Senior Agriculture Economist

Job Description

Job Family
Agriculture

Sector
Agriculture

Term Duration
4 years 0 months

Recruitment Type
International Recruitment

Required Language(s)
English

Preferred Language(s)
French

Description
Working at the World Bank Group provides a unique opportunity for you to help our clients solve their greatest development challenges. The World Bank Group is one of the largest sources of funding and knowledge for developing countries; a unique global partnership of five institutions dedicated to ending extreme poverty, increasing shared prosperity, and promoting sustainable development. With 189 member countries and more than 120 offices worldwide, we work with public and private sector partners, investing in groundbreaking projects and using data, research, and technology to develop solutions to the most urgent global challenges. Visit www.worldbank.org .

The vision of the World Bank Group is to eradicate extreme poverty and promote shared prosperity. Delivery of this vision relies on a three-pronged strategy that includes maximizing development impact by engaging country clients in identifying and tackling the most difficult development challenges; promoting scaled-up partnerships that are strategically aligned with the goals; and crowding in public and private resources, expertise and ideas. The architecture underpinning the strategy is the establishment of 14 Global Practices or GPs (organized into four Practice Groups) and five cross-cutting Solution Areas that, in concert with WBG Regions, design and deliver solutions that address clients’ most pressing developmental challenges, and ultimately, enable the WBG to meet its twin goals of eliminating extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity.

Agriculture and food systems are a crucial pathway to meet the World Bank Group’s twin goals; it is estimated that global food production must increase by at least 35 percent to meet the needs of the rising global population!

The Agriculture and Food Global Practice (AGF GP) of the World Bank Group, supports a Global Vision for Agriculture and Food with agriculture able to feed every person, every day, in every country with a safe, nutritious and affordable diet, and where jobs and income gains in the food system are sufficient to meet poverty reduction targets.

The Agriculture and Food team in the Africa West (AFW) Region (SAWA4) is organized under the umbrella of AFW Sustainable Development that also incorporates water, environment, social, urban, disaster resilience and land teams. The unit’s work program covers seven Country Management Units that comprise the AFW Region and is led by a Practice Manager. The team consists of 31 staff. The focus of the team’s work going forward is on the future of agri-food systems, green and resilient transitions, including inclusiveness, diversification of economies, jobs, agricultural value-chains development and competitiveness, one health, leveraging the private sector, climate-smart agriculture, digital agriculture, financial innovation, post-COVID recovery, fragility and conflict, and regional and cross-GP collaboration.

The selected candidate will report to our SAWA4 Practice Manager, based in Washington DC.

Job duties and responsibilities:
The primary responsibility of the Senior Agriculture Economist will be to provide technical and strategic leadership in the development and implementation of the AGF GP’s work program in a sub-set of the AFW Region’s CMUs (G5 Sahel countries, Cameroon). The selected candidate will lead and contribute to the delivery of the program, quality assurance and interaction with internal and external clients, as well as other development partners, and will report to the SAWA4 Practice Manager, while working closely with the AGF team, the AFW SD Program Leaders, and Country Management Unit in the region.
The Senior Agriculture Economist will:

• Lead the preparation and supervision of operations as Task Team Leader of projects led by SAWA4 in the region and those projects supporting agriculture and food system related activities led by other GPs. Assure timely delivery of these operations with high levels of quality.
• Lead or contribute to analytical products, and initiate and maintain a high level engagement and dialogue with key government counterparts on the strategic program and policy issues in areas including sustainable and climate resilient agriculture, linking smallholders to markets and agriculture value chain development to accelerate green competitive agriculture development.
• Lead or contribute to policy dialogue on agricultural and rural development issues and interactions with the client, development and other partners, and alert management (both country and sector) to issues requiring attention.
• Work with the relevant Program Leaders and staff of the Agriculture GP and other GPs to find opportunities for addressing agricultural and rural development issues as part of the Systematic Country Diagnostics, Country Partnership Frameworks, country policy dialogue, sector investment operations, development policy operations, and other multi-sectoral projects.
• Identify innovative opportunities or ways to address existing needs in the agricultural sector, including bringing in experience from other parts of the world, and to better align the GP’s portfolio with the AFW region’s and CMUs’ core priorities.
• Serve as an active member of the AFW SD team contributing to the Region’s strategic scale up of support for an agricultural and sustainable transformation.
• Represent the World Bank in fora involving the community of development partners and private sector. Provide support, either explicit or implicit, to the work of the development partners in the sector. As necessary, represent the World Bank and the Agriculture GP’s management at events with sectoral focus.
• Mentor and coach other Agriculture GP staff in the country office.

Selection Criteria

• A minimum of a Masters in Agricultural Economics, Agribusiness, Agriculture or related fields. A minimum of 8 years of relevant working experience in areas related to agriculture, agriculture economics, agribusiness, and other fields related to food systems;
• At least eight years of experience on agricultural development issues;
• Solid experience in leading complex operations, with demonstrated high quality results;
• Demonstrated experience in leading ASAs and dialogue with clients;
• Excellent interpersonal, problem-solving and team skills with ability to find balanced, pragmatic and implementable solution;
• Ability to work across various subject areas and multi-disciplinary teams; while being diplomatic and sensitive to cultural, political and gender issues;
• Proven written and oral communication skills in English, including the ability to present complex issues to specialists as well as to non-specialist audiences. French communication skills are a plus.

DEADLINE: 18 JULY 2022

About the Organization

The World Bank, a member of the World Bank Group, is a vital source of financial and technical assistance to developing countries around the world. Our mission is to fight poverty with passion and professionalism for lasting results and to help people help themselves and their environment by providing resources, sharing knowledge, building capacity and forging partnerships in the public and private sectors.

We are not a bank in the common sense; we are made up of two unique development institutions owned by 188 member countries: the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA).

Each institution plays a different but collaborative role in advancing the vision of inclusive and sustainable globalization. The IBRD aims to reduce poverty in middle-income and creditworthy poorer countries, while IDA focuses on the world's poorest countries.

Their work is complemented by that of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) and the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).

Together, we provide low-interest loans, interest-free credits and grants to developing countries for a wide array of purposes that include investments in education, health, public administration, infrastructure, financial and private sector development, agriculture and environmental and natural resource management.