| Overview : UNDP South Africa and the Independent Electoral Commission had been in discussions since 2015 to partner on a project to strengthen the capacity of the institution, and more recently, to ensure that the commission explores innovative ways in its electoral management processes. In 2015, a project document was developed in collaboration with UNDP HQ and UNDP South Africa which proposed support across five key result areas: domestic electoral observation, civic education, enhancing their research capabilities, enhanced regional and international partnership, and gender mainstreaming throughout the electoral process. A new UCount proposal was developed in late 2018, and we received $653,021 in TRAC2 funding, focusing on similar programmatic areas but prioritised the use of innovation throughout the electoral process and ‘pushing the boundaries’ in each. The project will also prioritise South-South cooperation and will utilise all opportunities to build the capacity of neighbouring countries and to strengthen South Africa’s role as a continent leader. Since March 2019, UNDP has on several occasions iterated with senior management of the commission and provided support in the development of knowledge products as build-up to the 8 May 2019 elections, in areas of domestic observation and civic education. The long-term support will focus on the 2021 local government elections. The short-term priorities are to finalise and sign off the project document, implement the 2019 agreed upon activities, viz. the support the Electoral Commission in collaborating with a youth led NGO to deliver a small grants scheme to youth across South Africa to develop a peer to peer learning civic education programme; the publication of a research report examining women’s political representation since democracy in the three tiers of government; and explore and provide exposure to the Commission on new technologies that can be adopted in the 2021 local government elections, as part of transitioning from a purely manual system to an electronic voter identification that is fool proof and cyber secure. UNDP requires the services of consultant who will be based at the country office for the duration of the assignment. The purpose of this short –term consultancy is to support the UNDP South Africa in carrying the key major activities with our project partners and other stakeholders in the electoral management space. | 
