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UNICEF works in over 190 countries and territories to save children’s lives, defend their rights, and help them fulfill their potential, from early childhood through adolescence.

At UNICEF, we are committed, passionate, and proud of what we do for as long as we are needed. Promoting the rights of every child is not just a job – it is a calling.

UNICEF is a place where careers are built. We offer our staff diverse opportunities for professional and personal development that will help them reinforce a sense of purpose while serving children and communities across the world. We welcome everyone who wants to belong and grow in a diverse and passionate culture., coupled with an attractive compensation and benefits package.

Visit our website to learn more about what we do at UNICEF.

TERMS OF REFERENCE

Background and Justification

The Planning, Monitoring, Data and Research (PMDR) section of UNICEF’s Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office (ESARO) plays a pivotal role in supporting 23 Country Offices. It provides strategic guidance and technical support across planning, monitoring, data and analytics, and research functions.

In a context where progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) remains uneven—particularly for children affected by climate change, conflict, and poverty—the need for high-impact, data-driven strategies is more urgent than ever. The PMDR section leads UNICEF’s efforts in evidence-informed plans and strategies, monitoring, data and statistical systems strengthening, and use, towards ensuring that programming is inclusive, strategic, and grounded in robust evidence.

The PMDR section’s SDR (Strategic data and Research) unit is seeking a consultant to support the Data analytics and Statistics system strengthening for children in ESAR. Under the supervision of the Data and Research Manager, the consultant will support the implementation of the ESAR Data Strategy and Framework 2022–2025 mainly through provision of i) support the strengthening of national data and statistical systems for children to ensure timely availability and use of data and statistics for policy and programming ii) advance child centric survey systems across ESAR, provide technical assistance to ongoing surveys, and advocate for increased uptake of MICS and other national household surveys related to children, iii) conduct country/ multicounty data analytics (benchmarking, small area estimation, modelling...etc) on the situation of children and monitoring child rights across SDGs, Africa 2040 and other relevant sectoral, thematic areas across regional and continental frameworks, including the dissemination and roll-out of the Census Analytics Toolkit for Children.

This assignment is a specialized consultancy designed to accelerate progress in strategic data and statistics system work during the organizational transition. It aligns with UNICEF’s commitment to act as “One UNICEF”—a unified team making courageous decisions and collaborating across the evidence ecosystem to achieve results for children at scale.

Scope of work

1. Goal and Objective

The consultant will support UNICEF ESARO’s strategic data analytics, and statistics system strengthening agenda, with a focus on strengthening national systems, enhancing child-focused data analytics, and advancing the implementation of the ESAR Data Strategy and Framework (2022–2025) in alignment with the new Strategic Plan.

Specifically, the consultant will:

• Support the implementation of regional data strategy and Africa data offer for children.
• Strengthen engagement and capacities in statistical system development planning processes (NSDSs and similar) for children by applying UNICEF and PARIS21 toolkit.
• Support strategic engagement with countries to strengthen national survey systems, censuses, and administrative data systems for monitoring child rights, including alignment with child-related SDGs and the AU Agenda 2040.
• Position UNICEF as a knowledge leader in child rights monitoring through cutting-edge, demand-driven data analytics, including leveraging geospatial models, early warning predictive analytics and responsible adoption of LLMs and NLPs.

2. The work relates to the regional workplan result area:

Outcome: ESAR Country Offices are supported to accelerate the advancement of Child Rights through strategies that transform gender and social norms, builds evidence-base and its use in advocacy, promotes partnerships, and responds robustly to crises, and regional stakeholders are influenced to advance child rights at scale through normative and intellectual leadership, policy dialogue, evidence-based advocacy and regional partnerships.

3. Activities and Tasks:

The consultant will play a central role in advancing UNICEF ESARO’s data, statistics, and child rights monitoring agenda, with responsibilities spanning technical coordination, strategic analytics, capacity building, and advocacy.

Key areas of support include:

1. Data Strategy and Governance (15%)
• Stocktake and update of the ESAR Data Strategy and Framework implementation including activities related to data governance, demand-generation, and child rights integration.
• The rollout of UNICEF data transformation intiative including the responsible integration of emerging technologies (ML: NLP, LLMs) into analytics for child rights monitoring.
• Develop and update guidelines and protocols aligned with UNICEF’s Responsible Data for Children, Ethical Guidelines, and Data Protection Policy;
• Support at least 10 countries in developing implementation plans for the strategy;
• Monitor implementation progress, document lessons learned, and identify emerging priorities.
• Secretariat support for the Africa Expert group on child and adolescent-related statistics.
2. National strategies for development of Statistics (15%)

• Strengthening of UNICEF capacities on NSDS engagement, and providing technical support to mainstream child-rights into NSDS and sectoral statistical plans, leveraging UNICEF-PARIS21 guidance;
• Advocate for the uptake of child-centric surveys as part of the national statistical plans and survey schedules.
• Contribute to national and regional assessments of data system capacities, maturity, and financing.
• Support the development of regional monitoring frameworks and performance analytics.

3. Data generation systems Coordination and Technical Support (30%)
• Coordination of the MICS programme across ESAR and provide technical assistance to country offices on survey planning, implementation, analysis, and reporting;
• Quality assurance processes in sampling, data collection, and weighting;
• Technical support on measurement of child-related indicators (SDGs, AU2040) across other national and large-scale household surveys, admin, and emerging data sources.
• Support data analytics for monitoring from admin data systems, and strengthen CRVS data use.
• Support census are aligned with best practices for measuring child-related outcomes and the rollout of census analytics for children.
4. Data Analysis and Use (30 %)
• Conduct regional and cross-country data analyses using official sources (census, surveys, administrative data) and emerging sources (big data, citizen data, geospatial data, synthetic data) as relevant.
• Leverage advanced analytics (geospatial, SAE, climate hazards) and ML tools (e.g., LLMs, NLPs) to inform regional programming and advocacy priorities.
• Produce and disseminate analytical products, including data pipelines, visualizations, and dashboards.
• Support piloting and scale-up in selected countries and facilitate adaptation in others.
5. Capacity Strengthening and Collaboration (10 %)
• Organize and facilitate regional workshops and training sessions on measurement, data processing, analytics, and reporting.
• Identifying and facilitating learning and sharing sessions across countries.

Payment schedule

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

Minimum requirements:

At least a Master’s degree, or equivalent, in social sciences, demography, data science, statistics or a related technical field, with a significant measurement and analysis component.

At least five years’ experience with the measurement of social phenomena and human populations, particularly using household surveys, preferably MICS or DHS surveys.

Work Experience: At least five years’ experience with the measurement of social phenomena and human populations, particularly using household surveys, preferably MICS or DHS surveys.

Skill

 Excellent understanding on the use and limitations of various data collection methods, including large-scale household surveys, censuses, administrative data systems, and programme monitoring systems for child-related topics is required.

Knowledge of the data analysis life cycle is highly desirable – from collection, analysis to visualization - with experience in data science, statistical modeling, regression, classification, and/or machine learning. Experience in designing bespoke data piplines, including visualizations and dashboards an asset.

Understanding and use of statistical software packages is required (such as SPSS and CSPro) additional knowledge of R and python is an asset.

Experience in developing countries.

Management experience in implementing measurement projects.

For every Child, you demonstrate...

UNICEF’s Core Values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust and Accountability and Sustainability (CRITAS) underpin everything we do and how we do it. Get acquainted with Our Values Charter: UNICEF Values

The UNICEF competencies required for this post are…

(1) Builds and maintains partnerships

(2) Demonstrates self-awareness and ethical awareness

(3) Drive to achieve results for impact

(4) Innovates and embraces change

(5) Manages ambiguity and complexity

(6) Thinks and acts strategically

(7) Works collaboratively with others 

[add the 8^th competency (Nurtures, leads and manages people) for a supervisory role]. 

Familiarize yourself with our competency framework and its different levels.

UNICEF promotes and advocates for the protection of the rights of every child, everywhere, in everything it does and is mandated to support the realization of the rights of every child, including those most disadvantaged, and our global workforce must reflect the diversity of those children. The UNICEF family is committed to include everyone, irrespective of their race/ethnicity, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socio-economic background, minority, or any other status.

UNICEF encourages applications from all qualified candidates, regardless of gender, nationality, religious or ethnic backgrounds, and from people with disabilities, including neurodivergence.

UNICEF does not hire candidates who are married to children (persons under 18). 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 based on gender, nationality, age, race, sexual orientation, religious or ethnic background or disabilities. UNICEF is committed to promote the protection and safeguarding of all children. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks, and will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles. 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, and selected candidates with disabilities may be requested to submit supporting documentation in relation to their disability confidentially.

Remarks:  

As per Article 101, paragraph 3, of the Charter of the United Nations, the paramount consideration in the employment of the staff is the necessity of securing the highest standards of efficiency, competence, and integrity.

UNICEF is committed to fostering an inclusive, representative, and welcoming workforce.

UNICEF does not charge a processing fee at any stage of its recruitment, selection, and hiring processes (i.e., application stage, interview stage, validation stage, or appointment and training). UNICEF will not ask for applicants’ bank account information.

Humanitarian action is a cross-cutting priority within UNICEF’s Strategic Plan. UNICEF is committed to stay and deliver in humanitarian contexts. Therefore, all staff, at all levels across all functional areas, can be called upon to be deployed to support humanitarian response, contributing to both strengthening the resilience of communities and the capacity of national authorities.

Additional information about working for UNICEF can be found here.

How to Apply

Institutional and individual proposals should be sent to the online recruitment portal (Talent Management System)