Human Development Specialist

Job #: req22192

Organization: World Bank

Sector: Education

Grade: GF

Term Duration: 3 years 0 months

Recruitment Type: Local Recruitment

Location: Mbabane,Eswatini

Required Language(s): English

Preferred Language(s): Closing Date: 4/28/2023 (MM/DD/YYYY) at 11:59pm UTC

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

THE EDUCATION GLOBAL PRACTICE (GP)

Education is central to achieving the WBG’s twin goals: it is a reliable route out of poverty through large and consistent returns to income for individuals and as a driver for economic growth. It is also a prime vehicle for promoting shared prosperity. The main challenge in the education sector is to achieve “learning for all and learning for life”- that is, to ensure that all children and young people acquire the knowledge and skills they need for their lives and livelihoods. In the past two decades, the developing world has made great advances in education, most notably in enrolling and keeping children in school and in approaching gender equality. Despite these successes in expanding access to education, critical challenges remain: removing persistent educational barriers faced by the poorest people and those living in fragile and conflict-affected states, and improving the quality of education so that schooling leads to real learning. In recent years, the WBG, and the broader education development community, have shifted their focus to include learning outcomes. Traditional input-driven programs have shown that they do not always lead to improved learning outcomes, so that the WBG’s education strategy highlights the need for a more comprehensive ‘systems approach’ to education reform, investments, and service delivery. This approach is about increasing accountability and targeting results, as a complement to providing inputs. It also requires strengthening the knowledge base on education, to highlight where systems are achieving results, where they are falling short, and what the most effective solutions are. These efforts are increasingly guided by the need to invest early; invest smartly; and invest for all. Through high-quality analytical work, collection of evidence, and practical know-how in these three areas, the WBG is helping its partner countries accelerate their progress in the education sector.

EDUCATION AND THE AFRICA REGION

The WBG serves 48 client countries in the Africa Region (AFR). Clients range from low-income countries, among them several fragile and conflict-affected states, to a small but growing number of middle-income countries (MICs) but with weak human development indicators. Average annual per capita income varies widely, and inequalities persist in most AFR countries, with most of the Region’s population living in poverty. The Bank’s strategy in AFR is focused on two pillars – competitiveness and employment, and vulnerability and resilience –and prioritizes cross-cutting approaches founded in governance and public sector capacity. In AFR, many countries have achieved considerable progress in access to basic education. But challenges persist, namely: improving the quality and relevance of education at all levels; expanding access to early childhood development (ECD) and post-basic education; developing emphasis on science, technology and innovation; and improving skills development. Efforts are needed in each of these areas to produce a quality workforce to sustain, innovate, and expand on the current economic growth in the region.

The Education GP team in the region works with client countries – at the regional, sub-regional, national, and sub-national levels – to address their unique and shared challenges. We do this by addressing low quality at all levels of education, increasing the efficiency and accountability of education services, modernizing the higher end of the formal education continuum, integrating science and technology more effectively, and aligning skills formation with the needs of a fast growing Region, including MICs. The GP aims to not only deliver high quality products but also to build capacity in client countries through collaborative interactions with country counterparts and other development partners. It seeks to bring the best possible knowledge to bear on the practical challenges facing client countries and at the same time places a high priority on knowledge generation, including through rigorous impact evaluations of education interventions.

The Education GP is comprised of four Practice Management Units in AFR. The HAEE2 unit covers 13 countries in Eastern and Southern Africa, across four Country Management Units (CMUs). In that context, the unit is responsible for policy dialogue, analytical work, and operational investments in the education sector. The unit’s growing portfolio currently includes operations, sourced from IDA, IBRD, and Trust Funds, and technical assistance (TA) products in both low-income countries and middle-income countries. The portfolio spans the full spectrum of the education sector from ECD to higher education as well as job-relevant skills development. The portfolio is increasingly using new lending instruments and approaches to support systemic reforms, including program-for-results (PforRs) and multi-phased programmatic approach (MPAs). The unit produces innovative and programmatic analytical and advisory services (ASA).

Many of our operations and analytical products are based on approaches that: (i) assist countries in developing and implementing strategies for ensuring quality teaching and learning at all levels of education (ECD, basic education, secondary education and tertiary education), and in addressing the issues that face these countries’ disadvantaged and vulnerable groups; (ii) ensure that education systems respond to the needs of labor markets; (iii) continue to stress the focus on results; (iv) build capacity for monitoring and evaluation of reforms, and foster knowledge sharing; (v) promote innovative strategies, cross-sectoral linkages, and partnerships with the private sector and other development partners whenever relevant; (vi) develop and scale up successful strategies for regional collaboration to leverage economies of scale; and (vii) aim to strengthen governance, accountability, and transparency in the education sector.

Eswatini has made encouraging progress in improving educational outcomes, including the achievement of universal basic education. However, there are several key challenges in the education system that require continued attention. Access to early childhood education programs is very limited (with only 1 in 3 children having access to ECD) and this is a threat to foundational learning in the country. While reliable learning assessment data is not available, evidence from household survey data shows that many children are not acquiring foundational literacy and numeracy skills. Across grades there is high level of dropout, resulting in low secondary completion rates. Access to post-secondary education, including tertiary education and TVET is quite low. This means a majority of youth do not have the opportunity to acquire the relevant skills they need to be productive. Health, Nutrition, and Population (HNP) GP

The central contribution of the HNP GP to the WBG’s twin goals is to enable the achievement of universal health coverage (UHC), in which all people are effectively covered by essential health services, and nobody suffers undue financial hardship as a result of illnesses. In the quest for UHC, the HNP GP is building on progress made in the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals, an array of advisory services and analytics (ASA), strategic partnerships with partner institutions and other financing agencies, and an active lending portfolio. The HNP GP works with and across multiple sectors, in recognition of the fact that HNP outcomes often depend on actions that lie outside the HNP sector. Accordingly, a capacity to work across GP boundaries, forge coalitions and influence multi-practice solutions is essential for achieving the major objectives of improving HNP outcomes. The HNP GP includes staff members in Washington, DC and many country offices.

Regional Context

The Africa HNP GP comprise four units covering Western, Central, Eastern, and Southern Africa. The Africa HNP Practice Managers have joint responsibilities for region wide HNP strategies, and staff work across unit boundaries. HAEH2, which covers part of Eastern and Southern Africa, is responsible for policy analysis and dialogue, ASA, strategic engagement, relationship management and lending operations in that part of the region.

Country Context Eswatini is classified as a LMIC, yet health indicators continue to be poor. Eswatini ranks poorly on key maternal and child mortality indicators, used as a tracer for overall health system performance. Non-communicable diseases are on the rise, both as part of the burden of disease and as share of health expenditures. Health sector performance is suboptimal, to a large extent, because of the lack of linkages between financing and service delivery, challenges in institutions and governance and management at all levels.

As per the National Development Strategy, Vision 2022, the Kingdom aspires to be in the top 10 percent of the medium human development group of countries, founded on sustainable economic development, social justice and political stability. One pillar of this strategy is unlocking human capacity. To support Eswatini’s progress toward Vision 2022, the Kingdom has become an early adopter of the Human Capital Project (HCP) to bolster human capital formation. The work program in Eswatini includes a suite of operations as well as ASA, aiming to improve coverage and quality of reproductive, maternal, neonatal, child, and adolescent health and nutrition (RMNCAH-N) and non-communicable diseases (NCD) and strengthen health systems, including public financial management and fiduciary functions, human resources for health, health financing, and governance. The Bank’s current portfolio in the health sector has two active operations: the Eswatini COVID-19 Emergency Response Project (ERP) and Health System Strengthening for Human Capital Development Project (HSS4HCDP). The COVID-19 ERP aims to prevent, detect and respond to the threat posed by COVID-19 and strengthen national systems for public health preparedness, while the HSS4HCDP aims to improve the coverage and quality of key RMNCAH-N and NCD services by focusing on medium-term structural changes and the modernization of the health sector.

In addition, the Bank is undertaking analytical work to provide options and recommendations to inform policy and strategies on health financing, health system governance and management, and service delivery innovation. This ASA will provide critical information that should allow the GOE to prepare policies/strategies toward UHC in the COVID-19 era and implement such policies/strategies with support from the HSS4HCDP

Given the numerous challenges in the education and health sectors in Eswatini, the Bank is seeking an HD Specialist/Economist, based in Mbabane, to lead or contribute to the policy dialogue, provide implementation support to the human capital development portfolio in education and health GPs, and lead a program of high-quality analytical work. The selected candidate will report to the Practice Managers for HAEE2 and HAEH2 and will be expected to work in close collaboration with the CMU. The selected candidate is expected to work with colleagues across Human Development sectors, based in the country office, in the region, and in Washington DC. He/she will also interact heavily with Eswatini Education and Health task teams and the Human Development Program Leader based in South Africa.

DUTIES AND ACCOUNTABILITIES

The HD specialist/economist will lead and/or support policy dialogue with the client on key issues across the HD areas The candidate will also provide daily implementation support to the government on the lending operations, as well as co-lead the preparation of new lending programs. He/she will also be expected to lead or/co-lead analytical work to inform policy discussions.

The main responsibilities include:

•  Policy Dialogue and Building Client Capacity: Contribute to policy dialogue with the Kingdom of Eswatini government on a range of sector issues in education and health. Identify and nurture opportunities for participating in the broader policy dialogue in the country. Build client capacity to use findings of policy research/analytical work for developing new policies and undertaking sector reforms. Provide technical advice on key issues and strategic directions for the country’s education and health sector development, by bringing relevant international experience and research to assist in developing local solutions.
•  Operations: Contribute to the development of new lending operations, in education, health and multi-sectoral, tapping into the Bank’s full range of instruments (including investment project financing, results-based financing, etc.); mobilize global experience and evidence and tailor them to the local context; review and prepare operational documents, coordinating across practices and project components with other team members; and provide day to day operational support and advise the government on technical and operational aspects of project implementation for ongoing projects. Support mission preparation and contribute to mission objectives, including preparation of mission aides-memoire and implementation status reports (ISRs). Support monitoring and evaluation of project development objectives and implementation progress, intermediate outcomes, and results-based financing/disbursement linked indicators.
•  Analytical Work: Lead and/or contribute to the design, preparation, and dissemination of analytical products (e.g. sector assessment, policy notes, impact evaluation, public expenditure reviews, country systems diagnostics, case studies, etc.); provide input on a range of issues (e.g., education/health financing, management and governance, human resource policies, school/health facility performance assessments, skills development, etc.) that respond to critical policy questions identified by the client and have an impact on policy and operational design. Work on cross-sectoral teams to contribute to products such as public expenditure reviews, service delivery surveys, and impact evaluations. Contribute to the country diagnostics and other core analytical work.
•  Leadership: Work closely with the Practice Manager and education/health team and the CMU to identify new business in the HD, including innovative financing approaches, technical advisory services, fee-based services and other services, as required.
•  Partnerships: Contribute to partnership activities on a regular basis, with multilateral and bilateral development partners, UN agencies, non-profit organizations, academia, and civil society. Contribute to alignment and coordination around country-led priorities.

In performing these roles, the selected candidate will interact with counterparts in government, a variety of international and other partner organizations, and with Bank colleagues and managers within the Education and Health GPs, the CMU, as well as those in other GPs. She/he will be expected to work in close collaboration with the other members of the education and health team and colleagues in other GPs.

Selection Criteria

The Bank is seeking an experienced, versatile, and highly motivated candidate to work on a large and growing portfolio as part of the HD team based in Mbabane, Eswatini. The ideal candidate will combine excellent technical capabilities, experience in analyzing policy options and recommending practical policy reforms, a capacity to translate analytical findings into policy and into innovative Bank operations to help clients shift policies in new directions or to pilot new approaches; and strong operational skills to provide effective implementation support for the Bank’s growing portfolio.

The candidate should have:

•  Education: At least a master’s degree from a recognized university in economics, education policy, medicine, public health or related discipline.
•  Experience: A minimum of 5 years relevant work experience in education and/or health; and demonstrated expert-level knowledge of and experience in leading education and/or health projects and analytical work
•  Analytical/technical skills: Strong analytical and economics skills (e.g., education, health, labor economics), and a solid understanding of public finance issues.
•  Operational skills: Operational skills and experience in the design and implementation are required. Experience in design and implementation of World Bank-financed programs and projects (e.g., IPFs, PfoRs, IPF with PBCs) to address key HD issues; knowledge of Bank operational policies and procedures; and ability to find practical solutions to operational issues would be an added advantage
•  Strong client orientation: Ability to conduct high-level policy dialogue with sophisticated clients, including the Ministries of Education, Higher Education, Science, Technology, and Innovation, Health, Economic Planning and Development and Finance, as well as other stakeholders.
•  Excellent teamwork and interpersonal skills: Proven ability to work effectively and collaboratively across and within practice boundaries, inspire commitment to excellence and teamwork, and to liaise tactfully as a member of a multicultural team.
•  High levels of energy, initiative, and flexibility: Proactive attitude to challenges and flexibility in quickly adjusting to changing work program requirements. Ability to juggle numerous competing demands and priorities, respond quickly to internal and external client requests, and set realistic priorities for self and others.
•  Language: Excellent written and oral communication skills in English.

COMPETENCIES

•  HD knowledge and experience: Possesses strong analytical and technical skills, including an understanding of key core education and health issues with regard to quality, relevance, and equity at all levels. Has familiarity with analytical resources, data sets, indicators, tools for data analysis, and the use of evidence for HD policy.
•  General economic knowledge and analytical skills: Possesses a demonstrated track record of working with economic and sectoral data and analytical tools and models to conduct economic analyses and produce user-friendly written outputs; understands underlying statistical concepts.
•  Knowledge and experience in development arena: Understands policy making processes; distills operationally relevant recommendations/lessons for clients; understanding of political economy issues as well as a good grasp of governance issues.
•  Policy dialogue skills: Identifies and assesses policy issues and plays an active role in the dialogue with the government and/or other stakeholders; possesses political judgment, diplomatic acumen, and negotiating skills; applies cross-country development knowledge to discussions with clients and development partners.
•  Integrative skills: Demonstrates strong integrative thinking and ability to support project teams in developing an integrated point of view around development challenges.
•  Policy, strategic and technical analysis for country/sector issues: Provides inputs to key ASA documents by analyzing relevant issues, soliciting input from others, and using data and facts to support conclusions and/or position.
•  Written and verbal communication: Delivers information effectively.
•  Client orientation: Takes personal responsibility and accountability for timely response to client queries, requests or needs, working to remove obstacles that may impede execution or overall success.
•  Drive for results: Takes personal ownership and accountability to meet deadlines and achieve agreed-upon results and has the personal organization skills to do so.
•  Teamwork (collaboration) and inclusion: Collaborates with other team members and contributes productively to the team’s work and output, demonstrating respect for different points of view.
•  Knowledge, learning, and communication: Actively seeks knowledge needed to complete assignments and shares knowledge with others, communicating and presenting information in a clear and organized manner.
•  Business judgment and analytical decision making: Analyzes facts and data to support sound, logical decisions regarding own and others’ work.

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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