E T Consultant – Quantitative Poverty Analysis Expert
Job #: req19389
Organization: World Bank
Sector: Poverty Reduction

Grade: EC2
Term Duration: 1 year 0 months
Recruitment Type: Local Recruitment
Location: Dar Es Salaam,Tanzania
Required Language(s): English
Preferred Language(s): Swahili

Description

Job at World Bank Group (WBG) Tanzania, E T Consultant – Quantitative Poverty Analysis Expert Do you want to build a career that is truly worthwhile? Working at the World Bank provides a unique opportunity for you to help our clients solve their greatest development challenges. The World Bank consists of two entities – the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA) – and is part of the World Bank Group. It is a global development cooperative owned by 189 member countries. As the largest development bank in the world, the World Bank provides loans, guarantees, risk management products, and advisory services to middle-income and creditworthy low-income countries, and coordinates responses to regional and global challenges. For more information, visit www.worldbank.org.

The Poverty and Equity Global Practice
The Poverty and Equity Global Practice, part of the Equitable Growth, Finance, and Institutions vice-presidency, plays a key role in supporting the World Bank Group’s goals of ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity. It generates knowledge and dialogue and supports operational solutions, focusing on poverty monitoring and statistical capacity building, markets and institutions, fiscal and social policy, and resilience to shocks and sustainability. The practice is organized into seven regionally-oriented units—East Asia and the Pacific (EAP), Europe and Central Asia (ECA), Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA), and South Asia (SAR) and two in Africa—each managed by a Practice Manager. The development and flow of global knowledge within the practice is facilitated through four cross-cutting thematic lines, each of which is led by a thematic Lead Economist. These are: (1) data for policy analysis; (2) markets and institutions for poverty reduction and shared prosperity; (3) fiscal and social policy for poverty reduction and shared prosperity; and (4) welfare implications of climate change, fragility and conflict risks. Every member of the practice is affiliated with, participates in, and contributes to the work of at least one of the thematic lines. In addition, the practice takes the lead in two corporate priority areas: (a) Data for Goals; and (b) Systematic Country Diagnostics.

The poverty analysis agenda in Tanzania
Much is known about challenges that remain for reducing poverty and promoting equitable growth in the country, but further in-depth analysis is needed on the role of concrete policy barriers. The Mainland Tanzania Poverty Assessment completed in 2019 shows poverty barely changed between 2012 and 2018 despite fast economic growth, with 26% living below the national poverty line of US$ 1.35 PPP per day. Those at the bottom of the distribution suffered from slower growth than the average. The measures taken to prevent the spread of COVID19 will likely have added a few percentage points to the poverty rates in 2020. Despite remarkable improvements over the last years, non-monetary markers of poverty still signal significant deprivations and lack of basic services affect large shares of the population. Against this backdrop, the engagement on data generation and analysis needs to have a greater policy focus and provide a deeper understanding of the effectiveness of policies and programs that promote the drivers of poverty reduction: wage jobs, agricultural commercialization, secondary education enrolment, rural resilience, a more stable informal sector, and climate change.

Additionally, there is a need to better understand the huge variation in poverty and human development outcomes across space and population groups in terms of what is driving the variation and how it relates to the spatial distribution of public spending. As the drivers for poverty reduction have now been identified, further poverty analysis will need to focus on the risk of social exclusion, particularly in lagging areas in Tanzania. Moreover, better efforts are needed to disseminate World Bank analytical work across government and academia.

There is also a need to focus analysis on emerging topics such as the nature of the ‘new poor’ and how to target them, vulnerabilities, the nature of the economic recovery – including of the tourism sector – and its poverty reduction impact, vaccinations, and distributional aspects of green investments. The nature of the recovery of the COVID19 crisis and the impact of the current inflation trends is uncertain and requires close monitoring.

The vast majority of the poor are rural smallholders and a better understanding of barriers and opportunities for strengthening productivity of smallholder farmers while building resilience through climate smart agriculture is also essential. Commercialisation is currently driven by large and medium scale farmers and the question remains what can be done to make sure neighboring smallholders can benefit from technology and market access of these commercial farmers while stabilizing their yields in te wake of climate change.

The Poverty and Equity Global Practice in Tanzania
The work of the Poverty GP in Tanzania consists of three pillars:
Pillar 1: Technical assistance to strengthen the production and use of high-quality data on poverty and other social and economic indicators

This pillar is focused on providing technical assistance to generate quality and timely data fundamental to understand the socio-economic situation in the country and monitor progress over time. Activities under this pillar include technical assistance to: (i) strengthen data production including leveraging new technologies for data generation; (ii) improving statistical skills of government to strengthen data management and the use of timely statistical information by policy makers, the media and the public, and (iii) support government in monitoring the country’s development progress.

Pillar 2: Informing the policy dialogue with analytics
This pillar regards developing evidence-based analytics that inform policy-making, with a view to strengthen their equity and inclusion impact and address COVID-19 crisis and inflation induced vulnerabilities. Activities include (i) regularly updating our understanding of poverty and shared prosperity trends, (ii) conduct poverty-focused policy analysis, with a focus on engaging national researchers in the design, implementation and dissemination of the research, this also includes analysis of the distributional impact of fiscal policy, and (iii) analysis of the spatial dimensions of wellbeing and exclusion and analysis of new emerging topics.

Pillar 3: Support to the WB country program:
This pillar revolves around advising and timely support to the WB country team, with a view to modernize monitoring techniques to improve project implementation and enhancing the poverty and equity impact of country engagement. It aims to strengthen the linkages between sectoral issues and household and individual welfare, and thus to the World Bank twin goals. Activities under this pillar will be responsive to the country team’s evolving needs, but overall are envisaged to include: testing rapid monitoring techniques, provide comments and inputs to strengthen the poverty and equity lens of project and analytical products and Project Appraisal Documents (PADs) and of the Tanzania Economic Update, producing Macro and Poverty Outlook (MPOs) and Poverty and Equity Briefs (PEBs); and just-in-time advice and rapid analysis for use by teams and the WB country team.

Technical Assistance activities are partly provided by the World Bank executed component of the European Union-financed Development Support for Tanzania Statistics project as part of (P159954). This EU Trust Funds also finances an ETC position of resident statistician.

Through this European Union funded project, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and the Zanzibar Office of the Chief Government Statistician (OCGS) have recently completed three surveys: the National Panel Survey (NPS) 2021, the National Agriculture Sample Census (NASC) 2020 and the Integrated Labor Force Survey (ILFS) 2020/21. The micro-data from these surveys will be made available for researchers and offer opportunities for in-depth analysis to explore the issues mentioned above. The project has also advanced the statistical skills of many government and non-government analysts. This is done through technical support to survey implementation and a series of hands-on and on-the-job training courses on a range of topics. This includes basic and advanced data analysis using Stata as well as data interpretation, communication and preparation, report writing, and the use of GIS and spatial data analysis. A call for proposals for national researchers will be funded to strengthen national capacity and generate high quality government-owned poverty policy analysis.

Objective
The objective of this assignment is to contribute to the World Bank and EU supported analytical program around poverty to contribute to a deeper understanding of policy constraints and solutions for reducing various aspects of poverty in Tanzania.

Duration of Assignment and Accountability
The Consultant will be recruited on a one-year Term contract at ETC 2 level (GF equivalent) with an option of a one-year extension. The assignment is expected to commence on or around October 1, 2022. The Consultant will report to the World Bank Task Team Leader. She/ he will be located at the World Bank office in Dar es Salaam with regular travel to Dodoma.

Scope of Work and Activities
The consultant is expected to work closely with the Tanzania Poverty team. The work will consist of conducting various types of data analysis and producing brief write-ups as contribution to a series of World Bank poverty policy notes that will be produced by the World Bank Tanzania Poverty GP team. The successful candidate will also be asked to contribute to or comment on analytical work around poverty issues that will take place as part of a call for proposals initiative for local researchers mentioned above. Where relevant she/he will also conduct hands-on trainings for NBS, OCGS and other data analysts.

Tasks
The exact content of the tasks is to be determined through discussion with the Tanzania Poverty and Equity team. They could include: Prepare a data analysis plan. This will include collaborating with the team to propose and align on key topics for the analysis, organize the analysis, identify data sources, identify key steps and implementation timelines, as well as training needs of local analysts.
Data preparation, data analysis and reporting. This involves the preparation of the dataset for the analysis, including the operationalization of variables and indicators that should be analyzed, analysis of these variables and indicators, production of the reports from these analyses in Word and PPT documents with policy recommendations deduced from the analyses. Preparing training and reference materials and where needed co-lead trainings for Tanzanian data analysts on how to conduct various types of poverty analysis.

Selection Criteria
The ideal candidate has the following qualifications and experience:

• A master’s degree (PhD preferred) in a relevant discipline and a minimum of 5 years of relevant experience conducting quantitative analytical work.
• Good knowledge of the theory and principles and of poverty measurement and techniques for conducting poverty analysis as well as interpretation and communication of findings.
• Good knowledge of statistical software packages.
• Experience in designing and implementing high quality and interactive hands-on training sessions (online and face-to-face) around poverty analysis that meet requirements for effective adult learning.
• Team worker and ability to work in a multi-cultural environment. A self-starter with excellent team playing skills. Additional skills required include: (i) pro-active and a continuous learner, (ii) problem solving, critical thinking and innovating, (iii) influence, partnership oriented and collaborating across institutional boundaries, (iv) emotional intelligence and resilience, and (v) accountability for results and high integrity.
• Excellent communications skills (written and oral).
• Fluency in English. Knowledge of Swahili is preferred.

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.

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Closing Date: 10/24/2022 (MM/DD/YYYY) at 11:59pm UTC