Result of Service

Final evaluation report of the United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework for Eswatini 2021 – 2025

Work Location

UNRCS Eswatini (Hybrid)

Expected duration

5 months

Duties and Responsibilities

The Kingdom of Eswatini is a small landlocked country in Southern Africa bordered by Mozambique and South Africa. The population of Eswatini is around 1.2 million, of which 51.4% are women. Over 78% of the population live in rural areas. Eswatini has a young and growing population with half (46.9%) of the population under the age of 25 (47.4% male and 46.3% female). The country measures 17,364 square kilometres. Although small in size, the country’s land and climate are diverse with four distinct agro-ecological zones, including the mountainous high-veld with gorges, waterfalls and rivers; the middle-veld, endowed with fertile soils and home to the largest industrial area; the low-veld with sub-tropical climate, where most of the sugarcane farming takes place; and the Lubombo plateau, which exhibits climatic conditions similar to those of the middle veld. Eswatini has committed to human rights standards and international obligations, but challenges remain in upholding them, especially regarding gender equality and environmental protection. Efforts to improve healthcare, education, and gender equality have seen minimal progress, while economic transformation requires addressing youth unemployment and fostering private sector growth. Eswatini faces challenges in sustainable energy generation and climate change adaptation. Aligning policies with global commitments is crucial for environmental conservation. Interconnected risks affecting SDG achievement remain high, requiring an integrated approach for mitigation. Overall, the Eswatini UNSDCF, National Development Plan (NDP) for 2023/24 – 2027/28, and SDGs are complementary frameworks that work together to advance sustainable development in the country, ensuring alignment of priorities, resources, and efforts towards achieving common objectives for the benefit of the Eswatini population. The UNSDCF serves as a strategic partnership framework between the Government of Eswatini and the United Nations system. It identifies key areas where the UN can support national development priorities and the achievement of the SDGs. The UNSDCF is designed to align with Eswatini’s national development plans, including the NDP, to ensure coherence and synergy in development efforts. The NDP outlines Eswatini’s strategic priorities, objectives, and policies for a specific period. It sets out the government’s vision and roadmap for achieving socioeconomic development, including goals related to economic growth, social development, infrastructure, and governance. The UNSDCF complements the NDP by providing additional support and resources through UN agencies to implement priority interventions identified in the plan. Eswatini’s SDG Recovery and Acceleration Plan (ESRAP) is intended to support the fast tracking of implementation of SDGs in the country. 1.2 UNSDCF Highlights The UNSDCF 2021-2025 was developed during the onset of COVID-19 in 2020. The development was an all-inclusive transparent process. The process identified four outcome areas aligned to sixteen out of 17 SDGs except for Goal 14 on Life Below Water . Each of the UNSDCF outcome area is backed by a theory of change identifying the immediate and underlying causes and proposed approach and partnerships to address the causes. The funding framework of 2020 projected that implementing the UNSDCF 2021-2025 would require an estimated USD$20 million per year or approximately USD$100 million over 5 years of which only 65% was available. During the implementation of the UNSDCF 2021 to date, several emerging events occurred that influenced the delivery of the UNSDCF targets, and in some cases, possibly reversed national development milestones. The outbreak of COVID-19, recurring cyclones, unprecedented civil unrest, as well as global geo-political events, such as the Russia-Ukraine war have all impacted on national development processes in Eswatini. These have resulted in job loses, escalating food prices, political uncertainties, and extensive damage to national and individual infrastructures, widening food insecurity and out of pocket health services and reversing educational gains with marginalized groups such as persons with disability, youth, women, and children most affected. The Cooperation Framework outlines three priorities and four outcome areas (organised around four Results Groups (RGs) and the five pillars of the 2030 Agenda,: People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace, and Partnerships. Eswatini only chose 3: Prosperity, People, and Planet under the following outcomes: Outcome 1: Promoting Sustainable and Inclusive Economic Growth, Outcome 2: Investing in Human Resources and Social Development, Outcome 3: Accountable Governance, Justice, and Human Rights, and Outcome 4: Strengthening Natural Resource Management. 2 PURPOSE AND OBJECTIVES The overarching purpose of the UNSDCF 2021–2025 evaluation is to; o Ensure UNCT’s accountability to Eswatini and Implementing Partners: The evaluation will help the various parties involved in the Cooperation Framework process, such as people of Eswatini, Government of Eswatini (GoE) and other national counterparts and development partners, to hold the UNCT and other parties accountable for carrying out their roles and commitments by objectively presenting evidence of results achieved within the context of the Cooperation Framework (CF) and evaluating the efficacy of the strategies and interventions used. o Foster learning and operational improvement for the next UNSDCF. The outcomes of the evaluation will provide the necessary lessons learned, experiences, treasured information and opportunities for a strengthened and more robust designing, planning, programming, and implementing of the next generation UNSDCF (2026-2030) leading to better, more coordinated, and enhanced development results in Eswatini. The specific objectives of the evaluation are to: a. Evaluate the contribution of the CF to national development outcomes through evidence-based assessments using agreed evaluation criteria. b. Determine the elements that influenced the UN’s contribution, providing an explanation for the enabling conditions and learning bottlenecks, and responding to the query of why the performance is as it is. c. Draw conclusions and lessons learnt including human and financial resources for implementation (based on the UN’s capacity to deliver the CF in line with the 2020 configuration exercise). d. Outline recommendations for consideration in the next Cooperation Framework. These should be relevant to the findings and be based on the lessons documented throughout the assessment. 3 SCOPE Programmatic scope: The Evaluation will cover all the outcomes of UNSDCF 2021-2025 implemented through the joint workplans, UN entities country programmes and implementation frameworks as well as other initiatives, projects, and activities conducted by the UNCT under the UNSDCF implementation. Geographic scope: The evaluation will cover the national and regional levels. During the inception phase, a selection of 2 to 3 regions (sub-national) will be selected by the evaluation team in consultation with the UNCT. Temporal scope: The evaluation will cover the implementation period from January 2021 to July 2024, in relation to the outcomes and results achieved. However, data will be collected on selected programmes and projects as per the agreement of the evaluation team and the technical committee. The evaluators will be based in Eswatini with travel to the purposely selected regions and programmes based on an evaluation plan/roadmap to be submitted by the evaluation team and approved at the inception stage. The evaluation will be conducted over a five-month period July to November 2024 and the results will be disseminated amongst and utilised by government, development partners, civil society, private sector, academia, DCO and other stakeholders. The Evaluation Team will develop a detailed work plan at the inception phase.

Qualifications/special skills

Advanced Degree in Results Based Management (RBM), Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E), Development Studies, Public Administration, Economics, Social Sciences, Environmental Management, Law, or related field is required.

Languages

Fluency in oral and written English is required.

Additional Information

A minimum of ten years of progressive experience in conducting complex evaluation both internationally and locally using both qualitative and quantitative methods is required.

No Fee

THE UNITED NATIONS DOES NOT CHARGE A FEE AT ANY STAGE OF THE RECRUITMENT PROCESS (APPLICATION, INTERVIEW MEETING, PROCESSING, OR TRAINING). THE UNITED NATIONS DOES NOT CONCERN ITSELF WITH INFORMATION ON APPLICANTS’ BANK ACCOUNTS.