Procurement Notices

United Nations Capital Development Fund

UNCDF is the UN’s capital investment agency for the world’s 47 least developed countries. With its capital mandate and instruments, UNCDF offers “last mile” finance models that unlock public and private resources, especially at the domestic level, to reduce poverty and support local economic development.

UNCDF’s financing models work through two channels: financial inclusion that expands the opportunities for individuals, households, and small businesses to participate in the local economy, providing them with the tools they need to climb out of poverty and manage their financial lives; and by showing how localized investments — through fiscal decentralization, innovative municipal finance, and structured project finance — can drive public and private funding that underpins local economic expansion and sustainable development.

By strengthening how finance works for poor people at the household, small enterprise, and local infrastructure levels, UNCDF contributes to SDG 1 on eradicating poverty and SDG 17 on the means of implementation. By identifying those market segments where innovative financing models can have transformational impact in helping to reach the last mile and address exclusion and inequalities of access, UNCDF contributes to a number of different SDGs.

UNCDF’s Energy Access Programme (also known as CleanStart):

UNCDF aims to empower millions of vulnerable people, such as farmers, youth, women, refugees, migrants, MSMEs, by leveraging the power of digital in various sectors (finance, agriculture, education, health, water & sanitation, energy, transport) to lead productive and healthy lives. To achieve this goal, UNCDF is providing financial support and technical expertise to both the public and the private sector. It provides capital financing  in the forms of grants, soft loans and credit enhancement products – and the technical expertise to unleash sustainable financing at the local level. 

In the energy sector, UNCDF supports low-income consumers to transition to cleaner and more efficient energy. To this end, UNCDF promotes access to finance across the energy value chain from customer to enterprise by investing in early 

stage, innovative business ideas from SMEs that have the potential to make a step-change in improving the accessibility, affordability, and reliability of modern energy for people, especially those at the last-mile. Business ideas should have strong commercial-viability potential.

UNCDF has adopted four pillars to improving the energy access market. The (1) investment component as described above is complemented by three other components that center around; (2) providing technical advisory services to get concepts and business plans investment-ready, as well as general advice and linkages to non-financial resources such as experts and business development opportunities during the life of the partnership; (3) knowledge and learning through customer insights research and Think-Shops to discuss trending market topics; and (4) advocacy and partnerships with strategic partners to jointly support the improvement of the energy access market ecosystem so that business models can scale.

UNCDF’s vision for energy access is to dramatically expand consumer and enterprise financing, supported by innovative digital services, for vulnerable consumers who want to transition to cleaner and more efficient energy. To make this happen UNCDF partners with financial institutions, service providers and energy enterprises  providing financial solutions and advice to test scalable business models in varying market conditions. The use of innovative digital services and finance solutions plays an essential role in many markets, particularly in reaching vulnerable people.

Since 2012, UNCDF’s energy access market development work is currently active in 4 countries (Nepal, Uganda, Myanmar and Ethiopia) and has recently expanded to other markets such as DRC and Burkina Faso. UNCDF is implementing key interventions in these countries to promote digital services, off-grid energy and other utility financing; and selectively deploy these depending on market needs and where UNCDF can add most value:

• Support financial service providers on energy (and other utility) lending through risk capital (grants, loans, guarantees) and technical assistance;
• Support energy (and other utility) enterprises (including MSMEs) who have viable business models to achieve market breakthroughs and scale, including for vulnerable last-mile consumers, through risk capital (grants, loans, guarantees) and technical assistance;
• Support the development of guarantee mechanism and credit enhancement tools to micro-finance institutions and commercial banks lending to MSMEs;
• Support the development of innovative digital services and digital finance solutions (e.g. business models using PAYG technology) enabling upscaling and reaching more vulnerable people;
• Crowd-in (commercial) financial service providers (national and international) by de-risking transactions with energy (and other utility) enterprises, e.g. via guarantees or syndicated loans;
• Provide technical assistance to energy (and other utility) enterprises to prepare them for external financing (debt, equity) and make them bankable;
• Engage closely with government partners and regional/global initiatives, including UNDP, REDD+, GEF and GCF, as well as industry associations such as the Global Off-Grid Lighting Association to influence high-level dialogue and policies that help create an enabling environment for energy markets for low-income markets to flourish.
• Strengthen capacities of private sector industry associations, such as solar energy or clean cooking associations, to enable them to act as an effective intermediary between individual energy companies and government and influence policy discussions.

UNCDF’s energy access market development work is supported by the Austrian Development Cooperation, the Government of Andorra, the Government of Liechtenstein, the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation, the Swedish International Development Agency, Embassy of Sweden in Uganda, the UK Department for International Development in Uganda, The Ministry of Energy Luxembourg, and the Central African Forestry Initiative and REDD+ in the DRC. 

UNCDF’s Energy Access Programme in DRC

In DRC, UNCDF is implementing with UNDP a Joint Programme for the Sustainable Consumption and Partial Substitution for Wood Energy in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).  Funded by the Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI) through the National REDD+ Funds of the DRC (FONAREDD), the Joint Programme is structured around three main energy sub-sectors of focus: Improved Stoves; Liquid Petroleum Gas; Micro-Hydro Electricals. This is through an institutional setup that makes use of a diversified partnership with Congolese public institutions, the private sector, UN agencies, research institutions and learned societies as well as civil society. To this end, the Joint Programme aims to contribute to the establishment of a sustainable clean cooking market through (i) the establishment of a favorable environment and (ii) an incubation programme for the private sector to select clean cooking companies to receive funding and technical assistance throughout the duration of the programme. In line with the national and international lessons learned, the Joint Programme's efforts are focused on sites where a viable and self-sufficient potential market exists, with the presence of actors able to benefit effectively from catalytic technical and financial support of the Joint Programme to change scale of production (knowledge of the sector and sufficient basic entrepreneurial capacities).

In 2020, UNCDF launched a microfinance pilot in DRC under the FONAREDD Energy Joint Program though GLPGP, COETE GAZ and EQUITY BANK. The overall outcome of the Microfinance activity is to set up a demonstration pilot showing over 250 households have taken up LPG through a microfinance mechanism.  A local consultant was recruited by GLPGP to coordinate this pilot since July 1, 2020 and has been following up closely the pilot. After withdrawal of GLPGP from the pilot, UNCDF is now directly coordinating the pilot.

In November 2021, the pilot was launched in Kinshasa and customers have started registration to get access to the LPG credit.

For a close follow up of the pilot and technical support to local partners, a consultant is needed in Kinshasa.

OBJECTIVES OF THE ASSIGNMENT

The overall objective of the Technical Assistance (TA) support is to coordinate interaction with EQUITY BANK, COETE GAZ and the community under the pilot on a regular basis and make  close follow up of responsibilities of each stakeholder in the pilot so targets can be reached.

To this end, the selected consultant will:

1. Coordinate the planning and implementation of the Project to effectively promote LPG uptake in selected low-income peri-urban and rural households across initially three communities and subsequently in other regions
2. Be “hands-on” as to the general field implementation and monitoring of field operations over time
3. Interact regularly with the microfinance partners for timely reporting, loan repayments and refill purchases by beneficiaries’ households to UNCDF team
4. Complete work assignments accurately and timely

SCOPE OF WORK

1. Provide the status of the microfinance pilot on the performance side and advice on solution-oriented way forward to accelerate implementation
2. Attend microfinance pilot monthly and weekly catch-up calls and meetings with EQUITY BANK and COETE GAZ and submit minutes of meetings to the UNCDF DRC Energy Program Specialist
3. Prepare monthly reports to monitor progress against key metrics ( eg. Loan repayment, number of refills per household, etc)
4. Conduct the final satisfactory survey in collaboration with the Joint program M&E expert
5. Prepare the final report at the end of the microfinance pilot and propose recommendations
6. Attend UNCDF scoping mission to identify new prospect of GPL in DRC
7. Through an open mechanism (Request for Proposals (RFPs), take part in the identification and selection of local financial institutions (micro-finance institutions, intermediary funders, SACCOs etc.) to receive support in developing innovative energy consumer or MSME financial products and blended finance or direct lending.

DURATION OF ASSIGNMENT, DUTY STATION AND EXPECTED PLACES OF TRAVEL

Contract Duration:9 months

Duty Station: Kinshasa,Democratic Republic of Congo.

In case of mission travel, the schedule/duration of travel will be negotiated with the consultant according to the requirements of the programme. Travel costs associated to the assignment will be advanced by the consultant, and paid by UNCDF on a reimbursement basis, and following the UNDP/UNCDF rules and regulations which states that consultant shall only be paid the most direct and most economical ticket, as will be quoted by the official UN travel agency.  Any amount in excess of the said quotation, such as class and airline preference of the consultant, shall be borne by the consultant. The daily living allowance will be paid as per UN Rate prevailing on the city/ies of destination, and may be paid before or after the travel, and only upon submission of appropriate supporting documents.   All other expenses outside of these items shall be on the account of the consultant.

For full details, please see the Terms of Reference attached and UNDP Job link: UNCDF Jobs - 105621- Expert in providing Technical Assistance to Microf (undp.org)