By The UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) makes public and private finance work for the poor in the world’s 46 least developed countries (LDCs). With its capital mandate and instruments, UNCDF offers “last mile” finance models that unlock public and private resources, especially at the domestic level, to reduce poverty and support local economic development. This last mile is where available resources for development are scarcest; where market failures are most pronounced; and where benefits from national growth tend to leave people excluded.
UNCDF’s financing models work through three channels: (1) inclusive digital economies, which connects individuals, households, and small businesses with financial eco-systems that catalyze participation in the local economy, and provide tools to climb out of poverty and manage financial lives; (2) local development finance, which capacitates localities through fiscal decentralization, innovative municipal finance, and structured project finance to drive local economic expansion and sustainable development; and (3) investment finance, which provides catalytic financial structuring, de-risking, and capital deployment to drive SDG impact and domestic resource mobilization.
By strengthening how finance works for poor people at the household, small enterprise, and local infrastructure levels, UNCDF contributes to SDG 1 on eradicating poverty with a focus on reaching the last mile and addressing exclusion and inequalities of access. At the same time, UNCDF deploys its capital finance mandate in line with SDG 17 on the means of implementation, to unlock public and private finance for the poor at the local level. By identifying those market segments where innovative financing models can have transformational impact in helping to reach the last mile, UNCDF contributes to a number of different SDGs and currently to 28 of 169 targets.
Since 2008, UNCDF has been supporting digital finance with significant success, with digital finance currently the largest part of its inclusive finance portfolio. This includes digital innovations linked to on an off-grid energy, agriculture, employment, health and transport. UNCDF is also host to the Secretariat of the Better than Cash Alliance, a partnership of governments, companies, and international organizations that accelerates the transition from cash to digital payments in order to reduce poverty and drive inclusive growth.
With 60 professionals with strong digital finance experience across the globe and with several hundred projects in digital on-going, UNCDF is one of the leading development agencies in digital finance with a mission and expertise to reach very low-income customers in some of the world’s most difficult markets. UNCDF’s digital team and resources are currently spread across several programmes and UNCDF is in the process of consolidating its financial and technical resources to create a comprehensive team of experts in various domains to drive its newly-launched Digital Finance strategy “Leaving no one behind in the digital era”
Based on this experience UNCDF started in 2017 to expand the scope of its programmatic agenda to go beyond digital finance. Through the “Leaving none behind in the digital era” strategy, UNCDF is supporting, through its digital finance interventions, the emergence of inclusive digital economies. The strategy recognizes that reaching the full potential of digital financial inclusion in support of the SDGs aligns with the vision of promoting digital economies for the following reasons:
- The value of DFS is not obvious, especially to poor and vulnerable populations, as it is not closely linked to their ability to respond to their specific constraints and needs around agriculture, education, health, energy and other key aspects of their daily lives.
- New innovative services should be developed to address these unmet needs. Innovation will not come from traditional providers but mainly from a range of new players (entrepreneurs, start-ups in various sectors, and platforms like Facebook, Grab, WeChat, etc.).
UNCDF’s “Leaving no one behind in the digital era” strategy intends to move its focus on only digital finance (DF) to digital economies builds upon and constitutes a logical integration of UNCDF interventions in financial inclusion and digital, developed over many years. The legacy of UNCDF intervention programmes was built through a range of country/regional programmes and global thematic initiatives, which has established a very strong reputation for UNCDF vis-à-vis donors and peers.
Position Context:
From 2021 onwards, UNCDF is launching a 4 year program in Africa, the Pacific and the Caribbean that contributes to the deployment of digital finance solutions at the scale and speed necessary to deepen financial inclusion, accelerate economic recovery from COVID-19, and to make economies and societies more resilient to external shocks. The program will be implemented in 4 regions (West & Central Africa, East & Southern Africa, Pacific and the Caribbean) and has a strong regional and global advocacy component. The program will leverage existing teams at country, regional and global levels for the implementation and to achieve our objective.
UNCDF requires an Administration and Financial Analyst (Service Contract) to support the programme implementation in Gabon, working under the supervision of UNCDF Regional Digital Hub Manager, P5 based in Dakar, Senegal.
The Admin & Financial Analyst will play a critical role in supporting the workflow of the team. He/She will support key functions such as procurement, admin support, budget revisions and reporting, as well as all clerical and support staff roles for the programme in accordance with UNCDF/UNDP Programme and Operations Policies and Procedure and applicable rules and regulations.
The Admin & Financial Analyst will work in close collaboration with the operations and programme staff in other UNCDF offices/teams such as headquarters/ Office of Finance and Management Services’ regional and HQ colleagues, Procurement and Operations colleagues and will lend support in the management of contracting, vendor management and budget-related issues.
The role will be based in Libreville, Gabon with in-country travel as permitted and necessitated.
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