International Nutrition Supply Chain Specialist Consultant, Abuja, Nigeria - 11.5 months

Contract

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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.

And we never give up.

For every child, Service

Nigeria is among a set of countries with disproportionate levels of people living in hunger and suffering from food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms. Unfortunately, stunting has declined very slowly over the last 20 years, for instance, from 42 to 37 percent in children under five. Therefore, there remains about 14 million children in Nigeria suffering from stunting today. In addition, 68 percent of children 6-59 months have some degree of anemia. Although hunger and malnutrition are widespread across the country, the Northern region faces a higher burden due to conflict and insecurity, climate change, reduced agricultural productivity, and low literacy levels. To reverse the hunger and malnutrition, Nigeria has endorsed a range of policies and plans including but not limited to the National Policy on Food and Nutrition (2016).

Towards this vision, UNICEF provides technical and financial support to Government and partners. Taken together, UNICEF has planned to contribute almost $200M USD in the Country Program 2018 to 2022, about half of which is planned to support the nutrition supplies, mostly, within the humanitarian context.

As Sector Lead for Nutrition, UNICEF is responsible for procurement of all therapeutic products (including Ready to Use Therapeutic Food, Therapeutic Milks, antibiotics, etc.). Additionally, for prevention, UNICEF also procures micronutrient powders (MNPs) and receives contribution in kind of Vitamin A Supplements. Several challenges have emerged in managing the overall supply chain, which puts at risk UNICEF’s mandate to deliver on its promise to prevent malnutrition and save children’s lives. The challenges have included, but are not limited to, poor plan development and forecasting, delays in procurement due to internal and external factors, warehousing and in-country distribution of commodities, expired inventory, fraud, and misuse.

How can you make a difference?

To enable UNICEF to diagnose key issues and support the Nutrition and Supply Sections to plan and manage its supply chain in a seamless manner, UNICEF Nigeria is looking to contract a Supply Chain Consultant to identify risks, barriers and bottle necks, consultatively develop recommendations, and plan implementation, and mentor the team to take on this work long-term.

To provide Technical Assistance to diagnose and resolve Nutrition supply chain bottlenecks, with improvements to supply chain forecasting, financing, order placement, shipment tracking, and invoice management of nutrition commodities that are procured by UNICEF Nigeria.

Under the direct supervision of the Chief of Supply and Logistics, Abuja, and in close consultation with the Logistics Specialist and Nutrition Manager, the consultant will

• diagnose and resolve Nutrition supply chain bottlenecks, implementing improvements to supply chain forecasting, financing, order management, shipment tracking, and invoice management of nutrition commodities that are procured by UNICEF Nigeria.
• be the temporary focal point for upstream and downstream visibility to Nutrition Supplies in UNICEF Nigeria.
• provide proactive transparency of nutrition commodities to enable decision-makers to ensure that there are no breaks in the pipeline for products procured by UNICEF on behalf of the government, implementing partners, or UNICEF Nigeria Country Office.
• prepare a handover plan to ensure that improvements are taken forward by the Nutrition and Supply teams.

To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…

Education: Minimum of Undergraduate degree education is required, preferably supplemented by technical, advanced degree, or certification courses related to supply chain management.

Experience: A minimum of 8 years of relevant experience in supply chain operations in the private sector, nutrition, or global health environment.

• Experience in logistics operations, inventory management, or distribution management
• Proven experience with Excel, ability to create calculations, look-up tables, and pivot tables
• Ability to organize and manage information
• Ability to work in a multi-cultural environment
• Fluency in written and spoken in English
• Proficiency in MS Excel, PowerPoint, Word

Understanding of development and humanitarian work is an advantage.

Experience working in Nigeria health systems is an advantage.

Language Requirements: Fluency in English is required.

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF's values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, Accountability, and Sustainability (CRITAS).

To view our competency framework, please visit here.

UNICEF is here to serve the world’s most disadvantaged children and our global workforce must reflect the diversity of those children. The UNICEF family is committed to include everyone, irrespective of their race/ethnicity, age, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socio-economic background, or any other personal characteristic.

UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.

Remarks:

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.

Individuals engaged under a consultancy or individual contract will not be considered “staff members” under the Staff Regulations and Rules of the United Nations and UNICEF’s policies and procedures, and will not be entitled to benefits provided therein (such as leave entitlements and medical insurance coverage). Their conditions of service will be governed by their contract and the General Conditions of Contracts for the Services of Consultants and Individual Contractors. Consultants and individual contractors are responsible for determining their tax liabilities and for the payment of any taxes and/or duties, in accordance with local or other applicable laws.

The selected candidate is solely responsible to ensure that the visa (applicable) and health insurance required to perform the duties of the contract are valid for the entire period of the contract. Selected candidates are subject to confirmation of fully-vaccinated status against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) with a World Health Organization (WHO)-endorsed vaccine, which must be met prior to taking up the assignment. It does not apply to consultants who will work remotely and are not expected to work on or visit UNICEF premises, programme delivery locations or directly interact with communities UNICEF works with, nor to travel to perform functions for UNICEF for the duration of their consultancy contracts.