UNDP Jobs - 76096- Consultancy for the Formulation of a Common Countr

Consultancy for the Formulation of a Common Country Analysis for the Republic of Mauritius

Location :

Port Louis, MAURITIUS

Type of Contract :

Individual Contract

Starting Date :

13-Dec-2017

Application Deadline :

07-Dec-17 (Midnight New York, USA)

Post Level :

International Consultant

Duration of Initial Contract :

20 working days from 13 December 2017 to 16 February 2018.

Languages Required :

English

Expected Duration of Assignment :

20 working days from 13 December 2017 to 16 February 2018.

UNDP is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence. UNDP does not tolerate sexual exploitation and abuse, any kind of harassment, including sexual harassment, and discrimination. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks.

Background

Project title

Formulation of a lite Common Country Analysis for the Republic of Mauritius.

Project description

Even with limited agency physical presence (only UNDP and WHO have country offices) and absence of a UNDAF, the work and support of the UN remains highly relevant. Mauritius remains committed to access the support and expertise of the UN development system although the request is not always primarily for grant based finance, but quality resources that enable access to rapid technical support.

The last UNDAF for Mauritius ended in 2003 and there has been no overarching UN/Government cooperation framework since. Mauritius is classified as a non-harmonised programme country (where UNDAF is not a mandatory process) but UNCT is continuously attempting to get in place a coordination framework.

Notwithstanding the absence of an UNDAF and formal DaO status, the RCO together with the UNCT consolidated its efforts to improve coordination whilst also tracking progress made on the DaO pillars and core elements. The RCO is also undertaking an exhaustive SAMOA pathway mapping with contribution of the UNCT, which will also support the ongoing Rapid Integrated Assessment of policies and strategies related to SDG achievement.

As a first building block towards DaO, a multi-disciplinary study was carried out far back in 2010. The United Nations Resident Coordinator’s Office (UNRCO) in Mauritius now seeks the services of an individual contractor to support the formulation of a Common Country Analysis (CCA), which is intended to define both the current and projected (three years forecast) priority development opportunities and challenges alongside their underlying causes in the Republic of Mauritius, with due reference to the Island of Rodrigues.

The findings of the CCA will help to strategically position the UN system in the country based on robust evidence-based analysis on sustainable development. It will provide the basis for future programming and represents a powerful source of information to help the UN system engage with national stakeholders, including to advocate for policy changes. The CCA will be underpinned by the promise of the 2030 Agenda to Leave No One Behind, and the three programming principles (human rights, gender equality and women’s empowerment; sustainability and resilience; and accountability). Closely linked to the CCA is a UN Comparative Advantage and Capacity Assessment exercise to highlight the areas where the UN is the most efficient and effective partner to take forward the development of the Republic of Mauritius.

This process will entail consultation and engagement with the Government of the Republic of Mauritius and other relevant stakeholders, such as Development Partners, the Private Sector, Civil Society Organizations, Academia and Research Institutions.

Duties and Responsibilities

Scope of work and key tasks

The CCA is a comprehensive assessment of the national development plan-Vision 2030 and other sectoral plans. The purpose of the assignment is to articulate Mauritius’ context, opportunities and challenges, encompassing sustainable development, human rights and gender equality. The CCA includes a SWOT analysis of the policy and legal frameworks and institutional capacity for formulation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies, and will look into the government’s capacity for coordination and management of development assistance.

This exercise will:

Provide the essential evidence base from which UNCT collective theory of change is drawn;
Define medium and longer-term trends, based on a wide range of data sources, which provide the foundation of the Agenda 2030 document;
Identify areas for enhanced policy coherence, reflecting the interdependence of the SDGs and issues that the country must address.

To the extent possible, the assessment will examine UN and other development partners’ contribution to national development results and thereby help to identify areas of UN’s comparative advantage.

The assessment will be based on secondary data review whenever possible, collect and draw on information from national and international development partners, including civil society organizations by way of consultations and draw from findings. The analysis of development results will identify challenges and strategies for future interventions. In doing so, in all development result areas, effort should be made to address crosscutting issues and include to the extent possible the assessment of the implementation of international conventions and the recommendations of relevant human rights monitoring mechanisms.

The following criteria will be applied for assessing development results:

Economic management of the country

Assess the inclusiveness of economic growth in Mauritius;
Assess fiscal policy and its impact on the macroeconomic indicators (inflation, private investment, and current account deficits or the public debt). While assessing the fiscal policy impact, evaluate if fiscal policy was responsive to the needs of the population by way of provision of public goods and facilitating medium-term growth;
Assess the consistency of government spending with the poverty reduction priorities, taking into account the extent to which individuals, groups (including women and girls), or localities that are poor, vulnerable, or have unequal access to services and opportunities are identified and supported through the existing public service delivery mechanism (among others through decentralization process) or through an explicit interventions to assist the groups identified; and establish the composition and incidence of public expenditures are tracked systematically and their results inform subsequent resource allocation decisions;
Assess the labour market policies and unemployment issues in the country. How the socio-economic reforms are contributing to sustainable and decent job creation in the country and to reducing gender gaps;
Review the process of evidence based policy making including the statistical systems based on disaggregated data with the view to identify critical gaps in information for policy making;
Assess the level of development finance in view of the changing local and global circumstances including the role of private sector in financing development;
Identify priority areas of development intervention;
Identify key issues and challenges;
Suggest areas of rationale and opportunity for UN support.

Private sector development, domestic, regional and international trade

Establish the role of private sector in the Mauritian economy through identifying best policy options for private sector’s contribution to value added, employment generation and regional integration;
Assess the role of trade in the economy of Mauritius. In doing so, estimate the share of trade (domestic, regional and international) in the economy, both for value added and employment. Analyze the value and volume of trade to establish the trends;
Critically examine the factors that affect industrial development in Mauritius with a view to increase the contribution of the sector to the economy and employment generation;
Identify constraints for private sector development with two focus: on Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs); and on Investment Promotion (Foreign Direct Investment). Among others the factors constraining private sector participation should look at regulations affecting entry, exit, and competition. The analysis should be done at central and local levels and consider international rankings such as the Doing Business (World Bank) and Competitiveness Index (World Economic Forum);
Identify the financial instruments and key factors to develop strong, stable, competitive, and inclusive financial system that provides access to financial services for the entire population and contributes to growth by efficiently channeling domestic and foreign savings toward productive investments;
Identify priority areas of development intervention;
Identify key issues and challenges;
Suggest areas of rationale and opportunity for UN support.

Human capital development

With focus on aspects of human capital development with a gender perspective as follows:

Assess national policies and service delivery that affect access to and quality of health and nutrition services, including population and reproductive health, and prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS, as well as Communicable and Non-Communicable Diseases;
Assess access, efficiency, effectiveness and gender sensitiveness of services pertaining to education, Early Child Development (ECD) and adult literacy programs;
Examine the effectiveness of skills development and technical vocational and higher education services with a view to promote structural transformation needed for the achievement of Vision 2030 and address the high level of unemployment levels in particular to the youth and women;
Review the progress made in the promotion of access to and quality of water and sanitation services and if gender dimension is properly addressed;
Critically examine the adequacy and effectiveness of social protection systems with a view to identify areas for further improvement;
Given the pervasive poverty levels and regional disparities, identify key policy and programmatic priority areas to address inequality and promote social cohesion;
Identify areas for policy and programmatic support to improve the human capital development of the country;
Identify key issues and challenges;
Suggest areas of rationale and opportunity for UN support.

Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Security

Assess the contribution of the agriculture and fishery sector to the economy and food security. Establish the linkages between agriculture/fishery and other sectors including manufacturing;
Examine the effectiveness of current policies and strategies to promote production and productivity in the agricultural/fishery sector with specific focus on small holder agriculture and women, given their significant importance in the sector. The analysis should cover the linkages between the sector and the budget and resources allocation;
Assess value for money – return on investment in the agriculture/fishery sector;
Analyze supply chain constraints. Identify weaknesses at various stages of the value chain;
Assess the progress of food security in the country;
Review the policy options put in place to combat agriculture sector vulnerability to climate change and disaster risk reduction approaches and provide implementable solutions;
Identify priority areas of development intervention;
Identify key issues and challenges;
Suggest areas of rationale and opportunity for UN support;
Governance and Accountability;
Assess the extent to which economic activities are facilitated by an effective legal system and rule-of-law-based governance structure in which property and contract rights are reliably respected and enforced;
Assess progress related to judiciary sector reform. Among others the assessment should cover conformity with international and regional human rights standards, predictability, transparency, non-discrimination and impartiality of laws affecting the population, and their application by the judiciary;
Examine the accountability systems for the use of funds and development results including the effective and independent functioning of oversight institutions (electorate and by the legislature and judiciary);
Identify key policy and programmatic areas for further improvement in promotion of good governance, human rights and deepening democratic culture;
Assess the decentralization process and reforming the local government system;
Assess role and participation of civil society organizations - including women’s organizations in terms of supporting democratic reforms, monitoring human rights, promoting accountability and the rule of law and delivering services at communities;
Identify priority areas of development intervention;
Identify key issues and challenges;
Suggest areas of rationale and opportunity for UN support.

Environment, climate change and natural resources management

In view of the significant vulnerability of Mauritius to climate change and disaster, the following critical points will be covered in the country assessment:

Critically assess the profile and trends of disaster risk in Mauritius with specific focus on the impact of climate change on the economy as well as the adequacy of policies and legal frameworks of the country to adapt and mitigate climate change, as well as critically review the disaster risk reduction approach of the country to the changing disaster risk circumstances;
Examine the effectiveness of environmental policies to foster the sustainable use and management of natural resources (i.e. water, waste, conservation management, coastal zones management, and natural resources management);
Examine the Long-Term Energy Strategy 2009-2025 (10% RE by 2025) implementation and the main challenges and opportunities to the Country. Use some indicators like avoided CO2 emissions so far, energy generated from RE in KWh and as % of the total;
Examine the impact of urbanization on the environment and sustainability of growth in the country;
Identify priority areas of development intervention;
Identify key issues and challenges;
Suggest areas of rationale and opportunity for UN support.

Expected outputs and deliverables

The CCA consultant shall prepare and submit:

A first draft Lite CCA report (Max. 30 pages (English), including Executive Summary (5 pages), by 19 December 2017;
A second draft CCA report, including an executive summary of max 5 pages, which will be presented for validation, by 15 January 2018; and
A final CCA report having incorporated comments arising from the reviews (Max. 30 pages (English), including Executive Summary (5 pages), by 15 February 2018.

The final CCA report should be ready to feed into the next UNCT Retreat (Strategic Engagement Workshop), tentatively scheduled for mid-February 2018.

The Final CCA report should describe the current development status, challenges and opportunities in Mauritius, using the MAPS approach on the SDGs, including:

A UN capacity assessment: Undertake a baseline assessment of the UN’s current capacity to leverage the UN policy advisory, project implementation and coordination roles; and
A UN Comparative Advantage assessment: analyze the UNCT’s Comparative Advantage to the country’s development agenda in relation to all development actors in the country.

All deliverables shall be submitted in draft form for comments and then in final format. Draft documents should be complete and not in schematic form. The documents shall be in English language. The government will endeavour to provide comments on the reports.

Institutional arrangement

The consultant shall work in close collaboration with the RC Office, the UNCT members and relevant national stakeholders.

The RCO office will make the necessary arrangements for the consultations meetings, if necessary.

All draft and final reports shall be addressed to the UN office of the Resident Coordinator for Mauritius and Seychelles.

Duration of the work

The consultant will be engaged under a short-term individual/institutional contract, and the whole assignment will be for no more than 20 working days from 13 December 2017 to 16 February 2018.

The expected date of start of the contract is 13 December 2017.

Duty station
The contractor’s duty station will be home-based, with possible travel to Mauritius.

Competencies

Excellent knowledge of Mauritius’s development challenges;
Excellent understanding of development vulnerabilities and challenges in MIC/SIDS, including those linked to climate change;
Outstanding research methods and writing skills;
Ability to deliver high quality report in a very short period of time;
Familiarity with participatory methods of data gathering, the UN four Programming Principles: Human rights, gender equality and women’s empowerment; Sustainable development and resilience; Leave no one behind; and Accountability;
Familiarity with the new UNDAF preparation guidance, especially the development of the CCA process, is an advantage.

Required Skills and Experience

Education

Advanced university degree (Masters and equivalent) in development studies, economics, socio-economics, international relations or related field.

Experience

10 years of relevant professional experience in developing countries, especially in SIDs and/or Indian Ocean countries;
Experience and knowledge of the UN system and UN common country programming processes, including previous involvement in CCA/UNDAF formulation and review;
Previous experience in conducting CCAs is an advantage.

Language

Excellent written and spoken English.

Scope of price proposal and schedule of payments

Financial proposals must be “all inclusive” and expressed in a lump-sum for the total duration of the contract based on UNDP salary rules and regulations. The lump sum is fixed regardless of changes in the cost components.

Payment will be made based upon successful completion of the deliverables as per terms below:

Thirty per cent (30%) after the submission of the first draft CCA;
Thirty per cent (30%) after the submission of the second draft of the CCA;
Forty per cent (40%) after the submission of the final CCA.