Financial Engineering, Structuring and Modelling Expert – Nigeria’s NDC 3.0 Investment Pipeline, Paris, France

## Financial Engineering, Structuring and Modelling Expert – Nigeria’s NDC 3.0 Investment Pipeline, Paris, France - Organization:UNEP - United Nations Environment Programme The expert delivers a financing landscape and pathway analysis for the agriculture and transport components of NDC 3.0 (aligned with the NZIP 2060 and the forthcoming sectoral NDC Investment Plan), investability screening of the long-list of candidate projects in the two sectors (as per Activity 1.3), full bespoke financial models and structuring/de-risking options for the government-validated short-list of priority projects, investor-ready teasers/investment memoranda and a financier mapping, documented investor engagement, and the transfer of models and methodologies to the NCCC and relevant MDAs. Home-based, with missions to Abuja, Nigeria 160 working days over 12 months, from 25 September 2026 to 25 September 2027. Duties and Responsibilities The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is the United Nations system's designated entity for addressing environmental issues at the global and regional level. Its mandate is to coordinate the development of environmental policy consensus by keeping the global environment under review and bringing emerging issues to the attention of governments and the international community for action. The NDC Act & Invest is a global project led by UNEP and currently funded by the International Climate Initiative (IKI) and the NDC Partnership’s Partnership Action Fund (PAF) multi-donor trust fund. It is designed to support countries raise their climate ambition and translate their new Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs 3.0) submitted in 2025 and 2026 into actionable, investable plans. Structured around three interconnected workstreams: fostering G20+ ambition and action, piloting policy and planning alignment, and providing deep-dive support to enhance NDC investability, the project aims to bridge the gap between climate commitments and tangible implementation. By aligning national strategies, strengthening enabling environments, and working collaboratively with key partners, including the NDC Partnership, GIZ, UNDP’s Climate Promise, UNFCCC, multilateral development banks (MDBs), development finance institutions (DFIs), and private sector actors, the NDC Act & Invest seeks to make the next generation of NDCs both more ambitious and more achievable, accelerating progress toward the 1.5°C goal and enhancing global resilience. The NDC Act & Invest team, based within the Mitigation Branch in Paris, is responsible for the global management and overall coordination of the project across partner countries, in line with UNEP’s delivery model. The team also acts as the main liaison between UNEP and the NDC Partnership, coordinating UNEP’s responses to country support requests shared through the Partnership, identifying and applying for additional funding where appropriate, and consolidating implementation and progress reporting. In addition, the team maintains close coordination with related projects under the IKI Programme to ensure coherence and synergies across initiatives. Nigeria submitted its Third Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC 3.0) to the UNFCCC in September 2025, committing to economy-wide absolute emissions reductions of 29% by 2030 and 32.2% by 2035 relative to the recalculated 2018 baseline of 573.5 Mt CO2e, on a pathway to net-zero emissions by 2060. Nigeria estimates that US$337 billion will be required over 2026–2035 to implement the NDC 3.0 (US$195 billion for mitigation and US$141.5 billion for adaptation), with 80 per cent conditional on international support. The NDC 3.0 foresees explicitly the preparation of an Implementation Strategy and Action Plan (ISAP) and an NDC Investment Plan, while the Net Zero Investment Plan (NZIP, endorsed in May 2026), prepared under the auspices of the National Council on Climate Change (NCCC), estimates total investment needs of approximately US$2.04 trillion to 2060, around US$38 billion per year to 2030, against tracked climate finance flows of only about US$2.5 billion per year in 2021/2022. Following the Government of Nigeria’s request channeled through the NDC Partnership, UNEP, through Workstream 3 of NDC Act & Invest project, has agreed with the NCCC to provide support structured around two complementary components: (i) technical assistance to the development of a comprehensive, inclusive and actionable Implementation Strategy and Action Plan (ISAP) for NDC 3.0, translating NDC targets into costed, monitorable and implementation-ready interventions; and (ii) targeted deep-dive support to advance priority measures towards investability and bankability, through pre-feasibility work, business model design, financial structuring and investor engagement, in the two priority sectors confirmed with the NCCC: agriculture and transport. The implementation timeline for this support was validated by the NCCC in June 2026. Institutional ownership, coordination and decision-making rest with the NCCC and the relevant federal and state Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), UNEP and its experts provide technical inputs and analysis in support of this Government-led process. The support is delivered by a team of three experts: an agriculture sector expert, a transport sector expert, and a financial engineering, structuring and modelling expert, working under UNEP’s coordination and in close collaboration with each other. The financial engineering, structuring and modelling expert acts as the technical lead expert of the team, coordinating and consolidating the technical inputs of the two sectoral experts into a coherent, cross-sectoral investment pipeline and financing package. Closing Nigeria’s climate investment gap is the central challenge of NDC 3.0 implementation. Nigeria has pioneered sovereign green bonds in Africa (with a third series of NGN 50 billion launched in June 2025), developed a Carbon Market Activation Policy projecting a market worth US$0.74–2.5 billion by 2030, and is working to activate the National Climate Change Fund, alongside instruments such as NIRSAL risk-sharing facilities, local-currency guarantee providers, and development finance from the World Bank, AfDB, IFC, EIB, KfW, AFD and bilateral partners. The endorsed NZIP 2060 identified persistent barriers: foreign exchange risk, high cost of capital, a thin pipeline of bankable projects, limited project preparation capacity and a limited PPP track record, and calls for de-risking instruments, blended finance structures and stronger project preparation as priority responses, with target public-private funding splits of roughly 50/50 for transport and around 60% public for AFOLU. Under the agreed support, the deep-dive investability work in the agriculture and transport sectors responds directly to this gap by converting prioritized NDC 3.0 measures into financially structured, investor-ready propositions. The approach is consistent with international good practice on NDC financing and investment strategies, which rests on four components: assessing financing needs and gaps, mapping the financial landscape, reviewing the enabling environment, and developing pipelines of bankable projects (OECD/UNDP, Investing in Climate for Growth and Development, 2025). The expert will contribute directly to the achievement of the objectives of the NDC Act & Invest support to Nigeria agreed with the NCCC, as described in section 1 above. The expected results outlined below correspond to the main milestones of the work plan and are accompanied by performance indicators to assess their achievement. Result 1: Financing landscape and pathway analysis for the agriculture and transport components of NDC 3.0. o Activity 1.1: Review the NDC 3.0 by 2035, the Net Zero Investment Plan 2060, the Landscape of Climate Finance in Nigeria (2024), the Carbon Market Activation Policy and related frameworks, and prepare a sector-level financing