Development of the Joint Secretariat Support Office (JSSO) Digital Platform
AFDB1JP00000093
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Posted On
2025-09-22
Period
2025-10-20 to 2026-01-19
Job Type
Temporary Full Time
Location
Abidjan 01CIV
Category
Business Professional
Description
The African Development Bank Group (AfDB) hereby invites individual consultants to indicate their interest in conducting a digital design service by developing the Joint Secretariat Support Office (JSSO) Digital Platform using Drupal Content Management
The services to be covered under the terms of the assignment include, but are not limited to, the following (further details are outlined in the Annex: Terms of Reference): • identifying business requirements, • designing workflows, • developing the website of the JSSO, • ensuring back-end and • Front-end development to fit unique, project-specific functionality needs.
Application Close Date
2025-10-05
Engagement Type
Individual Consultant
Job Family
15.Information Management Technology
A. Background Objectives
1. Background
The Joint Secretariat Support Office (JSSO) is a joint initiative of the African Union Commission (AUC), the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), and the African Development Bank (AfDB), which was created in 2010 by an MoU. The MoU followed the recognition of the common primary objective of the three institutions, which is to contribute to the economic development and social progress of African countries, as well as the need to enhance cooperation and coordination in achieving this shared objective.
The objective for establishing the JSSO was to set strategic directions of cooperation and reinforce and enhance coordination and dialogue among the three institutions through (i) creating a more effective framework for collaboration, (ii) enhancing coherence, coordination, and cooperation in support of Africa’s development; (iii) increasing the number of joint activities and programs to be undertaken by the three institutions; (iv) fostering stronger institutional and program links between the relevant Departments and Divisions of the three institutions; (v) developing partnerships among the three institutions, on the one hand, and critical parties including regional Economic Communities (RECs), on the other; and (vi) knowledge sharing.
Since its establishment in 2010, JSSO has been a platform for enhancing strategic partnerships, coordination, collaboration, and leveraging synergies between the three institutions. This is evidenced by several High-Level Consultative Meetings of the heads of the three institutions, work at the Steering Committee Level, and the activities of the Thematic Working Groups (TWG) through coordination platforms set up and run by JSSO to facilitate coordination, and several ad hoc programmatic engagements.
2. Core Programmes
a) Facilitating High-Level Dialogue
Objective: Strengthen strategic engagement and collaboration between the AUC, UNECA, and AfDB by facilitating high-level dialogue on shared priorities, advocating for integrated initiatives, and enhancing the collective visibility of the three institutions within the African and Global development landscape.
b) AU's Agenda 2063, UN's Sustainable Development Goals, & AfDB's High 5s
Objective: Enhance joint efforts to harmonize the programs and activities of the AUC, UNECA, and AfDB with the AU's Agenda 2063, the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, and the AfDB's High 5s. This will be achieved through active participation in coordination, monitoring, and reporting mechanisms, ensuring that the contributions of all three institutions are effectively mainstreamed and contribute to a unified approach towards sustainable development in Africa.
c) Coordination Platforms through the Technical Working Group and other activities
Objective: Enhance collaboration and coordination between the AfDB, the AUC, and the UNECA through the operation of Thematic Working Groups (TWGs). These TWGs serve as a platform for aligning institutional efforts with Agenda 2063, mainstreaming the achievements of the High 5s and SDGs, and fostering sector-specific cooperation.
d) Africa´s G20 Engagement
Objective: The objective of this core program is to ensure that Africa's participation in the G20 translates into tangible benefits for the continent, contributing to the achievement of the AU's Agenda 2063, the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, and the AfDB´s High5s
e) Enhancing Knowledge Sharing and Learning
Objective: Develop and implement strategies to facilitate knowledge sharing and learning across the three institutions and with external partners. This could involve creating a knowledge repository, organizing workshops, training programs, and fostering communities of practice.
f) Programme Support
Objective: JSSO carries out the groundwork and foundational activities to support identifying, preparing, and implementing all Bank-financed AU projects and programs. JSSO will use the outcomes of the TWGs and Coordination
B. Scope of work
The Consultant will work under the supervision of the JSSO Senior Programme Officer, who will be supported by the IT team from the Bank’s Division of Application and Innovation (TCIS1).
A. Technical Requirements Consolidation
• Consolidate stakeholders’ needs into a comprehensive Business Requirement Documentation (BRS), including architecture, data frameworks, data fields, sitemap, definitions, and metadata standards.
B. Platform Design and Development
• Design the JSSO Digital Platform’s Architecture: to be sustainable, scalable, modular Drupal architecture (content types, taxonomies, workflows, permissions), with API integration.
• Core Features & Modules
• Content Management & Publishing: Role-based authoring, editorial workflows, versioning, media library, scheduling, and multilingual (EN/FR).
• Knowledge Hub / Resource Library: Filtered search, tagging, and collections for links, events, news articles, project briefs, country profiles, publications, blogs, bespoke research, documents, and newsletters on climate adaptation in Africa. This feature may facilitate the dissemination of newsletters.
• Project Database (DPD): The database allows users to locate existing projects, simplifying document review and planning. A knowledge hub/resource library connected to the Drupal backend enables users to perform filter searches, auto searches, and other functions to find relevant resources. The section will be associated with a global map to pinpoint where the projects are undertaken (at the country and regional levels).
• Project Tracker: A digital statistic module for website admins where admins can monitor project portfolio management (here understood as projects as a content type). Given that Drupal offers content types and taxonomies out of the box, the projects will be associated with metadata such as country, region, value, business area, etc., which will be used in the statistics module to monitor progress. Given that there is no clear indication of the amount for statistics, we assume that one dashboard has a pie chart (demonstrating the number of projects per region in percent) and a bar chart (demonstrating the number of projects per country in percent).
• Sorting mechanisms like the last 30 days and 60 days last year will be possible, whereas metadata associated with the content type “projects” can be used as a fetched search for the charts. The admins can export data in .csv format (full dataset and not determined by selections in the UI) to play with the data locally or by third-party software. The integration enables the downloading and exporting of various data for visual exploration, monitoring, and generating reports from the dashboard.
- Newsletter Subscription: The digital platform should allow users to complete an appropriate subscription process to the JSSO newsletter using email authentication. The email addresses of subscribed users should be added to JSSO’s Mailchimp Audience list. The user registration process should adhere to best practices, including the use of email verification, and should be able to scale as needed, i.e., there should be no limit on the number of users that can register.
- Site Analytics & Reports: The digital platform should provide authorized users with relevant reports, such as the number of documents uploaded and user registration, site usage and traffic, fundamental interests/topics discussed within the collaborative spaces, and other relevant statistical data. This statistics module for admins should allow administrators to obtain information on how often a given page is viewed, who viewed it, the previous page the user visited (referrer URL), and when it was viewed.
- Spam Controls: The digital platform should provide, if relevant, an automated challenge system that reduces the number of spam comments/posts that either need moderation or slip through filtering mechanisms such as Google reCAPTCHA or any other mechanisms.
• User Experience & The
C. Deliverables Expected
Phase 1: MVP Launch
• Analysis of the requirement
• Design and prototyping
• Implementation and deployment
Training and Handover
• Training of technical and non-technical stakeholders
Transition Support
D. Duration and Timetable for the Assignment
The duration of the consultancy is for a period of three (3) months.
Once a contract has been signed, within 15 working days, a mock-up of the proposed platform (using wireframing applications or other application software) should be presented to the supervision team. The total design, development, migration, testing, and deployment time should not exceed three (3) months.
E. Bank Contribution and Institutional Arrangement
Business requirements
F. Duty Station
The work will be carried out at the Bank's Headquarters in Abidjan.
G. Essential Specialized Skills/Knowledge/Competencies
1. Qualification
• Education:
o A Master’s degree or equivalent in Computer Science, Programming and Web Technologies qualification with a minimum of five (5) years of hands-on experience in design and implementation of Drupal CMS, web, IT solutions/systems, and mobile application development, including graphics, layout, scripting, programming, etc.
o A bachelor’s degree in Science or Engineering discipline with at least ten (10) years of hands-on experience in Drupal CMS, web, and mobile applications.
• Certifications: Certification in at least one cloud practitioner, e.g., Azure practitioner, AWS cloud practitioner, or OCI cloud practitioner, is required.
• Language Skills: Proficiency in English and/or French will be considered an advantage.
• Evidence of operational effectiveness, ability to deliver results in a timely manner, customer focus, problem solving, communication and teamwork.
2. Experience of the Consultant
• The Consultant must have proven delivery of the Drupal 10/11 CMS framework with a deep understanding of services, custom modules, hooks, plugins, and the Drupal application lifecycle.
• Back-end proficiency: Developed robust web applications using PHP/Drupal, with integrations to RESTful APIs and third-party services
• Mastery of modern front-end technologies: HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript frameworks (React, jQuery, Bootstrap), and REST/SOAP web services
• Good understanding of API management and authentication (OAuth2, OpenID Connect)
• Integrations experience (Mailchimp/newsletters, analytics, Rest APIs).
• Data engineering skills and strong experience with relational DBMS (MySQL/MariaDB, PostgreSQL) and NoSQL platforms (MongoDB)
• Strong security practice: OWASP-aligned secure coding, vulnerability assessment, and remediation; experience passing independent security reviews.
• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines WCAG 2.1, SEO, performance optimization across Drupal platforms (caching, lazy builders, BigPipe, etc.), and analytics/reporting.
• Good understanding of code versioning and repositories (Azure Repos, GitLab, GitHub)
• Robust DevOps (version control, CI/CD readiness, environment promotion, backup/rollback).
• Post-launch support and maintenance capability; clear SLAs and incident response.
3. Understanding of the ToR and Methodology
The consultant shall explain its understanding of the Terms of Reference in detail and articulate the methodologies that will be followed to deliver the project. The consultant shall elaborate on how it will accomplish the work listed under the scope of the work and achieve the desired objectives of the project, as outlined in the terms of reference.
The consultant shall also provide a project implementation plan highlighting milestones of the project, critical stages, and time frame. The project plan shall be presented in a Gantt chart.
H. Supervisor
The consultant will work under the supervision of the Project Manager.
Appointed by the TCIS department. A weekly report highlighting the progress made, key challenges, and other relevant updates should be submitted to the Division Manager, TCIS.1.
