Chemonics International seeks experienced professionals for the USAID-funded Global Health Supply Chain-Procurement and Supply Management (GHSC-PSM) project. GHSC-PSM Ethiopia will serve as the primary vehicle through which USAID will procure and furnish health commodities, provide technical assistance to improve the country’s management of the supply chain, and collaborate with key international stakeholders to support global and local health initiatives.

Background

Ethiopia is a country- where there is a significant increase in health coverage and expansion of health facilities. With the increase in accessibility of health facilities, there is also an increase in utilization of services by the communities.  This unprecedented increase in the number of health facilities and enhanced utilization rate create an opportunity and a challenge for the health supply chain managers to avail essential health commodities in an equitable manner. Accordingly, health commodities including medicines should be selected and quantified using acceptable advanced scientific methods. Subsequent to quantification of accurate demands of health facilities, there comes the need for implementation of best procurement practices that integrate social responsibility into the process of tendering and of suppliers’ selection and other steps of the procurement process.

For the health supply manager to excel in pharmaceutical procurement, there is a huge need for knowledge of standard of practice and excellence in the procurement procedures, practices, procurement policy implementations, and procurement requirements. Accordingly, professionals involving in procurement should be provided with a comprehensive in-service training that will equip them with the required knowledge, skills, and attitude. These professionals will be expected to sustainability of the supply. And the best way to ensure sustainability of the chain is to integrate social responsibility into the process of tendering and of suppliers’ selection.

The Ethiopian Pharmaceutical Supply Agency (EPSA) is established to ensure continuous availability of pharmaceuticals in public health facilities of the country. EPSA is a public-sector health commodity supply agency located in Addis Ababa and operates throughout the country through its 19 regional hubs/branches with more than 2,000 employees. The agency is striving to achieve its mission and objectives through enhancing financial and human resources capacity, implementing need-based efficient pool procurement and implementing modern inventory management system to meet the ever-increasing demand of health commodities.

The agency has been developing various in-service curricula and providing in-service trainings for its staff since its establishment. The agency has recently conducted a competency assessment of its workforce and identified several supply chain technical competency gaps including procurement that can be addressed by implementing a need-based in-service training program.

Over the past years, the GHSC-PSM project has been supporting EPSA to develop different supply chain management related in-service training curricula to implement in a number of initiatives that improve the agency’s business processes and enhance efficiency of its performance. Accordingly, GHSC-PSM has planned with EPSA to design and develop comprehensive procurement modules and deliver in-service trainings to improve its procurement processes performance, improve the overall efficiency of the agency, and enable to achieve better customer satisfaction.

The Pharmaceuticals Procurement training package is expected to compose the following modules:

• Suppliers relationship management (SRM)/Prequalifying suppliers,
• Contract Management in pharmaceutical procurement,
• Tendering Management and practice,
• Pharmaceuticals Customs clearing Freight forwarding
• Local procurement laws and regulations

Therefore, the GHSC-PSM Ethiopia Field Office would like to recruit two local consultants for the development of the training module as per the following scope of work and consultant requirements.

Scope of work (Comprehensive Pharmaceutical Procurement Local Sourcing Advisors)

The scope of work for the consultant will include but not limited to, the following:

• Design rapid need assessment tool and lead the data collection and analysis to understand expectations from the agency and its selected staff
• Design comprehensive pharmaceuticals procurement modules following the ADDIE[1] model of curriculum development. The modules include:

 Qualifications and Desired Attributes

• Advanced degree in supply chain, business administration, pharmaceutical logistics, or related fields (advanced logistics, procurement, etc. are preferred). This activity needs two consultants with advanced education and experience in general procurement management and pharmaceutical supply chain management
• Extensive experience in supply chain management work with special focus on health commodities procurement, contract management and suppliers relationship management.
• Experience in business and pharmaceutical academia
• Previous similar work experience on module development for in-service trainings
• Experience in curriculum development following the ADDIE model
• Experience in organizing and facilitating training events
• Adept to dynamic and advanced teaching techniques
• Has extensive experience working with international and/or national stakeholders in low and middle-income countries