1. Organizational setting
The Programme Management Department (PMD) is responsible for the overall lending programme of the Fund, and is composed of five (5) regional divisions, a Policy and Technical Advisory Division and an Environment and Climate Division. The West and Central Africa Division (WCA) is currently recruiting a Regional Economist, based in Rome, Italy. Under the direct supervision of the Director of WCA, the Regional team will be composed as follows:
- Regional Economist
- K.M. & Communication Officer
- NRM Officer
- Gender Coordinator
- Cassava Coordinator
- Regional Programme Assistant
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2. Job purpose
Within WCA, the Regional Economist works with staff to deliver IFAD's services to the rural populations of the region--with increasing effectiveness, sustainability and efficiency-- by:
a) Providing timely and authoritative analytical and advisory capacity to staff in appropriate forms to enhance the quality, relevance and effectiveness of WCA's work and instruments (Results-Based Country Strategic Opportunities Programmes [RB COSOPs], projects, grants, policy dialogue, knowledge management, South Cooperation, portfolio review and M&E).
b) Developing and implementing strategies, systems and approaches to better integrate the different types of operations, allowing IFAD to enhance its value-addition capacity, its scale of operations, and its impact on poverty reduction in the region.
3. Duties and responsibilities
Under the direct supervision of the Director of WCA, the incumbent will:
- Lead implementation of WCA quality support process, working with WCA Director, CPMs and Portfolio Advisor, as well as other relevant IFAD units, to ensure that key WCA divisional outputs (including for new lending, country strategic opportunities papers (COSOPs), country briefs, completion reports, and country and regional grants) meet and exceed IFAD quality standards with particular focus and direct responsibility for quality of lessons learned, economic and financial analysis, institutional arrangements and integration of scaling-up mechanisms.
- Liaise with Regional Economists in the other regional divisions and work closely with divisional focal points (gender and youth, environment, rural finance, farmer organizations, etc), to ensure provision of timely advice and information on key issues of country policy dialogue to country program teams (with particular emphasis on decentralized staff), through CPMTs, participation in missions and in response to direct requests, including helping to identify relevant expertise within and outside IFAD.
- Develop and support an enhanced approach to project monitoring and evaluation, including capacity to provide outreach and results reporting at corporate level, improved implementation of IFAD's results and impact monitoring systems (RIMS) and active participation in IFAD's corporate efforts to improve monitoring, evaluation and impact assessment.
- Provide support to Knowledge Management Officer in developing partnerships for populating knowledge sharing platforms with IFAD projects and other stakeholders with specific focus on learning, policy dialogue, innovation and scaling-up of successful approaches.
- Develop and maintain an overview of WCA regional trends and identification and analysis of cross-cutting issues and results to generate inputs for strategic or programmatic documents and agendas at the divisional and corporate levels such as medium term plans, annual reports, IFAD communications materials and briefs and presentations by IFAD senior management.
- Derived from above analyses, take the lead in policy dialogue at the regional level with regional bodies and entities, furthering the improvement of livelihoods of the smallholder farmer and rural poor.
- Support WCA Director in close collaboration with WCA Portfolio Advisor in strategic planning and programme oversight activities, country assessment and resource allocation analysis.
- Prepare key inputs and work closely with WCA Portfolio Advisor in overall preparation of annual portfolio performance review report.
- Support strategic partnership development at regional level and facilitate linkages to country programs.
- Carry out other related tasks as assigned by the Director.
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4. Professional requirements
Education and experience
- Minimum requirement is an advanced university degree (Master's level or equivalent; but preferably at the PhD level) in agro-economics, economics or a related field.
- At least 10 years of relevant post qualification professional experience with International Financial Institutions, aid agencies, rural development/financial institutions in agricultural project formulation, economic and financial analysis, monitoring and evaluation, and rural policy analysis.
- Excellent knowledge through minimum of four years' direct work experience in operations, rural sector and policy environments.
- Experience of working in West and Central African countries is a distinct advantage.
- Extensive experience working with multi-disciplinary teams on delivery of written reports.
Technical/functional competencies
- Analytical skills: you will have very strong analytical and numerical capacities and experience in quantitative and qualitative analytical methods.
- Leader and team worker/builder: you will possess excellent management skills, and will be able to deploy these in a multicultural setting. You will have the capacity leading results based teams with a capacity to deliver high quality products within tight deadlines to achieve stretching objectives; Ability to lead and manage organizational change.
- Planner and organiser/decision-maker: you will have excellent judgement and the ability to think strategically, assessing and responding to new challenges in rural development. You will be able to set clear priorities within a boundless and often challenging agenda with tight deadlines.
Languages and other skills
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English and French are essential, including the ability to set out a coherent argument in presentations and group interactions.
- Excellent communicator, who can deliver analytical and policy messages clearly and convincingly; ability to communicate with rural development practitioners from the international to the grassroots level.
- Excellent working knowledge of Microsoft packages and electronic communication.
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