International Consultancy: Data and Analytics Consultant at UNICEF

Scope of work

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.


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.

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:

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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.