the costing tools developed by OSSAP-SDGs/MBNP to not only complement the customised iSDGs policy simulation model, but to also help in validating the results of the exercise.
- Facilitate alignment of the ERGP to the SDGs, through performing an ERGP and SDGs costing exercise.
- Collaborate with the OSSAP-SDGs/MBNP team to adapting/extending the existing Excel Costing Models for SDG costing exercises.
- Assess the investment needs and the financing implications, human resources and infrastructure facilities needed (on an annual and per capita basis, and cumulatively) until 2030 to achieve the SDGs.
The details of the services required can be found on the UNDP e-tendering platform https://etendering.partneragencies.org/ |