The Team Leader for Africa, within the Country Support Management Team, supervises Crisis Bureau interventions in the region, aligning resources with GPN’s vision and supporting COs. They advise on global crisis programming, lead the Africa Team, promote partnerships, and advocate for UNDP. UNDP’s portfolio approach acknowledges interconnected development risks, requiring multidisciplinary teamwork for an integrated response across issues, units, and projects.

Duties and Responsibilities

1. Strategic country support coordination and timely delivert of technical assistance, programme, and operational support. 

• Ensure timely application of agreed business processes to guarantee predictable country support for COs on crisis prevention, response and recovery issues.
• Stay abreast of developing crisis in the Africa region and identify/understand the regional and country support needs as it relates to crisis and fragility.
• Conduct prioritisation exercise with RBA to determine region priorities, taking into account local needs, capacities and resources, as well as corporate and partnership crisis related commitments.
• Ensure the continuous collation of lessons learned and best practices in crisis preparedness, response and recovery.

• Ensure effective leadership in coordination and in recovery programming in times of crisis, the implementation of timely, sequenced and appropriate UNDP response and recovery activities, safe and sustainable response actions and timely and commensurate funding allocations.
• Supervise the secretariat function of temporary support structures, timely organization of coordination meetings, information sharing and proper record of decisions.
• Advise on Level Declaration, composition of the SURGE Planning Team, deployment of First Responders, selection of SURGE Advisors, etc.
• Coordinate the preparation of all background material submitted to the Crisis Board, including the Exigency Memo, the SURGE Plan, Business Cases and After-Action Reviews.

• Strategic engagement and effective liaison with relevant partners, including UN entities, in relation to operational country specific issues in close collaboration with RBA.
• As agreed with RBA, support the participation of UNDP in Inter-Agency Task Forces and in Peacekeeping or Special Political Mission Planning.
• In close coordination with RBA, BERA and relevant GPN teams, keep track of the organization of country specific and crisis related International Pledging Conferences and ensure CSMT support as required.

• Brokers prioritization / organizational focus on high-impact crisis support vis-à-vis the broader GPN and Regional Bureau and aligns the use of resources behind these priorities.
• Leads the establishment of a work plans for Africa and internal collaboration practices, role modeling how integrated work approaches are translated in UNDP’s crisis support.
• Overseeing the contracting and supervision of consultants to support programme development in the Africa Team.
• As required, support post-crisis assessment processes (e.g. RPBA / PDNA) from a process design and coordination perspective, working closely with GPN teams and RBA;
• Participate in inter-agency mission and coordinate inputs from various GPN teams;
• Support country level preparedness planning and programme criticality;

• Actively contribute to community of practices to ensure wide dissemination of best practices and lessons learned from the implementation of programmes related to crisis and fragility in Africa;
• Oversee the knowledge extraction, analysis, documentation, codification of results/lessons learned in the implementation of programmed in priority countries, in line with guidelines and corporate tools, including After Action Reviews.;
• Support the capacity development of UNDP staff in the Africa region in application of tools and practices related to crisis and fragility.

The incumbent performs other duties within their functional profile as deemed necessary for the efficient functioning of the Office and the Organisation.

Supervisory/Managerial Responsibilities: 
Supervision of the Africa Team staff and ensuring that performance management practices contribute to continuous improvement in team cohesion and individual staff development.

Check: UNDP National Finance Officer-UNOCHA-(Nationals Only) in Türkiye

Required Skills and Experience for Team Leader for Africa/ Country Support Management Team