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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, hope!

How can you make a difference? 

BACKGROUND

 

UNICEF is gearing up to establish its next quadrennial Strategic Plan 2026-2029[1], as the current Strategic Plan 2022-2025 enters its final year in 2025.  Accordingly, UNICEF Regional Offices will begin preparing new Regional Office Management Plans (ROMP). 

 

The current ROMP 2022-2025 for UNICEF Eastern and Southern Africa was prepared at the end of 2020 and early 2021 amid the coronavirus-19 pandemic and UNICEF’s global response to counter what remains one of the biggest challenges of our time.  Four years on, while the pandemic has subsided, the region’s challenges are many:  increasing number of children living in extreme poverty; slow pace of reduction in child mortality rates and in immunization coverage; stagnation in reducing stunting rates; global epicentre of the AIDS epidemic with disproportionate burden of new HIV infections among young girls and women; alarming learning crisis; high prevalence of violence against children and women; and low coverage of basic sanitation. Structural challenges such as the continent’s demographic pressure, debt crisis and inflation, severe adverse impacts of climate change and multiple conflicts continue to constrain great efforts of the countries in the region to accelerate results for children against the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and targets. 

 

The new UNICEF ESA ROMP will need reconfirm the UNICEF Regional Office’s accountabilities and value-proposition to best support, guide and oversee the work of UNICEF Country Offices in the region, taking the above set of challenging situations for children into account, while building on rich programmatic and operational experience and lessons learned from the current ROMP period as well as from the learnings and insights from across the world where UNICEF operates.     

 

MAJOR DRIVERS THAT SHAPE THE NEW ROMP

 

There are a set of drivers that will guide and shape the new ESA ROMP and the way UNICEF ESARO will deliver its mandate.

Emerging thrust of the new Strategic Plan: While the new Strategic Plan and the new ROMP will be formulated, de facto, in parallel, ESARO will closely follow the evolving discourse of the new Strategic Plan design, which will define the high-level priorities, goals and common approaches of the organization in the remaining years of the SDG period. Conceptual agility and flexibility will be needed to build the ROMP aligned with the architecture of the new Strategic Plan, while the latter will evolve throughout the ROMP preparation period. 

Corporate commitment to accelerate SDGs for children and the Global Effectiveness Review: The new strategic plan, at its core, will be about sharper focus and prioritization to ensure meaningful contribution of UNICEF to the countries’ SDG acceleration. The global leadership deliberations on this during the current Strategic Plan has been called Global Effectiveness Review (GER) as part of the GMT since 2022.  The new ESA ROMP planning will take into consideration the GER deliberations and related analytics as shared big-picture programming insights. 

Africa Strategy – UNICEF’s contribution to Africa’s SDG acceleration:  The new ROMP preparation for three UNICEF Regional Offices that cover Africa will have an exciting backdrop of UNICEF Executive Board endorsement of UNICEF’s Contribution to Africa’s Development Agenda. Regional Office accountabilities and value-add will take on an intentional and clear continental outlook, where programming in Africa will be framed and anchored against Africa’s own ambitions, goals and instruments, with significantly elevated partnership outlook vis-à-vis the African Union. ESARO has a special opportunity to reflect its strategic positioning befitting this new and ambitious continental outlook. 

Collaboration for Children: C4C (a set of shared regional priorities for UNICEF ESAR) was adopted subsequent to the current ROMP and has become a vehicle to galvanize all UNICEF staff in the region around two flagships of ‘Learning’ and ‘Climate Adaptation’, and is likely to have continued relevance, along with five focus areas[2] of unfinished business.  The new ROMP establishment will need to review how such regionally shared priorities can be more effectively used by ESARO to provide technical assistance to the countries in the region.

Business model review:  The global business model review and its evolving discussion is particularly important for Regional Offices, as they relate to how best UNICEF should utilize its global technical assets – such as the Global Technical Teams - to support countries to deliver results for children.  UNICEF ESAR is actively participating in these deliberations, with its own learning lab established on shared technical support around food systems strengthening for a group of middle-income countries in southern Africa.  While the business model review is still an evolving global discussion, the ROMP discussion of how ESARO delivers its accountabilities must be informed by and accompanied with the global business review conversation. 

Prospects of decreasing/earmarked funding:  The global fundraising outlook suggests that it will be challenging to continue achieving year-on-year increases in resources mobilized. Given the current geopolitical context, an increasing earmarking of contributions can be expected, despite UNICEF’s large-scale advocacy for flexible funding. This requires a sharpened focus on affordability, and as maintained in the Programme Budget Review (PBR) of the current ROMP and its mid-term review, a strategic approach to ESARO’s fit-for-purpose.

 

PURPOSE OF THE ASSIGNMENT

 

This consultancy assignment aims at supporting the UNICEF ESARO undertake the preparation of the ROMP 2026-2029 and the related budget submission to global PBR in/around April 2025, under direct supervision of the Deputy Regional Directors and overarching guidance of the Regional Director.  

 

MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES

 

• Through desk review and broad consultations with ESARO staff and envisaged ESARO ROMP steering and reference groups, as well as broader ESAR Country Office senior managers, and regional partners, among others, support ESARO to arrive at shared key priorities of the next quadrennium that adequately reflect clear alignment with the new Strategic Plan and embrace drivers for the new ROMP as described above.
• Support ESARO establish ambitious yet appropriate outcome/output results, targets and strategies as per the organizational accountabilities and value-propositions of a UNICEF Regional Office.
• Advise ESARO on the review of the programmatic and management structure and budget, taking into account the strategic/programmatic shifts, learnings from the current planning cycle, global discourse on business model review, and the related ESARO consultancy findings on shared technical assistance practices and way-forward.
• Support ESARO to maintain clear and transparent internal communication with all staff on the ROMP/PBR preparation, using regularized and effective means of communication pre-defined with ESARO, on processes undertaken, consensus being built and next step work required of all staff, in close consultation with ESARO steering group.   
• Support ESARO to prepare the submission of the new ROMP for global Programme Budget Review. 

 

DELIVERABLES

 

Task	Deliverable	Indicative Timeframe	Attributable cost
Desk review of key ESARO milestone documents, including Annual Reports, Annual Review Reports, Mid-term Review documents, Annual CO Analyses documents, RMT and Dep Rep Meetings Reports; and key analytical documents that establish the context of the region and recent learning to inform the way forward, and global background documents related to the Strategic Plan and Global Effectiveness Reviews	Summary note of desk review	3  days	2%
Prepare an Inception Report, including: (1) detailed roadmap, outlining activities to be carried out to support the regional office to develop a solid Regional Office Management Plan (ROMP); (2) communication plan with proposed frequency, content and medium that will accompany the development of the ROMP, to be agreed with ESARO; (3) the outline for the ROMP document.	Inception report including ROMP Roadmap ROMP Outline Communication Plan	2 days	3%
Prepare and facilitate one day Strategic Moment of Reflection with ESARO Staff	Organization & facilitation of SMR 3-4 pager SMR Report	4 days	7%
Facilitate consultations with ESARO sections, including any relevant multi-sectoral working groups/taskforces, PBR Reference Group and with select reference persons from the Country Offices to bring consensus on risk-informed key priority results and strategies for 2026-2029, and required programmatic and organizational / structural shifts, aligned with the evolving thrust of the new draft Strategic Plan	Summary note of consultations	12 days	20%
Facilitate identification and consultations with key external regional partners	2-3 pager summary note of consultations	5	8%
Prepare an executive brief and present to senior managers of ESARO on the positioning and management of emerging priorities for ESARO that need to be in the ROMP, based on the consultations	Short 5–6-page executive brief	4 days	10%
Prepare the programme elements of draft ROMP including updated situation analysis; lessons learned; office-wide priorities, strategies and results, including draft results and resources matrix; and risk management	Draft ROMP	10 days	20%
Review and advise on the overall staffing structure to ensure best-fit and affordability, to deliver on the priorities and plans for the ROMP 2022-2025, reflecting on global reviews (including the GS review)	Affordability analysis of ROMP	5 days	15%
Production of regularized internal communication per the agreed communication plan	Internal newsletters (title TBD)	1 day	5%
10.Prepare final draft ROMP	Final draft ROMP	4 days	10%
Total		50 days	100%

 

 

PAYMENT SCHEDULE

Payments will be based on quality deliverables cleared by the Deputy  Regional Director, supervisor of the consultancy,  to be invoiced as per the details in the previous section. No more than one payment will be processed per month to reduce transaction cost of processing, so all activities and related deliverables for the month must be combined into a single invoice for payment processing.

 

Conditions

• As per UNICEF policy, payment is made against approved deliverables. No advance payment is allowed unless in exceptional circumstances against bank guarantee, subject to a maximum of 30 per cent of the total contract value in cases where advance purchases, for example for supplies or travel, may be necessary.
• The consultant selected will be governed by and subject to UNICEF’s General Terms and Conditions for individual contracts.
• Performance will be evaluated considering quality of deliverables, consultation with stakeholders, timeliness of deliverables of and comprehensiveness of work as defined in the terms of reference.
• The consultant may not publish or disseminate Reports, data collection tools, collected data or any other documents produced from this consultancy without the express permission of and acknowledgement of UNICEF.
• The consultant will be required to clearly identify any potential ethical issues and approaches, as well as the processes for ethical review and oversight of the evaluation process in their proposal.

MANAGEMENT

The consultant will work under broad guidance and direction of the ESA Regional Director and day to day supervision of the Deputy Regional Director.  The consultant will also interact with the ESARO ROMP reference group, composed of a number of Regional Advisors and select Representatives of the region, for broad steer and consultation.

 

QUALIFICATIONS AND SPECIALISED KNOWLEDGE/EXPERIENCED REQUIRED

• Education: Master’s degree in social science, business administration, human resources, social sciences or similar.
• Work Experience: 10 years of experience in managing development programmes, including strategic planning, programme and organizational design, Documented experience in results-based management and change management practice.  
• Special advantage: Experienced senior professionals  having an extensive experience and knowledge of UNICEF policies on Country Programme Management Processes and Change Management. Recent experience in/with UNICEF i.e. during the last Strategic Plan cycle a strong asset.
• Specific skills: Solid experience with UNICEF policy and procedure will be an asset, with a focus on programmatic aspects. Solid experience in organizational development/change/design as well as experience in developing staff structures, profiles and assessments in different environments required.
• Competencies: Very good analytical skills in relation to development challenges and relevant transformation processes; very competent in conceptualizing complex management challenges; excellent writing skills.
• Fluency in English Language combined with strong presentation and written communication skills is required.

 

ADMINISTRATIVE ISSUES

The work will be performed remotely/home-based and include one mission to Nairobi to facilitate a moment of reflection with ESARO staff

 

CONDITIONS

The consultant selected will be governed by, and subject to, UNICEF’s General Terms and Conditions for individual contracts. The work can be performed remotely/home-based. All products and data developed and collected for this agreement are the intellectual property of UNICEF. The consultant(s) may not publish or disseminate the final report, or any other document produced from this work without the express permission and acknowledgement of UNICEF.

 

HOW TO APPLY

Qualified candidates are requested to submit the following documents:

1. Cover letter describing motivation for the consultancy and relevant experience.
2. Expression of interest (EOI) demonstrating understanding of the terms of reference and proposing the consultant’s approach to the assignment.
3. Curriculum Vitae
4. Lump sum / Quoted fees for the assignment in US$ (all-inclusive including travel costs and fees)
5. Incomplete applications will not be considered.

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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 offers reasonable accommodation for consultants/individual contractors with disabilities. This may include, for example, accessible software, travel assistance for missions or personal attendants. We encourage you to disclose your disability during your application in case you need reasonable accommodation during the selection process and afterwards in your assignment. 

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. 

 

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