Consultancy on Financing for Development

Client of United Nation careers

Result of Service

1- Deliverable 1: A high-dimensional analytical matrix capturing structural proximity and relatedness across the production universe, serving as an interactive-visual network diagnostic asset to identify diversification-linked financing opportunities and associated exposure to illicit financial flow risks.

2- Deliverable 2: Apply data-driven models to prioritize products and sectors based on national capability structures. The deliverable will include a technical note identifying strategically linked products, feasible diversification pathways, financing opportunities, and potential finance entry points, while applying rigorous filters to exclude spurious, non-productive, or phantom investment-driven linkages.

3- Deliverable 3: A diagnostic report identifying high-potential product pathways while highlighting sectors structurally vulnerable to illicit financial flows.

4- Deliverable 4: A Python-based Inter-sectoral Structural Coefficients framework that transforms raw bilateral investment statistics into a standardized long-panel dataset for gravity-model analysis and detection of disguised flows.

5- Deliverable 5: A sector and product clustering matrix-based industries and products with similar production structures, supplier dependencies, and capability requirements.

6- Deliverable 6: Excel file and summary report assessing cluster-level production values, priority manufacturing ecosystems, high-value product groups, and opportunities for industrial upgrading and investment targeting.

7- Deliverable 7: Revised summary report incorporating FfD comments.

8- Deliverable 8: An econometric modeling framework to assess structural feasibility, upgrading potential, and capability spillovers across interconnected products and sectors.

9- Deliverable 9: Revised output (deliverable 7) incorporating FfD comments

10- Deliverable 10: Excel file and summary report assessing and synthesizing the outputs of the econometric models.

11- Other deliverables related to the tasks mentioned above as requested by the Hiring Manager including, but not limited to, graphs, charts, briefings, excel files, tables, etc.

Work Location Remote

Expected duration 8 months

Duties and Responsibilities

Background

ESCWA supports Arab countries in strengthening national and regional financing systems to accelerate progress toward the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development. Through an integrated approach that combines policy dialogue, analytical research, capacity-building, and digital innovation, ESCWA assists member States in mobilizing and managing financing across key sources, including domestic public resources, private investment, international development cooperation, trade and investment flows, and sustainable debt management. This work is aligned with global commitments, including the Seville Commitment, which underscores the importance of strengthening accountability and governance in financing development, as well as the mandates to address financing leakages as a key enabler of financing sustainable development. (paragraphs 29 (a) & (c), 28 (e), and 33 (a)). Central to this work is the conduct of detailed diagnostics of the financing for development landscape, analysing the various sources of financing available to address five major financing rifts that continue to impede sustainable development in the Arab region: financing insolvencies, financing inequalities, fiscal space constraints, funding shortfalls, and debt-financing overhangs. In response, ESCWA advances regional cooperation on domestic resource mobilization, integrated financing solutions, diversifying sources of revenues and addressing leakages related to illicit financial flows and investment distortions. These efforts are complemented by policy recommendations and practical tools to support governments in improving revenue mobilization and financing strategies. In parallel, ESCWA has developed a forward-looking digital financing ecosystem composed of analytical and AI-powered tools that enable governments assess financing gaps, improve spending efficiency, optimize public spending, address illicit financial flows, strengthen multiple aspects of their financing strategies, enhance policy targeting, accelerate progress towards the SDGs, and design integrated financing strategies aligned with national development priorities. This ecosystem has received recognition at multiple institutional levels and has been endorsed under the Seville Platform of Action and recognized by DESA as a scalable, real-life application that can be adapted and replicated across countries and regions. Within this context, ESCWA seeks a consultant to provide support in the implementation of various FfD activities as detailed below.

Duties and Responsibilities

1- Map productive linkages across pilot country/countries production base and financing structure to identify sectoral interdependencies, financing bottlenecks, and opportunities for higher-value economic transformation.

2- Estimate latent financing-space linkages by combining prospective structural configurations, visualization tools, and empirical signals of capability-space adjacency to identify feasible pathways for economic diversification and financing mobilization for blended finance while addressing resource leakages.

3- Construct and align a high-dimensional proximity matrix across the production universe, integrating relevant product, sectoral, industrial, and financing classification systems to enable comparable mapping of productive and financing linkages, identify tax- and trade-based leakage channels, and detect unrealized or suboptimally realized productive potential.