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Post:Senior Social Development Specialist, Accra, Ghana
Organization:The Sustainable Development Department
Location:Accra,Ghana
Background / General description:
Sub-Saharan Africa, with a population of around 780 million people in 48 countries, is home to 36 of the world's poorest countries and despite recent progress continues to present the world with its most formidable development challenge. The Africa Region comprises over 1,700 staff members, with about 60% are based in the Region's 37 field offices.
The Region has an active work program encompassing a large number of IDA operations, a smaller number of middle-income clients, a wide-ranging advisory and analytical program, active partnerships with Regional and Sub-Regional institutions and a large portfolio of around 400 projects under supervision. The core values guiding our work are passion for our mission of sustainable development and poverty reduction, putting the needs of our clients at the core of our work, trust and respect in everything we do, intellectual rigor and imagination, teamwork, openness to learning from our successes as well as our failures.
The Sustainable Development Department has a wide-ranging work program that covers the environment, agriculture and rural development, social development and fragile/conflict affected states, water, urban, energy, and transport sectors. As part of the Sustainable Development Department, the Fragile States, Conflict and Social Development Unit (AFTCS) plays a strategic, advisory and knowledge role for the Region's work in these areas. The Unit has around 45 staff and three major work streams: support for fragile states and conflict-affected countries; social development; and social safeguards.
The World Bank has a large and diversified portfolio in Nigeria, Africa's largest country. It has approved more than 130 IBRD loans and IDA credits to Nigeria for a total amount of more than US$10.5 billion. The commitment value of the 29 ongoing projects is about US$4.5 billion. Nigeria is officially re-entering blend status in FY014. The IDA allocation for the next 3-year CPS period is expected to be about $5.6 billion in addition to an indicative average annual IBRD financing of US$700 million.
Note: If the selected candidate is a current Bank Group staff member with a Regular or Open-Ended appointment, s/he will retain his/her Regular or Open-Ended appointment. All others will be offered a 3 year renewable term appointment.
AFTCS is seeking to recruit a Senior Social Development Specialist to manage AFTCS's social development work in Nigeria, based in the Ghana Country Office. The position will require leadership on all aspects of social safeguards and social development more generally. The candidate will report to the AFTCS Sector Manager, while coordinating closely with the Nigeria Country Management Unit and the SDN Sector Leader based in Nigeria. He/she will also be expected to work closely with the office of the Regional Safeguards Advisor and develop a strong partnership with environment colleagues working on environment safeguards.
Note: If the selected candidate is a current Bank Group staff member with a Regular or Open-Ended appointment, s/he will retain his/her Regular or Open-Ended appointment. All others will be offered a 3 year term appointment.
Duties and Accountabilities:
The Senior Social Development Specialist will be responsible for overseeing all social safeguards activities for Nigeria, providing social safeguards support to projects with particularly complex social issues, and ensuring that other projects are effectively supported by capable consultants and staff. Mentoring local and other safeguards staff is a key element of this position. Social safeguards activities are expected to take up more than fifty percent of the time for this position.
At the same time, the Senior Social Development Specialist will be responsible for overseeing the growing social development portfolio in Nigeria. This includes being a core part of the Nigeria governance team, with primary responsibility for demand side governance strategies (social accountability); ensuring issues such as social inclusion, voice and accountability are effectively integrated into projects across the lending portfolio; working on strategy and program development around conflict and fragility in different parts of the country; building effective relationships with national stakeholders and development partners through policy dialogue; strategic communications and outreach activities around key social development issues; and tasks managing a range of trust funds and/or project components that support social development activities across the portfolio.
Specifically, the responsibilities of this position include:
- Manage the social safeguards portfolio in Nigeria, including direct support for high corporate risk projects, category A and complex category B projects, and Inspection Panel cases; and the assignment and oversight of safeguards responsibilities across the portfolio (determining capacities, priorities and communicating to project staff).
- Working with the two Lead Specialists in HQ, ensure appropriate safeguards coverage for the Nigeria portfolio, including assignment of HQ-based staff to Nigeria projects.
- Advise and guide Bank teams and client governments on the applicability of, and compliance with, Bank social safeguard policies; supervise and provide technical support to government project preparation agencies on preparation and implementation of social safeguard components; formulate the necessary supporting documentation required internally by the Bank to process projects; and participate in periodic supervision to monitor and ensure compliance with safeguard policies throughout the project phases; ensure the quality of social safeguard documents such as Resettlement Policy Frameworks, Resettlement Action Plans, Environmental and Social Impact Assessments etc.
- Mentor less experienced consultants and staff, while developing a cadre of local consultants capable of supporting Bank and Government in implementing Bank safeguard and social policies and building linkages with local research and academic institutes as appropriate to strengthen the country teams' overall safeguards capacity.
- Organize and contribute to training and other dissemination efforts on social safeguards, such as country clinics and safeguard portfolio reviews.
- Represent the Nigeria Office in relevant regional or Bank-wide initiatives relevant to social safeguard policies and their application.
- Lead the social development agenda in the Nigeria portfolio including contributing to policy dialogue, social development strategy, just-in-time advisory work, and the design and implementation of specific initiatives, in the areas of social and economic inclusion, social accountability, and conflict and fragility; monitoring the implementation of the social development portfolio across the country program; managing a range of related trust funds that support the social development portfolio; managing and mentoring staff and consultants that work on different initiatives across the portfolio.
- Participate in the Nigeria Country Team governance team, taking the lead on demand side governance issues; ensuring social sector development inputs to CPS and other corporate priority initiatives within the portfolio.
- Serve as the focal point or spokesperson on social development issues for internal clients and external constituencies, including think tanks, civil society, and private sector partners.
- Continuously, and as an integral part of the daily work, strive to bring to Nigeria cutting edge knowledge from across and beyond the Bank on social development issues, and actively lead the packaging and dissemination of relevant knowledge produced in Nigeria.
- Contribute to knowledge generation and dissemination for the Social Development family Bank-wide.
Selection Criteria:
In addition to meeting Bank-wide competencies for Grade GG level Senior Social Development
Specialist positions, it is expected that the successful candidate will meet the following selection criteria:
- Advanced degree in a relevant social science (e.g., economics, anthropology, sociology, political sciences) with at least 8 years of experience in areas relevant to social development (e.g., social safeguards, conflict and fragility, voice and participation, gender, CSO engagement).
- Demonstrated experience and knowledge of Bank operations and social safeguard policies.
- Relevant experience on social safeguard policies in more than one Bank Region.
- Experience in participatory processes, civic engagement and community development approaches.
- Ability to work cross-sectorally, across and within a range of project teams.
- Excellent interpersonal, problem-solving, and team skills and ability to think innovatively and strategically to advance social development in AFR, and to find balanced solutions to complex safeguard issues, including mobilizing funds and managing Trust Funds.
- Experience and ability to dialogue with senior government officials, and other stakeholders including the private sector, donor community, NGOs and civil society.
- Good written and oral language skills (English essential, French an advantage).
Competencies (Level GG, Senior Social Development Specialist)
- 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 representatives of the government and non-government partners.
- Integrative Skills - Understands relevant cross-sectoral areas how they are interrelated; able to undertake cross-sectoral work in lending and non-lending operations.
- Analytical Tools for Social Sustainability - Extensive experience conducting social development analyses, deriving results that resonate with the client; ability to coach others in the application of the tools.
- Participation and Consultation - Extensive experience conducting social development consultative and participatory approaches, deriving results that resonate with the client; ability to coach others in the application of the interventions.
- Social Safeguards - Experience successfully applying the social safeguard policies to category A, B and C projects, with minimal supervision.
- Social Accountability and Demand for Good Governance - Broad understanding of social accountability with ability to support policies, institutions, and operations.
- Inclusion (including youth and gender) - Broad understanding of inclusion and exclusion, with ability to support policies, institutions, and operations, and help develop strategy.
- Social Resilience - Broad understanding of resilience to climate change and disasters to policies, institutions, and operations, with ability to support policies, institutions, and operations, and help develop strategy.
- Community-Driven Development - Solid, hands-on experience with community-driven development operations; can independently contribute as well as take a lead role in most operations.
- Project Design for Impact and Sustainability - IL - Contributes to the design of projects and programs, based on an understanding of the country and sector context.
- Sector Dialogue - IL - Able to conduct a dialogue with the client on familiar topics, based on a solid understanding of the sector.
- Team Leadership - Leads teams to achieve challenging outcomes, providing a role model and enhancing the team-leadership skills of team members.
- ESW/TA Policy, Strategic and Technical Analysis for Country/Sector Issues - Participates fully in the production of quality AAA work and policy papers, leveraging relevant analytical tools and a grasp of issues surrounding policy and sector reform.
- 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.
How to Apply
http://unjobs.org/vacancies/1379881393706
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