Market Shaping Practice Summary:  R4D’s Market Shaping practice area has deep experience in catalyzing increased access to and improved appropriate use of essential products, towards helping people lead healthier, more productive lives. The Market Shaping practice achieves this by leveraging four technical approaches – market analysis, strategy development, catalytic implementation and evidence generation – at a systems level, to holistically and sustainably optimize and transform markets. More specifically, we align priorities and incentives of policymakers, procurers, financiers, and manufacturers at the global- and country-levels, to develop and catalyze implementation of evidence-backed solutions for underserved markets at scale. Using practical and business-driven approaches, from increasing market transparency around sizes of various segments, improving demand forecasting, developing purchasing and value chain strategies, to crafting cost-effectiveness and financing gap analyses, our work ensures that the market operates with improved efficiency, and that utilization of life-saving products is also increased. Previously designed market-shaping solutions by R4D have the potential to achieve over a billion dollars in savings and availability of high-quality products in health, including for HIV/AIDS, malaria, childhood pneumonia, maternal health, and neglected diseases prevention and treatment as well as for nutrition, education and sanitation.

Opportunity: R4D is seeking a highly motivated and analytical Senior Market Shaping Specialist for a new Market Shaping Capacity Improvement Project (MSCIP) in Ethiopia. The Ethiopia Pharmaceutical and Supply Agency (EPSA), as a supply chain leader in the public health system, has achieved some improvements in supply chain performance over the last ten years. However, critical gaps remain that impede full access to health and nutrition products in the public health system. Historically, the Government of Ethiopia (GoE) has relied on donors and partners for market shaping support, which have generally taken the form of short-term, product-specific projects, which are not focused on addressing broader system-level market shaping needs in the Ethiopia landscape, or on building GoE’s market shaping capacities. In 2018, EPSA established the Quantification and Market Shaping Directorate (QMSD) to design, organize and deliver market shaping interventions, which is an important milestone towards ensuring self-reliant and sustainable market shaping investments in the public health system. However, QMSD currently lacks the capacity to fully play a lead market shaping role.

This project, in a partnership with EPSA, is aimed at supporting the QMSD to play a lead role as a market manager. The “market manager” role is conceptualized as primarily determining how to proactively identify and address market inefficiencies, in order to ultimately drive improved access to important health and nutrition products in the public health system. This project will be implemented by working closely with EPSA and QMSD  leadership in conducting a comprehensive market shaping assessment, developing a holistic market shaping strategy, optimizing the structure of the QMSD and providing catalytic capacity building support to QMSD staff to sustainably own, standardize and implement market shaping interventions.

As a Senior Market Shaping Specialist, you will provide technical leadership for the project. You will be based in the R4D Ethiopia office, working closely with colleagues in Addis Ababa and in Washington DC, and contribute expertise around methods to undertake cross-cutting market analysis and to identify appropriate market shaping opportunities to drive impact, in conjunction with key stakeholders at QMSD and EPSA. Active collaboration with other partners will be involved as well, including with the Ethiopia Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH), Ethiopia Food and Drug Authority (EFDA), and several development partners that provide support to the supply chain system in the country.

A successful Senior Market Shaping Specialist will be a creative problem solver and have strong analytical, communication, and collaboration skills as well as a commitment to excellence and producing results. We are a team that is resourceful, responsible, tenacious, high-energy, and always has a positive attitude. We hope you that you value these personality traits as much as we do!

This position will report to the Country Director in Ethiopia.

Responsibilities: 

Responsibilities include, but are not limited to: 

• Provide technical assistance for the co-development of market shortcoming assessment frameworks and methodologies
• Lead technical assistance around cross-cutting market analyses including data collection, data cleaning and rigorous analytics
• Provide technical guidance in the application of market shaping approaches to solve complex and ambiguous market shortcomings in the Ethiopia public health system
• Capture insights that will ultimately support the co-development of a comprehensive market shaping strategy to guide the market shaping interventions in the public health system in Ethiopia
• Provide high-level technical assistance support for the co-design of the QMSD organizational blueprint and analysis of various organizational structure options
• Provide inputs into the design of materials and other content for catalytic market shaping capacity building activities (e.g. skill building workshops, on-the-job coaching, targeted in-person trainings, a market shaping resource tool kit,) intended to ensure that
• QMSD staff can design and implement market shaping interventions in a continuous manner
• Foster positive and productive working relationship with EPSA and QMSD staff and other key stakeholders

Qualifications: 

• MA in Supply Chain/Public health/Business/ Pharmaceutical or other related advanced degree
• Minimum 7 years of relevant work experience in optimizing markets, preferably related to global health and pharmaceutical business
• Proven experience in areas of market shaping support to government institutions in low and middle-income countries
• Entrepreneurial and collaborative leader with proven experience conceptualizing, planning, and executing initiatives and solutions to ambiguous challenges
• Demonstrated experience and comfort with strategic thinking around complex qualitative and quantitative analytical methodologies while providing guidance to others’ analytical skills
• Significant experience leading the development of high-quality deliverables, including presentations and written reports, and previous exposure to evaluation & learning methods
• Strong interpersonal skills and demonstrated success in cultivating and managing relationships across public and private sector actors internationally, and in countries
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including demonstrated ability to deliver compelling presentations with both technical and non-technical audiences
• Approachable leadership style with demonstrated experience working with team of diverse background
• High level of proficiency in Microsoft Office, particularly Excel, PowerPoint, and Word
• Willingness to travel domestically and internationally, per project need
• Experience working in Ethiopia is a plus