The Position:
The Regional Supply Chain Management Specialist is located in the West and Central Africa Regional Office (WCARO) and reports directly to the Regional Commodity Management Team Lead (P5), WCARO, with a dotted reporting line to Head of Country Support and Monitoring in Supply Chain Management Unit (SCMU). You will work closely with the colleagues in SCMU, Technical Division/ Commodity Security Branch, the UNFPA Supplies Partnership, the Humanitarian Office, and the Country Offices in WCARO.
You are tasked with supporting the Regional Commodity Management Team Lead on regional efforts to strengthen national forecasting/ quantification, procurement planning, introduction of new products, and strengthening downstream supply chain management, ensuring "end-to-end" visibility and effective distribution of UNFPA donated commodities, and identifying, troubleshooting, and implementing remedial action plans from the Last Mile Assurance (LMA) process recommendations for the countries in the Region. You will apply an integrated, coordinated, and systems strengthening approach to support governments and other implementing partners, which is fundamental to UNFPA's overall strategy of building a ready, responsive, and resilient supply chain required for sustained and equitable access to and delivery of Sexual Reproductive Health (SRH) commodities.
How you can make a difference:
UNFPA occupies a unique position in the Reproductive Health Commodity ecosystem as a critical player in supply chain management, a leading public procurer of reproductive health commodities, a trusted partner to national governments, and one of the few organizations with the scale and partnerships necessary to build accountability for last mile delivery. Additionally, in humanitarian settings, UNFPA is responsible for ensuring the availability of lifesaving sexual and reproductive health and gender-based violence prevention and response commodities to those hardest to reach, and commodities to enable operational programme implementation in the hardest to operate settings.
The Supply Chain Management Unit, which was established in January 2022, ensures that UNFPA is able to support the delivery of life-saving reproductive health products and other programme supplies effectively and efficiently to the end user when and where they are needed. To do so, it provides enabling services to Regional Offices and Country Offices and ensures coordination, end-to-end visibility, and accountability on all supply-chain-management related activities, across all UNFPA Programmes.
Job Purpose:
As Regional Supply Chain Management Specialist, you will support the Regional Commodity Management Team Lead on regional efforts on oversight for sexual and reproductive health supply chain initiatives in the West and Central Africa Region, providing advice and support to ensure all member states have access to quality assured contraceptives, essential, lifesaving maternal health commodities, and other related core reproductive health commodities. You will support the provision of technical and programmatic guidance to governments, implementing partners and UNFPA Country Offices to develop and implement supply chain management strategies applicable in development and humanitarian settings, and to ensure programme supplies are effectively managed and safeguarded in accordance with the applicable supply-chain management and procurement policies, procedures, and related guidelines.
In the broadest definition, this role is multi-sectoral and crosscutting, engaging in all issues affecting commodity security, health system strengthening, supply management and quality assurance, as well as promoting availability, accessibility, and sustainability of SRH commodities. The role will also contribute to relevant data collection and consolidation processes, developing guidelines and tools, and ensuring interagency coordination and maintaining relevant partnerships and facilitating/monitoring compliance with policies. You will support the provision of relevant advice and capacity building in the forecasting/quantification as well as development and validation of national supply plans, procurement plans for countries in the Region, and guidance on distribution, inventory, and warehouse management, in line with good storage practices for health products.
You will work in close collaboration with the Technical Division, UNFPA Supplies Partnership, Supply Chain Management Unit, Humanitarian Office, Country Offices in the Region, and key Third Party-Procurement clients, ensuring timeliness, adequacy and relevance and quality of substantive outputs.
Qualifications and Experience:
Education:
Advanced university degree in Medical Science, Pharmacy, Supply Chain Management, Business Administration, Logistics or equivalent field is required. A first level university degree combined with a professional Supply Chain Management certification such as CIPS at Level 5 Advanced Diploma and/or CILT at any of the Level 5 qualification may be accepted in lieu of an advanced university degree.
Knowledge and Experience:
- A minimum of five years of relevant progressively responsible professional experience, including management experience of managing people and/or health projects at the international level, with ideally at least two years spent in low resource or humanitarian settings.
- Minimum of three years of substantive experience in health commodity quantification, forecasting, supply management, warehousing, distribution, logistics information systems.
- Demonstrated experience and successful track record in public health SCM strategy and network design creation and implementation.
- Experience providing direct and successful country support on public health SCM in development and ideally complex humanitarian operating environments.
- Experience in developing analytical tools for management reporting and performance metrics in supply chain.
- Basic knowledge of the principles and operational aspects of integrated SRH health care in the global development and humanitarian community is an additional asset.
- Demonstrated expertise in family planning method mix, contraceptive technology and humanitarian preparedness and prepositioning.
- Professional written and spoken presentation skills, including for the development of reports, presentations, and the ability to synthesize complex technical documents for both technical and non-technical audiences.
- Strong interpersonal skills and capability to develop and maintain broad diversified partnerships.
- Familiarity with UN agencies procurement and supply chain management policies, and guidelines is an asset.
Languages:
Fluency in English and French is required. Working knowledge of Portuguese is an asset.
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