UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.
Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.
Summary of key functions/accountabilities:
Lead day-to-day country financing work, especially focusing on the expansion of countries’ fiscal space for supplies through increase of domestically mobilized resources.
Improve use of public financial resources for immunization supplies
Strengthen the capacity of the government to plan, budget and monitor spending on immunization supplies.
Improve data and evidence generation to advocate for greater and better public investments for immunization supplies.
Engage in the budget process to influence allocation decisions and improve the performance of spending on immunization supplies.
Strengthen partnerships and advocacy for greater and better public investments in immunization supplies.
Lead day-to-day country financing work, especially focusing on the expansion of countries’ fiscal space for supplies through optimization of the use of domestically mobilized resources, including advancing value for money agenda to identify pathways to ensuring cost savings from improved efficiency are re-invested to improve access of essential supplies for children.
Coordinate the day-to-day engagement with governments and partners to advance and implement value for money agenda in child health procurement to unlock efficiency gains and identify pathways to reinvest resulting efficiency gains back into children’s services.
Apply UNICEF-developed methodology, to identify the potential procurement efficiency savings in countries, and work with country and regional colleagues/partners towards protecting the savings for the future child-related interventions. Planned interventions, among others, will include:
Value For Money analysis (VFM) and support to policy development,
Identification of inefficiencies and addressing them to achieve efficiencies,
Monitoring, measuring, and reporting on efficiency savings.
Identification of pathways to protect and reinvest savings towards child-related interventions.
Document the conducted analysis, interventions, and outcomes, including identification of lessons learned.
Leads analysis of existing UNICEF data (including procurement data) to track country spending through a child lens perspective.
Identify and support the collection of internal and external data related to health (and other intervention) financing from various sources.
Lead analysis of data related to country budgetary (and other) deployment, as well as budgeting spending efficiency. Develops tools to support the monitoring of financing sources and comparing to forecasts to identify issues and proposes and promotes appropriate responses in respect of such issues and concerns.
Coordinate engagement with other Supply Division units, Partners, ROs, COs to assess anticipated budgetary flows.
Lead preparation of periodic reports and summary analysis and document work papers relating to areas of responsibility.
Publish work on financing to be circulated internally and externally (including academic journals).
Coordinate the partnership engagement with Africa CDC, AU Development Agency (NEPAD) to advance sustainability and value for money agenda and to ensure alignment and complementarity on the support provided to governments.
Coordinate the normative and technical assistance around sustainable financing within the partnership with Africa CDC, including consultancies commissioned to strengthen capacity of local governments with the objective to support governments to increase and improve the use of public financial resources for children.
Collaborate with the Partnerships for African Vaccine Manufacturing (PAVM) on developing a financial plan on how the AU and the Africa CDC could support the achievement of the PAVM objectives.
Support the PAVM on activities related to the financial mechanism that will be put in place by partners, such as Gavi, the AU’s African Vaccine Acquisition Trust (AVAT), to support both members and potential African vaccine manufacturers.
Demonstrate how UNICEF’s innovative financing mechanisms could be used by Africa CDC, AVAT and the African Union to mitigate the risks of derailing program activities due to delays in procurement as funding may be a constraint.
Engage and strengthen the capacity of the governments to plan, forecast and budget to achieve high-quality multi-year forecasting and budgeting of essential supplies to augment visibility of regional needs, as well as to influence appropriate budget allocation and optimization of the spending of essential supplies for children.
Propose a financial plan that will enable the country to achieve successful transition from donor support and rely increasingly on their own domestic budgets achieving global targets of governments health expenditures, the PAVM objectives of 60% of vaccine doses procured from African based vaccine manufacturers.
To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have:
Education: Master’s degree in business, Finance, Public Finance, Public Policy Health Economics or Economics.
A first University degree in the above areas combined with additional five relevant years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.
Experience: Minimum eight years of progressively responsible professional work experience at national and international levels in health financing, public financial management, finance, accounting, or auditing, including experience with support to Country Ministries of Health and Ministries of Finance in the areas of sustainable financing, public financial management, financing, or commercial issues relating to health products, and forecasting / trend Analysis.
Firsthand experience with PFM issues required.
Experience in budget analysis, health financing, public financial management or other financing mechanisms in key sectors for children such as immunization, nutrition, HIV, water and sanitation and education is highly desirable.
Language: Fluency in English is required. Proficiency in French is considered as an asset.
