Purpose and Scope of Assignment
The RREP project is looking for a dynamic professional with a strong entrepreneurial sense and an excellent eye for identifying investment opportunities and partnerships. This role will work with local and international companies and investors, development partners and public sector stakeholders to drive energy partnerships and investment across mini-grids, productive use equipment and appliances, and potentially standalone systems.
The Energy Portfolio Specialist will directly report to the RREP Work Package Deputy Project Manager/Project Manager. He/she will manage a Programme Analyst advising, mentoring and managing him/her toward high quality and coordinated delivery.
Functional Responsibilities:
- Portfolio design, governance, delivery, and growth
facilitating and supporting partners in co-creation of interventions and
solutions that foster off-take of newly available mini-grid electricity and
productive use of energy at scale
- Develop, manage and grow a pipeline of strategic,
innovative, and co-leveraged partnerships and investments aligned with the
work stream’s objectives and goals.
- Assess and facilitate development of pilot
businesses cases and scalable & replicable interventions, practices,
business models, and financing instruments with partners including
mini-grid operators, project developers, energy companies, and public and
social sector stakeholders, as relevant
- Provide technical assistance
and capacity building to partners to design and pilot business cases that
target practice, processes, and overall strategy innovations.
- Provide operational and financial management
support to partners and manage partnership delivery against targets
including toward improving operational and financial management systems
that support innovation, scale and overall business growth.
- Nurture opportunities with investors and
developers and broker investments in target Facility areas
- Identify and
produce relevant and insightful content (i.e., videos, infographics, case
studies, snapshots, investment briefs etc.) toward development of a broad
knowledge and learning platform to raise awareness of the facilities services;
to inform the sector of mini-grid and productive use investment opportunities;
to inform sector learning and best practices; and to showcase portfolio.
- Manage team in the day-to-day operations of
the Rural Energy Market Development work stream
Knowledge Management:
- Establish a knowledge and learning
platform to promote best practice sharing, raise awareness of productive use
investment opportunity, and inform thought-leadership in the sector nationally
and beyond.
- Participate in the relevant Communities of Practice.
- Knowledge of industry best practices
- Support the Deputy Project Manager, Project Manager and
Communications team in documenting and
maintaining lessons learnt from the delivery of the Work Package for the
purposes of knowledge sharing and continuous improvement in the delivery of
similar activities
Personnel Management:
- Establish a
thorough understanding of UNOPS personnel contract modalities (i.e. ICA);
- Support the
selection, recruitment and training of the team as required by project plans
- Perform
Project Support role, unless appointed to another person or corporate/programme
function
Core
Values and Principles:
- Understand and respect UNOPS sustainability
principles
I. Look for ways to embed UNOPS sustainability
principles in day to day project management
II. Seek opportunities to champion gender
equality at work place
III. Champion and communicate project’s
sustainability aspects with key stakeholders
- Understand and Respect National ownership and
capacity
i. Understand the principles of the
Paris Declaration on aid effectiveness and
mainstream them into
the project plans
ii. Seek opportunities to support
recruitment of qualified local personnel
iii. Look for ways to build capacity of
local counterparts
iv. Partnerships and Coordination
Understand the UN Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) and UNOPS, the
project’s place in the UN system:
v. Strive to build strong
partnerships and effective coordination among relevant project actors (e.g.United Nations, governments, and
non-governmental organizations or other relevant partners)
- Accountability for results and the use of resources
i. The project management processes are
designed to deliver maximum accountability, transparency and results. If a
project or processes is not in line with this, it is the responsibility of the Energy Portfolio Specialist to raise the issue with the Deputy Project Manager and Project Manager.
i. Contribute to innovation and the adaptation
of best practice standards of sustainability and quality.
Additional Considerations:
The Energy Portfolio Specialist is expected:
- To develop and nurture relationships with key public,
private, and social sector stakeholders to identify key challenges and
opportunities across respective industries, value chains and development impact
interventions where energy access is a key bottleneck.
- To contribute to the strategic direction and vision of
the Rural Energy Market Development work
stream establishing an operational framework to guide roll-out of services and
instruments outlined in the work stream framework
- Ability to
demonstrated quantitative skills
- Integrity and ability to work in a dynamic team as
well as to supervise other specialists.
Monitoring and Progress Controls
- Effective work package/ Work stream governance, and
risk management
- Timeliness and accuracy of reporting on Work package
performance
- Accuracy of Work package planning and delivery
according to plans
- Identification and implementation of continuous
process improvement and risk management.
General:
- Provide support to ensure that the project produces
the required products within the specified tolerance of time, cost, quality,
scope, risk and benefits