Background

UNCDF is the UN’s capital investment agency for the world’s 48 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 CleanStart Programme

CleanStart supports low-income consumers to transition to cleaner and more efficient energy through inclusive finance. CleanStart co-invests in early stage innovations from financial institutions, distributed energy service companies and other providers of wholesale or retail financing for clean energy. It is active in Asia and Africa.

CleanStart, through a funding partnership with the Embassy of Sweden in Uganda, is managing the Renewable Energy Challenge Fund (RECF) in Uganda (2016-2020). The goal of RECF is increase access to renewable, efficient energy for domestic, productive and social uses among underserved poor households especially in rural areas.  By end of 2020, RECF aims to support 153,000 low-income customers transition to renewable energy.

To do so, RECF aims to fill a “missing middle” in renewable energy SME financing by investing in early stage, high-risk ideas, and set energy SMEs on a pathway for larger, more commercial-oriented capital. A company can use the RECF funding to test an early stage idea such as a new product, service or approach in the market, or a proven business model that can quickly be scaled up in a new sector or geographic area.

Central to RECF’s approach is encouraging women and youth’s active participation in the energy value chain as customers, employees and employers. RECF activities will be directed towards encouraging energy companies and ecosystem support actors to better understand the role of women and youth in energy value chains, and use catalytic funding and technical support to invest in inclusive business models.

Energy Solutions

RECF will have three challenge/funding windows to support innovations in three groups of energy solutions: 1) clean cooking, 2) pico solar power, and 3) large solar power.  

Clean cooking solutions will include efficient cook stoves, biomass fuels (e.g., wood, charcoal, briquettes) and gasified fuels (LPG, biogas, ethanol) or a combination of stoves and fuels.

Pico solar power refer to solar lanterns that have mobile phone charging capacity or multiple lights with phone and other device charging capacity.

Larger solar solutions refer to solar home systems or micro grids (solar or hybrid) that can power efficient appliances and equipment, and/or multiple homes or businesses.

CleanStart will look at how energy solutions can be integrated/bundled with different real economy value chains such as agriculture, intersections with business enablers such as digital financial services, and blending of public and private financial resources and instruments such as grants, loans and guarantees.

RECF will provide technical assistance to companies at pre-investment, investment and exit stages of the RECF funding. The nature and intensity of the assistance will differ depending on the development stage of the company and the business idea. In their business proposals, companies should already articulate all the inputs needed to deliver their “ideas”, and allocate their own and RECF funding accordingly.

Duties and Responsibilities

To this end, the Consultant will support the CleanStart Programme team to implement the challenge funding process in Uganda, as well as manage the partner portfolio once partnerships are in place.

Expected results

  • Challenge rounds are relevant to market developments and attracts applications from many commercially-driven companies;
  • Applicants submit investable proposals that align with the Challenge funding objectives; RECF’s Investment Committee members can make an informed investment decision based on sufficient background information about the business idea and the company’s ability to deliver;
  • Partners receive technical assistance at pre-investment, investment and/or exit stages of the RECF funding;
  • Progress and lessons learned throughout the implementation are well-documented and widely shared;  

Key Activities

The consultant will specifically assist with the following:

Key Activity 1: Challenge rounds are relevant to market developments and attracts applications from many commercially-driven companies;

  • Put together background on the Renewable Energy commercial business sector in Uganda. This means going through all relevant data and literature and identifying the key issues in expanding Renewable Energy commercial business sector in Uganda.
  • Identify quantitative indicators that might help build an accurate picture of the Renewable Energy landscape in Uganda and collect baseline data for those indicators.
  • Designing challenge rounds that are relevant to market developments, and can incentivize companies to take their business model/offerings to the next level;
  • Actively scoping out prospective applicants and business ideas by meeting a range of companies; through regular contact and engagement, assess commitment and ability to deliver;

Key Activity 2: Applicants submit investable proposals that align with the Challenge funding objectives; RECF’s Investment Committee members can make an informed investment decision based on sufficient background information about the business idea and the company’s ability to deliver;

  • Providing pre-investment consultations to applicants so that proposals are in line with the Challenge’s objectives;
  • Undertaking technical review of proposals for long and shortlisting based on objective criteria; conduct due diligence to ensure organizations have the capacity to implement; collect necessary documents for RECF appraisals;
  • Developing or updating call for proposal and appraisal templates and tools so they are fit for purpose;
  • Defining project key milestones and learning objectives with partners and advise CleanStart on how the disbursement conditions in the performance-based agreement should be structured;

Key Activity 3: Partners receive technical assistance during investment and/or exit stages of the RECF funding;

  • Organizing regular meetings with partners to understand implementation bottlenecks and provide complementary assistance; review progress reports;
  • Mentoring and/or troubleshooting implementation bottlenecks with other business development consultants (e.g. asset financing, go-to-market strategies);
  • Facilitating linkages to groups of people/organizations outside the applicants’ usual remit (e.g. funders, local governments, women/youth-serving organizations, agribusinesses, mobile network operators);
  • Working in tandem with other advisors to strengthen the overall financing plan of partners to attract a range of funding/investments and partners (including for concessional, equity and debt financing);
  • Assist with procuring consultants or consulting firms for by drafting TORs, defining outputs and timelines;

Key Activity 5: Progress and lessons learned throughout the implementation are well-documented and widely shared;  

  • Providing high quality technical input on knowledge products;
  • Monitoring partner progress, in an effort to provide lessons learnt, improve performance and design of future challenges;
  • Drafting portfolio progress reports which can serve as a management tool for the Programme team and contribute to data collection efforts, using the relevant UNCDF databases and dashboards;
  • Distilling learnings from partner implementation into knowledge products such as articles, blogs, presentations, etc.;
  • Organizing training and knowledge sharing events on specific topics;

Deliverables

  • Marketing scoping and challenge design documents;
  • Call for EOI, RFA, due diligence documents;
  • Project milestones and inputs to performance-based agreements;
  • TA recommendation and outcome documents;
  • Portfolio assessment reports;
  • Lessons learned documents;
  • Inputs to UNCDF reports;
  • Regular progress meetings with partners;
  • Knowledge products;
  • Minutes of meetings; back to office reports.

Reporting

The consultant will report to the UNCDF CleanStart Programme Manager who oversees the global portfolio, and work day-to-day with the UNCDF CleanStart Programme Analyst in Uganda, as well as other CleanStart team-members as required (e.g. on challenge fund and data-monitoring and research). The consultant will also need to work closely with a multi-functional team of international and national consultants.  
 

Competencies

  • Demonstrates technical knowledge about improved cooking and solar power solutions available in Uganda and elsewhere;
  • Demonstrates aptitude in business planning and financial modelling;
  • Ability to speak comfortably with enterprises about their businesses and encourage strategic thinking;
  • Comfortable with Excel and as well as social media and new communication tools;
  • Good project management skills;
  • Demonstrates ethics and integrity;
  • Demonstrates calculated risk taking;
  • Remains calm, in control and good humored even under pressure;
  • Displays cultural and gender sensitivity and adaptability.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

  • A Master’s degree in finance/economics, engineering/technology, public/business administration, social sciences, electrical or material engineering, or related discipline or the equivalent experience;

Experience:

  • Minimum of five (5) years’ experience working with SMEs in the distributed energy sector in Uganda; experience must be hands-on and demonstrate progression in responsibilities;
  • Experience with various distributed energy business models, including those that integrate digital solutions such as pay-as-you-go;
  • Experience in integrating some form of financing in the energy business model such as consumer or enterprise financing;
  • Experience with actively encouraging participation of women and/or youth in the energy value chain;
  • Experience with integrating energy in sectors such as agriculture, education, health, ICT;
  • Experience with market awareness building activities is a plus.

Language:

  • Fluency in English

Timeline, Duration of Assignment, Duty Station and Exepcted Places of Travel

Timeline: January –December 2017  
Location: Kampala, Uganda.
Estimated Total Number of Working Days: 150

Application

Applications will be rated on both technical and financial submissions.  The following selection method will be used:  Highest rated proposal using the combined scoring method, which assigns the weight distribution between the technical and financial proposals.  The weight distribution shall be 70% technical and 30% financial.  
 
All applications must contain the following information:

Evaluation

Step I: Screening/Longlisting

Applications will be screened and only applicants meeting the following minimum criteria will progress to the pool for shortlisting.

  • Education: A Master’s degree in finance/economics, engineering/technology, public/business administration, social sciences, electrical or material engineering, or related discipline or the equivalent experience;
  • Experience: Minimum of five (5) years’ experience working with SMEs in the distributed energy sector in Uganda; experience must be hands-on and demonstrate progression in responsibilities;
  • Language: Fluency in English

Step II: Shortlisting by Desk Review

UNCDF will conduct a desk review to produce a shortlist of candidates by evaluating the following criteria with the corresponding points (100 points)

  • Education/Qualification (20 points)
  • Experience (relevance) (80 points)

As applicable, only the first top 3 ranked applicants achieving 70% of the points at this stage shall be invited for a skype interview.

Step III: Interview

A competency-based Interview shall be conducted for the top 3 shortlisted candidates.
Only candidates obtaining a minimum of 70% on the total of Steps II Desk Review(20 points) +III Interview (80 points) will be considered as technically qualified and will be reviewed further for financial evaluation.

Step IV: Financial Evaluation

The following formula will be used to evaluate financial proposal:
Lowest priced proposal/price of the proposal being evaluated x 30%.

Both individual consultants and individual employed by a company or institution are welcome to apply.  

Any individual employed by a company or institution who would like to submit an offer in response to a Procurement Notice for IC must do so in their individual capacity (providing a CV so that their qualifications may be judged accordingly). Please note that in such case the company institution will be asked to issue an  RLA http://www.undp.org/content/dam/vietnam/docs/Legalframework/Reimbursable%20Loan%20Agreement.doc.   

Women candidates or women-owned businesses are strongly encouraged to apply.

Regular travel to the field may be required and will be compensated according to UN polices.