UNDP Sudan developed a country programme for 2018-21 with the aim to promote democratic governance and rule of law, community stabilization, addressing vulnerability to climate change and promoting equitable access to basic services in consultation with the development partners. UNDP supports its technical assistance in the area of adaption to climate change, renewable energy, employment creation and equitable access to natural resources in rural areas under the Sustainable Livelihood Unit. The unit focuses on strengthening capacities at local, regional and national level to manage and utilize natural resources in a sustainable way, to enhance resilience and adaptive capacity to long-term climate change including variability impacts and to reduce the associated risk of natural disasters.

One of the ongoing projects under climate change adaptation portfolio is Climate Risk Finance project (2014-18) and the fund was provided by the Least Developed Country Fund (LDCF). The aim of the project is to avail financial services are available to the high-risk population to provide them capital for resilience-building activities by supporting the development of a range of financial mechanisms to incentivize investments in climate change adaptation and risk reduction measures in six vulnerable agro-ecological regions of Sudan. Project Component 2 will focus on developing index insurance for climate risk management in the states of high rainfall variability where certain residual risks remain, even after adaptation measures are adopted (e.g., LDCF1 project). In 2017, the project developed Sudan’s first Weather Index Insurance products, which are strategically combined with microfinance services supporting adaptation-oriented agricultural and livestock practices. To ensure sustainability with these tasks, LDCF will be used for the creation of regulatory policy document to set out the types of Sharia-compliant products and include a robust dispute resolution process. To do so, the legal and regulatory framework for risk transfer must be analysed so that policies can be adapted, and reinsurance secured. Policies also need to be revised so that clear compensation criteria can be developed based on best practices to monitor and validate weather indices in each state. At the same time, regulators and policy makers should be trained, to develop a suitable legal, regulatory and policy environment for WII and on the created regulatory policy document that they can implement the regulatory scheme for WII in Sudan.

The objective of this assignment is to support the Government of Sudan to develop an agriculture insurance market for the benefit of agriculture sector which contributes significantly to the GDP. This will also contribute to increasing resilience of the players in the agricultural insurance value chain creating sustainability and thereby agriculture development. The assignment also aims to draft proposed regulation and guidelines to cover the various phases of an evolving agriculture insurance market from the inception stage to the scale up phases. Development of partnerships with projects which can facilitate the link between micro-finance and micro-insurance and savings and with partners who can facilitate outreach to small farmers and pastoralists. For the agriculture insurance market to be successful, it has to include the public sector and also make financial/commercial sense to the private sector, the International Consultant is expected to prepare a regulatory policy document for WII that will attract participation of the private sector. The legal and regulatory framework for risk transfer need to be analyzed so that policies can be adapted, and reinsurance secured. Policies must also be revised so that clear compensation criteria can be developed based on best practices to monitor and validate weather indices in each state.

The International Consultant will be responsible for completing the following tasks over a period of 30 working days spread over a period starting the second week of August 2018. The work of the Consultant will be divided into two related and parallel activities, namely:

• Training of regulators and policy makers to develop and implement legal, regulatory and policy environment for WII. To achieve this deliverable, the consultant should:
• Conduct training on “Best practices in WII regulation and supervision” with regulators and policy makers to develop a suitable legal, regulatory and policy environment for WII in Sudan. The consultant should provide a training report that reflect on the training needs assessment for capacity building on WII regulation and supervision, provide recommendations on the action plan, training curriculum and modules; 
• Conduct training of regulators and policy makers on the new regulations created in the created regulatory framework policy document so that they can implement the regulatory scheme for WII in Sudan. The consultant should provide training report, recommendations on the action plan, training curriculum and modules; this could be used to assist the service providers and locality extension administrations participating in the project to draft extension messages to raise awareness of agro-pastoralists in the targeted areas of the new regulatory framework.                 
• Creation of a regulatory policy document for WII in Sudan. To achieve this deliverable, the consultant should:
• Review and assess the regulatory frameworks that control access of small producers in the rain-fed sector to microinsurance services for risk transfer so that policies can be adapted, and reinsurance secured;
• Update the regulatory frameworks for reinsurance and co-provision of micro-insurance and micro-credit to facilitate the development of climate risk transfer products along with their integration with MF products that enable small farmers and pastoralist to access microinsurance services for production on reasonable terms;
• Use the results of the above tasks to draft a regulatory policy framework document that demonstrates international practices of linkage of micro finance and micro insurance to:
• Present the final draft policy document in a workshop to all project’s stakeholders, regulators and policy makers.

Corporate Competencies

• Demonstrates integrity by modeling the UN’s values and ethical standards;
• Promotes the vision, mission, and strategic goals of UNDP;
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability;
• Treats all people fairly without favoritism;
• Ability to work with a multi-cultural and diverse team.

Functional Competencies:

• Demonstrated experience in WII regulatory policy development
• Demonstrated experience in technical issues related to adaptation to climate change
• Ability to analyze substantial amounts of complex and diversified data related to climate change adaptation in least developed countries;
• Demonstrated strong coordination and facilitation skills;
• Strong interpersonal skills and the ability to initiate discussions about climate change adaptation and reliance issues specifically in the water and agricultural sectors.

Qualifications

• MSc Degree or higher in climate change, economic, agriculture, water and related development field, with a minimum 7 years of experience in climate change adaptation, weather index insurance, forecasting, microfinance, water and agricultural strategic frameworks and issues..

Experience

• Demonstrated experience with drafting regulatory policy documents related to climate change adaptation specially with the weather index insurance, forecasting and microfinance;
• Track record of excellent written and oral communication skills, with analytic capacity and ability to synthesize relevant collected data and findings for quality regulatory policy document for Weather Index Insurance and to provide training on it;
• Ability to work under tight timeline – within 30 working days from the date of commencement of the Contract;
• Demonstrated knowledge with interlinkages with weather index, forecasting, microfinance, water and agricultural strategic frameworks and issues.

Language

• English.