Description
Do you want to build a career that is truly worthwhile? 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. For more information, visit www.worldbank.org.
Agriculture is an essential pathway to meeting the World Bank Group’s (WBG) twin goals—eliminating extreme poverty by 2030 and promoting shared prosperity. Food production must increase by at least 35 percent to meet the needs of the rising global population. This task made even more challenging considering that the largest impact of climate change will be on agriculture. Yet, agriculture is a major contributor to climate change. Improving resilience while reducing agriculture’s environmental footprint thus have to integral parts of any strategy to sustainably improve food production and boost shared prosperity. Meeting today’s challenges on the food and agriculture agenda will require major strides in agricultural innovation and climate smart agriculture, efficiency in food production and distribution systems, promoting environmentally and socially sustainable production practices to reduce the impact on natural habitats while proactively restoring degraded landscape, strengthening agricultural policy and institutions, promoting more efficient and green agribusiness value chains, and joint private- and public- sector action.
The Agriculture and Food Global Practice (AGF GP) of the WBG, works with and across multiple sectors, in recognition of the fact that agriculture’s outcomes often depend on actions that lie outside the AGF GP and agriculture’s outcomes often directly impact the outcomes other GP’s seek to achieve, such as on environment, jobs and health. Achieving sustainable results also requires active engagement and cooperation with other development agencies and stakeholders. Accordingly, a capacity to work across AGF GP, other GPs and institutional boundaries, forge coalitions and influence multi-sectoral and coordinated development solutions is essential for achieving the major objectives of improving agriculture outcomes.
The AGF GP’s Global Engagement Unit (SAGGL) has a broad strategic mandate to develop, manage, and promote the AGF GP’s global and corporate responsibilities. To serve this mandate, the unit is responsible for designing and managing global programs, coordinating across regions to ensure the global nature of solutions the Bank brings to agriculture priorities and food in specific countries, facilitate knowledge and technical support to operational teams, provide corporate and high-quality client services across the full range of IBRD and IDA countries. It engages in high priority and strategic analytical work and strategic policy dialogue and engagements at the global and regional levels, often on a just-in-time basis. SAGGL is organized into seven teams including: 1) Climate Smart Agriculture, 2) Maximizing Financing for Development, 3) Data and Digital Agriculture, 4) Food safety, Animal health, FL&W, Nutrition, 5) Public Policy and Expenditures, 6) Food and Nutrition Security, and 7) Partnerships and Quality (P&Q) Team.
The Senior Economist position is with the PPE team. A major focus of the PPE pillar’s current work is on supporting countries to assess and, as needed, repurpose policies and public support to create appropriate incentives for transforming of the food system. To support national policy makers to evaluate the impacts and tradeoffs of policy options to best achieve national development objectives is the focus of the World Bank’s Technical Assistance (TA) program on “Repurposing Agricultural Policies and Support for Sustainable Food Systems.”
The Senior Economist is expected to play a leadership role in engaging and advising country teams, client governments, external partners, and stakeholders on the repurposing agenda as well as broader policy dialogues and analytical work. The PPE team provides guidance, technical advice and technical inputs to various TA activities; review and ensure quality of TA outputs from country deep dives, including inception, progress and draft reports on country deep dives; join selected country deep dive teams as a team member to provide the technical inputs, train and guide the consultants, and contribute to be country deep dive reports as needed; and support the PPE team in global advocacy and policy dialogue engagements.
Duties & Accountabilities:
The position is expected to have the same five results areas as all staff in the unit:
• Corporate commitments from IDA PC monitoring to producing corporate briefs etc.• Global knowledge including global ASAs such as flagship reports and other ASA/PASA .• Providing cross support to regions on ASA, LEN, SPN, ICR.• Knowledge Management including AGF forum, leadership on Communities of Practice, BBLs, Open Learning Courses etc.• Peer Review regional products coming to the Global Unit as part of the quality review process
Selection Criteria
• Minimum of a Master's degree in Economics, Agricultural Economics, International Relations, Food Security and Nutrition, Agricultural Development or a closely related field.• At least ten years of recent experience relevant to international agricultural development, preferably in the field related to agriculture policy analysis, (a completed PhD is equivalent to 3 years of relevant professional experience).• Demonstrated track record in leading agriculture and multi-sectoral analytical products.• Excellent knowledge of various modern methods of policy monitoring and evaluation and extensiveexperience in applying such methods to various datasets. Familiarity with the OECD’s and MAFAP’s agricultural support estimate and related indicators of agricultural support, and previous experience with the corresponding dataset is a plus.• Strong technical skills in the range of issues of relevance to agriculture, including in depth knowledge of agricultural and trade policy analytics, environmental impacts of agricultural policies, evaluation of agri-environmental policies and programs, Climate Smart Agriculture, environmental sustainability, and poverty analysis; knowledge of the European Common Agriculture Policy is an advantage.• Strong experience in policy dialogue and excellent ability to present complex issues to World Bankmanagement and senior Government representatives in country, as well as to nonspecialist audiences.• Familiarity with international organizations such as FAO, OECD, CGIAR, etc.• Demonstrated ability to work independently and a proven track record of contributing to knowledgegeneration and dissemination in the areas of relevance to agriculture.• Proven sense of initiative, result orientation, teamwork and leadership qualities, and ability to workeffectively across sector.• Excellent written and oral communication skills in English. Languages including French, Spanish, and/or Portuguese will also be an advantage.• Strong client engagement skills, and excellent interpersonal, problem-solving, and team skills with ability to work across various disciplines and multi-disciplinary teams; while being diplomatic and sensitive to cultural, political and gender issues.
Technical Competencies:
• Knowledge and Experience in Development Arena - Translates technical and cross-country knowledge into practical applications and contributions to country and sector strategies; interacts with clients at the policy level.• Policy Dialogue Skills - Anticipates needs and requests in the field and conducts independent policy discussions with high level representatives of the government and non-government partners.• Integrative Skills - Understands relevant cross-sectoral areas how they are interrelated; ability to conceptualize scaling up micro and project level outcomes to macro and global transformative outcomes.• Agriculture Policy, Strategy and Institutions - Solid understanding of agriculture policies, strategies, institutions, and regulations.• Project Design for Impact and Sustainability - Contributes to the design of projects and programs based on an understanding of the country and sector context.• Multi-sector Dialogue - Able to conduct a dialogue with a range of clients including on complex issues related to climate change and its impacts, including agriculture, environment, finance, and private sector and markets, based on a solid understanding of interactions with agriculture.• Client Orientation - Maintains client relationships in the face of conflicting demands or directions and provides evidence-based advice and solutions based on sound diagnosis and knowledge.• Drive for Results - Identifies the needed resources to accomplish results involving multiple stakeholders and finds solutions to obstacles affecting key deliverables.• Teamwork (Collaboration) and Inclusion - Shows leadership in ensuring the team stays organized and focused, and actively seeks and considers diverse ideas and approaches.• Knowledge, Learning, and Communication - Leads in the sharing of best practice, trends, knowledge and lessons learned across units and with clients and partners, articulating ideas verbally and in writing in a clear and compelling way across audiences of varied levels.• Business Judgment and Analytical Decision Making - Gathers inputs, assesses risk, considers impact and articulates benefits of decisions for internal and external stakeholders over the long term.
Note: If the selected candidate is a current World Bank Group Staff Member with a Regular or Open-Ended appointment, they will retain their Regular or Open-Ended appointment. If the selected candidate is a current World Bank Group Staff Member with a Term appointment that expires later than the end date of this appointment, they will retain the duration of their current Term appointment.
World Bank Group Core Competencies
The World Bank Group offers comprehensive benefits, including a retirement plan; medical, life and disability insurance; and paid leave, including parental leave, as well as reasonable accommodations for individuals with disabilities.
We are proud to be an equal opportunity and inclusive employer with a dedicated and committed workforce, and do not discriminate based on gender, gender identity, religion, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or disability.
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This vacancy is archived.