Lead Agriculture Economist - World Bank Group

The vision of the World Bank Group is to eradicate extreme poverty by reducing the number of people living on less than $1.25 a day to 3 percent by 2030, and promote shared prosperity by fostering the income growth of the bottom 40 percent in every country.

To achieve this vision, the WBG Board of Governors in 2013 approved a new strategy for the organization. This strategy leverages the combined strength of the WBG institutions and their unique ability to partner with the public and private sectors to deliver customized development solutions backed by finance, world class knowledge and convening services. The strategy has three components: 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 and five Cross-Cutting Solution Areas that, in concert with WBG Regions, will 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 is one of the 14 Global Practices and its agenda is essential for achieving the Bank’s twin goals of eliminating poverty and boosting shared prosperity: 75% of the world’s poor are rural, and most are engaged in farming.  Over 842 million people go to bed hungry every day, 26 percent of all children under age five are stunted, and 30 percent suffer from Vitamin A deficiency. The world needs to produce about 50 percent more food to feed the world’s expected population of nine billion by 2050.  A changing climate means that, in Africa alone, a warming scenario of 1.5°C to 2°C for the 2030s and 2040s will trigger a 40 to 80 percent reduction of area where maize, millet and sorghum are currently grown.  Accordingly, agriculture is critical for fighting hunger, boosting food and nutrition security, improving incomes, creating jobs, providing environmental services, and stopping a “4°C world.”

The Agriculture Global Practice (GFADR) consists of about 280 staffs of which 36% are located in country offices.  The active portfolio consists of about 240 projects representing about US$18 billion in lending commitments.  There are about 200 ongoing knowledge activities.  Areas of focus include, among other:  (i) increasing smallholder agricultural productivity, and it’s resilience through support to improved land and water management in irrigated and rainfed areas; (ii) linking farmers to markets and strengthening value chains through support for improved infrastructure, information technology, postharvest handling; (iii) facilitating rural nonfarm income by improving the rural investment climate and skills development; (iv) reducing risk, vulnerability and gender inequality through support to risk management mechanisms ; and (v) enhancing environmental services and sustainability.  To advance this agenda, GFADR collaborates closely with numerous other GPs; it is also one of the GPs actively collaborating with IFC.  To support GFADR’s growing engagement in Africa, the Practice is looking for a seasoned Lead Agriculture Economist to lead and manage important aspects of GFADR’s program in Kenya, Rwanda, the Great Lakes Region as well as on the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP) beyond. The position is based with the WBG in Nairobi, Kenya.   The Government of Kenya is keen to enhance Bank’s engagement in the Agriculture sector and currently an Agriculture sector policy note is being finalized and a new lending operation is under preparation.  In Rwanda, Bank is actively engaged in the Agriculture sector and recently a PforR operation has been approved to support the Government’s reforms in the sector.

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.

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