Procurement Notices

 

1.      Background

The Country Programme Document (CPD) 2020-2025, which aims to respond to the most pressing development challenges of the country - unemployment, poverty and inequality - was approved in June 2020 by the Executive Board. The anchor of the UNDP country programme 2020-2025 is youth and women’s empowerment and employment, as the bedrock for reducing poverty and inequality in South Africa.   

 

The country programme is aligned to three of the nine United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (UNSDCF) outcomes, on equitable social and economic opportunities, participation in decision-making and access to justice, and resilience to climate change. It implements the six signature solutions of the UNDP Strategic Plan, 2018-2021 and prioritizes five of the six impact areas of the UNDP regional offer (2020-2021), including the associated foundational enablers. The UNSDCF 2020-2025, is aligned with the Government’s Medium-Term Strategic Framework (MTSF) 2019-2024 and focuses on four of its seven priorities: transform the economy to serve the people; advance social transformation; strengthen governance and public institutions; and South Africa for a better Africa and world.   

 

The country programme is operationalized through three interrelated portfolios, with critical emphasis on leaving no one behind and achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals: a). Nature, Climate and Energy, b). Transformative Governance and c). Inclusive and Sustainable Growth.   

 

Policy Analysis is a key in delivering UNDP’s mandate as it produces knowledge that contributes to informing national policies and strategies to accelerate the attainment of SDGs, including in the aspect of development coordination and harmonization. The Accelerator Lab, as a cross-cutting intervention, is critical in ensuring that innovation is embedded in the program to ensure that more effective and efficient solutions to development challenges are integrated. Gender is at the center of the program not only in terms of mainstreaming but also in ensuring the advancing of gender equality in national institutions.  The Social and Environmental Standards (SES) unit supports the mainstreaming  of social and environmental sustainability in our Programmes and Projects to support sustainable development.

  

The CPD is implemented in a challenging context characterized mainly by limited opportunities for resources mobilization, including Government Cost Sharing, while there are pressing development challenges in which UNDP is positioned to play a pivotal role, such as the Just Energy Transition, Disaster Risk Management, Building State Capabilities for improved services delivery and Youth Employment promotion. Despite these challenges, UNDP has been able to implement its CPD with some degree of success, contributing to uplifting the image of UNDP in the country and its position as a government and other development actor partner of choice.  

 

The CPD is in its fourth year of implementation and has recently undergone an Independent Country Programme Evaluation (ICPE) in 2024, ahead of the new CPD development. The CO intends to take this opportunity to start reflecting on a Portfolio Approach to be the feature of the new CPD.

 

The country office has noted weaknesses in its business model which impacts its sustainability and has also noted gaps related to technical skills and performance compatible to the current scale of development, monitoring and evaluation requirements. These gaps are restricting the CO’s ability to achieve the targets set in its Integrated Workplan (IWP) and the programme performance entrusted to the CO as well as being able to implement new transformative visions and strategies that accelerate the envisaged results. Observable barriers to effective organizational capacity within the CO include:

·       Alignment of current technical skills with a fit for purpose organizational structure;

·       Limited financial and institutional capacity;

·       Inflexible organizational internal control and procurement systems;

·       Inflexibility towards internal organizational changes;

·       Unclear systems and processes for operations and program services delivery;

·       Weak interaction between various units that results in silos;

 

In order to develop the CO’s capacity in line with its long term goals, it is believed that a systematic  assessment of systems/processes and capacities should be conducted with the aim to identify critical gaps and propose strategic and tailored capacity development strategies that would guide the CO for the next 5 years and beyond. UNDP South Africa would thus like to commission a consultancy firm for a comprehensive capacity assessment of UNDP South Africa, leading to the development of tailored capacity building strategy that would enable the CO to deliver on its core mandate more effectively and efficiently.

 

2.      Objectives and scope of the consultancy

The objectives of the consultancy are to:

 

·        Review the UNDP South Africa business model (i.e. CO structure, systems and processes of running programmes and operations, funding modalities and sources, partnerships and engagement approaches with partners and programmatic interventions) and assess its relevance and suitability to implement the current CPD and develop/implement the next country CPD

·        Undertake a capacity gap assessment of the UNDP South Africa Country Office and propose strategic capacity development responses based on the UNDP Capacity Assessment Framework;

·        Develop a comprehensive capacity development strategy which can enable the CO to advance and accelerate the implementation of its CPD for the next three-five years.

 

 

3.      Scope of the Work

The consultancy service will be based in Pretoria and aims to conduct capacity gap assessment of the country office to plan, implement, monitor and deliver its CPD. In addition, the consultancy work is expected to develop a response strategy for the identified gaps but following a consultative and comprehensive approach. This is expected to be guided by UNDP’s capacity assessment framework. The methodology to be applied would involve the three levels of capacity development (individual, organizational and institutional) at the various levels of the country office’s operations at national level and would be expected to provide capacity development plans that address these three levels. The exercise should move away from the traditional capacity building approach: it needs to be purpose-oriented and make reference to international practices, standards and norms when it comes to the functions of the South Africa Country Office.

 

The consultant is also expected to prepare a strategy document relevant to the context that addresses:

a.      Development planning, management and governance, how to achieve institutional goals

b.      Policy implementation gaps, advocacy strategies

c.      Approach to innovation

d.      Medium to long term priorities

e.      Design to generate solution at scale

f.        Strategy for achieving results

g.       An integrated approach to programming, thematically and geographically.

h.