Innovation Dashboard Support

UNDP Malawi, in collaboration with the Government of Malawi, established the University Innovation
Pod (UniPod) at the Malawi University of Business and Applied Sciences (MUBAS) in 2024. The
UniPod is a state-of-the-art facility that promotes innovation, product development, prototyping and
small-scale manufacturing. It bridges academia, local innovators and industry by transforming ideas
into practical solutions that address Malawi’s development challenges. At the regional level, the
UniPod is connected to UNDP’s timbuktoo initiative and contributes to a growing network of
university-based innovation and entrepreneurship hubs across Africa.

UNDP seeks to engage a UN Volunteer to build and embed an innovation-tracker dashboard to
improve UniPod’s management of day-to-day operations and give UNDP, MUBAS, and other
stakeholders a clear, evidence-based view of UniPod’s impact and remaining gaps.
The UN Volunteer will receive the benefit of portfolio development, exposure to UNDP initiatives, and
a reference letter upon successful completion of the assignment.

Duties and Responsibilities

• Support finalization of the KPI framework across the dashboard’s four modules (equipment
and space use, skills and training, IP, outcomes and consumer trust).
• Build and refine simple data intake forms (e.g., in Kobo Toolbox or Google Forms) aligned to
each module.
• Support development of the MVP dashboard (e.g., Google Sheets + Looker Studio, or Power
BI), populating it with available pilot data.
• Support training of designated UniPod staff data owner and help produce a short
maintenance guide.
• Document processes clearly enough that a non-technical staff member can maintain the
dashboard independently.
• Integrate the Dashboard in UniPod website
• Provide monthly progress updates to assigned supervisor.

Expected Outputs

• A working, documented MVP dashboard populated with pilot data.
• Data intake forms in active use across all four modules.
• A short-written maintenance/handover guide.
• A brief monthly progress note to the UniPod/UNDP focal point.