The World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Africa (AFRO) is one of WHO’s 6 regional offices around the world. It serves the WHO African Region, which comprises 47 Member States with the Regional Office in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo. As the lead health authority within the United Nations (UN) system, WHO works with the Member States in the African Region and development partners to improve the health and well-being of people. This involves translation of global health initiatives into regional plans that respond to the specific needs and challenges of countries in the Region. WHO also support countries to achieve better health outcomes through technical and policy advice, development of norms and standards, generation and sharing of knowledge and convening health partners. Together with countries, they attain health objectives by supporting national health policies and strategies.
As part of its mandate, WHO provides technical, operational and logistical support to help governments implement large-scale public health activities, including mass immunization campaigns to prevent or respond to outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases (polio, yellow fever, measles, cholera, etc.). In this context, WHO transfers funds to the Ministries of Health (MOH) to cover various types of operational costs including per diem of frontline workers, car rental, fuel, hall rental…These payments currently rely heavily on cash which generates several problems including but not limited to: Delays in the provision of funds to frontline workers; Lack of transparency and poor reconciliation of funds; Suspicion of leakage of funds; Lack of confidence at the operational level that money will arrive on time and in a transparent way. These problems have, in the past, had a negative impact on the achievement of the technical objectives of the activities.
To address this situation, AFRO and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) agreed that a concerted effort must be made to digitize the payment of operational costs to the extent possible in order to improve the overall quality of health interventions through rapid smooth and secure payments, better traceability of the use of funds, more transparency and confidence.
In addition, from the public health perspective, the World Health Assembly, which is the supreme decision-making body for WHO, passed a resolution in 2018 which urges Member States to prioritize the development and greater use of digital technologies in health as a means of promoting Universal Health Coverage and advancing the Sustainable Development Goals. (71st World Health Assembly, 2018; Geneva, Switzerland).
With the spread of COVID-19 throughout the region, there is now a new sense of urgency to establish and strengthen the use of contact-free digital payments to health and community workers who risk their lives to provide lifesaving vaccines and treatments to communities.
Scope of work
The consultant will support the WHO Country Offices (WCO) and the Ministries of Health (MOH) in designing, setting up and implementing ecosystems that will enable the digitization of health workers payments in the countries. He will perform the following duties:
Technical support to the National Taskforce
Support the establishment and onboarding of a National Task Force (NTF) responsible for the overall management of the project. Assist with the definition of goals, structure, roles, responsibilities, and draft terms of reference of members of the NTF and act as the secretariat of the NTF.
Selection of service providers
Assist in the selection of service providers to be contracted for the project (digital financial services providers and other third parties) including requests for proposals, technical and financial evaluation of proposals, contract negotiation, and preparation of drafting of contracts.
Scoping of beneficiaries’ database
Support the MOH in defining the scope of the database: categories and number of health workers (civil servants, community health workers, volunteers, etc) across the health system as well as the type of information to be collected.
Assist the MOH in identifying all the databases of health workers across all health interventions that currently exist or are being created.
Assist the MOH to assess the relevance and accuracy of information available in existing databases and to determine to what extent this information can be exploited.
Determine the gap between the current state (existing databases across the health system) and the target state (one database of all health workers across the health system).
Support the MOH in defining and articulating a strategy and approach to close the above gap.
Configuration and use of the application selected for the enrolment
Work closely with relevant stakeholders to ensure that the application selected for the enrolment is configured and used in accordance with the decisions resulting from the scoping exercise.
Enrolment operations
Support the identification, recruitment, and training of enrollers.
Support the MOH in creating/maintaining an enrolment schedule.
Ensure that the various operations required prior to enrolment such as social mobilization are carried out by the MOH in a timely manner.
Monitor closely the enrolment operations to ensure compliance with agreed-upon expectations and timeline.
Work with digital financial services providers, MOH focal persons and WHO to ensure validation of information collected post enrolment using the Know Your Customer (KYC) process of MNOs.
Piloting of digital payments
Support the end-to-end process of operational costs payment from activity request preparation to clearance by country and regional offices, funds disbursement, implementation, payment of field workers and other operational costs, reconciliation, reporting, and assurance.
Support MoH and the country office as necessary in addressing issues and ensuring smooth payment of field workers and other operational costs in accordance with agreed-upon expectations and timeline.
Project management
Serve as a focal point on the project and track the implementation of deliverables by the MOH, WCO as well as all other stakeholders contracted for different components of the project.
Support the MOH and WHO with project wide communications and regularly update all stakeholders as needed.
Capacity building
Support the capacity development activities of WCO staff and MOH personnel on operational costs payment processes and other thematic through training sessions, workshops, and presentations and prepare reports for Country/Regional Office and partners as may be required.
Educational Qualifications
Band B level (P4) and band C (P5) level Consultant
Essential:
An advanced university degree in Business Administration, Finance, Project Management, Information technology or other discipline related to the functions of the position.
Experience
Band B level Consultant (P4)
Essential: At least 7 years of progressive experience, at the national and international levels, in areas related to the design, setup and implementation of digital financial services in sub-Saharan Africa.
Desirable: Relevant working experience with governments, international organizations NGOs or donors.
Band C level Consultant (P5)
Essential: At least 10 years of progressive experience, at the national and international levels, in areas related to the design, setup and implementation of digital financial services in sub-Saharan Africa.
Desirable: Relevant working experience with governments, international organizations, NGOs or donors.
Languages
Essential: Expert knowledge of French and working knowledge of English
Skills/Knowledge
Sound knowledge of Sub-Saharan Africa digital payments landscape
Proven track record in planning, managing and successfully delivering cross-functional projects in international and multi-cultural settings.
Demonstrated ability to think strategically and re-engineer current processes, with the ability to quickly understand strategic and tactical objectives and formulate comprehensive plans to address challenges/risks.
Demonstrated capacity to persuade and communicate effectively on complex and sensitive issues.
