Senior Economist (Project Manager - Mafap)

Organizational Setting

The Agricultural Development Economics Division (ESA) conducts economic research and policy analysis related to all five of the Organization's strategic objectives (food security and nutrition, sustainable agriculture, poverty reduction, inclusive food systems and resilient livelihoods). ESA provides evidence-based analytical support to national, regional and global policy processes and initiatives related to food security and nutrition and sustainable agriculture; and leads the production of two FAO flagship publications\: The State of Food and Agriculture and The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World. ESA also leads large programmes at country level on agricultural and food policy monitoring, climate smart agriculture (CSA), poverty, and food security information and analysis in support of national policies.

The post is located in the Monitoring and Analysing Food and Agricultural Policies (MAFAP) programme within ESA. The MAFAP programme seeks to establish country owned and sustainable systems to monitor, analyse, and reform food and agricultural policies to enable more effective, efficient and inclusive policy frameworks in a growing number of developing and emerging economies. The Programme has been working in more than a dozen developing countries to create sustainable policy monitoring systems and carry out a consistent set of policy and public expenditure analyses across a wide range of agricultural value chains. MAFAP works with government institutions, research organizations and other partners to establish a community of practice on policy measurement, monitoring and analysis by developing institutional capacities to systematically analyse government policies and their effects. MAFAP analyses are used to inform targeted food and agricultural policy reforms that will result in a more conducive environment for agricultural investment and productivity growth, especially for smallholder farmers. As such, MAFAP supports most of FAO strategic objectives, an in particular those of enabling inclusive and efficient agricultural and food systems and helping eliminate hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition

Reporting Lines

The Senior Economist reports to the Deputy-Director of ESA, under the overall supervision of the Director of ESA. He/she will also be reporting, through ESA Management, to technical cooperation units as well as donors funding the programme.

Technical Focus

Coordinate, manage and implement the MAFAP programme, ensuring that outputs and products are delivered as described in this programme's result framework. To implement these roles, he/she will provide guidance for the MAFAP team to engage in effective policy analysis, advice and advocacy, as well as in the formulation and implementation of engagement strategies to ensure that technical analyses are used for policy reform in partner countries. The Senior Economist will be extensively familiarized with quantitative techniques for policy analysis, and also with policy advice and advocacy efforts in an international development setting, preferably on agricultural and/or food security and nutrition policy issues.

Key Results

Leadership and conceptual thinking for the development and implementation of comprehensive technical, statistical and/or analytical frameworks to support the programme of work and related products, projects and services in accordance with the FAO Strategic Framework.

Key Functions

• Plans, manages, or leads highly specialized or multi-disciplinary teams, leads, coordinates, and/or participates on Organization-wide, cross-Departmental committees, project teams, and working groups, and/or provides technical leadership/secretariat services on technical networks and/or international technical policy and standard setting bodies.

• Analyses global and country specific requirements as well as agricultural, economic, social, environmental factors to provide critical input into the FAO Strategic Framework, Programme of Work as well as Detailed Work Plans and the supporting budgets and/or resourcing strategies.

• Implements and monitors work programmes involving the conception and development of comprehensive statistical and/or analytical frameworks including early warning, medium and long term plans and strategies, leading edge tools, methods, systems and databases, critical indicators, and/or policy models, etc.

• Oversees and reviews data collection, validation, analysis and reporting activities to support the development of technical standards, international instruments, innovation, FAO flagship publications/yearbooks, and/or on-going programme development as well as technical and/or policy advisory services.

• Provides technical and policy advice to Member Countries and technical support to decentralized offices in the development and implementation of their programmes of work.

• Plans, organizes and participates in capacity development activities involving the provision of advice, technical assistance projects, training workshops, seminars, and meetings as well as oversees the development of related materials, on-line tools and information kits.

• Represents the Organization at international/inter-governmental meetings and conferences, advocates strategic partnerships, best practices, and increased policy dialogue and develops and negotiates effective working relationships/consensus and agreements with international and national partners.

• Leads and/or participates in resource mobilization activities in accordance with the Corporate strategy.

Specific Functions

• Ensures the MAFAP programme creates sustainable policy monitoring systems and carries out a consistent set of policy and public expenditure analyses across a wide range of agricultural value chains in beneficiary countries; including sectoral and cross-sectoral policy analysis to ascertain their impact on food security and nutrition.

• Leads and participates in the technical work of the project in developing a system of indicators to monitor food and agricultural policies in participating countries, and in facilitating policy dialogue within and between participating countries and their development partners;

• Develops and maintains effective working relationships with senior officials from national governments, development partners, regional organizations and project partner institutions;

• Establishes contacts and seeks collaboration with other initiatives and activities within and outside FAO that are relevant to the programme and its objectives;

• Mobilizes additional resources to support and expand the activities of the project, particularly in relation to building and institutionalization of capacity within countries;

• Performs other related duties as required