Director, Regional Integration at African Development Bank - AfDB

 Reference: ADB/17/347
Location: Côte d’Ivoire
Grade: EL5
Position N°: 50092552

The Complex
The Bank has reorganized and is developing the Regional Development, Integration & Business Delivery Complex whose major objective is to build regional capabilities and bring responsibility for client activities closer to the regions.
Five Regional Development, Integration and Business Delivery Hubs have been created, each run by a Director General: Southern Africa, North Africa, West Africa; East Africa, and Central Africa.

The Hiring Department

• The Regional Integration Department provides strategic direction for the Integrate Africa work streams at the regional level while focusing on implementation at the national level through Country Strategy Papers to enable Regional Member Countries to realize enhanced outcomes.
• The Department collaborates closely with internal stakeholders (Bank) and external partners to address policy, legal, regulatory and institutional constraints that stifle regional integration, intra-African trade and investment.
• Projected outcomes include removal of tariff and non-tariff barriers to facilitate and ease the movement of persons, goods, services and other factors of production.
• The Integrate Africa function’s approach leans toward analytical and practical work streams that help to reduce the costs and time (durations) for doing business, expand market access in Regional Member Countries, consolidate smaller and fragmented regional markets, facilitate value chain development, and enhance industrialization, cross-border investment flows and development of African small and medium-sized enterprises.
• Core policy imperatives such as trade facilitation, trade in services, direct and portfolio investment, and sharing of knowledge products remain significant in addressing soft infrastructure constraints while simultaneously de-risking the Bank’s hard infrastructure investments.
• Through strategic partnerships, the Bank Group provides leadership in key trade-related matters such as the Continental Free Trade Area to boost intra-African trade and investment as part of the African Union’s vision and agenda for 2063.

The Position

• The position of Director, Regional Integration reports to the Vice-President, Regional Development, Integration & Business Delivery.
• The position is key to the attainment of the Bank’s transformative agenda for Africa. The Director is responsible for all aspects of planning and execution of the activities of the Regional Integration Department.
• The incumbent is accountable for performing the responsibilities, modeling the behaviors and maintaining the technical and managerial competencies (listed below) in his or her capacity as Director in the Complex.
• Accountability entails responsibility for managing quality, risks, results, institutional initiatives and compliance with Bank policies and procedures, and keeping the Department at the forefront of operational excellence through needed upgrades and innovation.

Duties and Responsibilities
Under the general guidance and supervision of the Vice-President, Regional Development, Integration & Business Delivery, the Director, Regional Integration will perform the following duties and responsibilities:

• Lead the implementation and monitoring of the regional integration strategy in close collaboration with Directorates general and Sector Vice-Presidencies within the overall vision of creating larger and more attractive markets, linking land-locked countries to international markets, and supporting intra-African trade;
• Lead the policy dialogue and advocacy work at the continental level on regional integration strategy, and define a knowledge building work program to support this strategy;
• Supervise the preparation of the Regional Integration/Country Strategy papers at Bank level, monitor their implementation under the Director Generals, and provide support to regional integration coordinators as required;
• Work closely with the Director Generals to provide high level Bank-wide leadership to ensure that the Integrate Africa priority is mainstreamed into and through the Bank’s other High 5 priorities, including in relevant projects and programmes;
• Support the Regional Office prioritization process by working closely with the Regional Office prioritization team and the Regional Programme Officers;
• Initiate, build, nurture and strengthen existing strategic partnerships and coalitions within and outside the Bank, including with the private sector, Africa-wide organizations (such as the African Union, Regional Economic Communities, Economic Commission for Africa, international institutions (such as the World Trade Organization and World Customs Organization, and other relevant partners on matters of integration;
• Support regional integration coordinators in providing effective and demonstrable support to the Regional Economic Communities and Regional Members Countries to implement or modify specific inter-regional integration policies, laws and regulations, and to address policy, legal, regulatory and institutional weaknesses to achieve better outcomes;
• Ensure that cross-cutting (gender, climate and fragility) dimensions are effectively embedded in the Department’s regional integration activities;
• Lead the strategic planning for human capital requirements of the Department, including performance appraisal of work undertaken, appraisal of staff potential, and determination of training and development needs;
• Manage the Department with appropriate delegation of day-to-day activities;
• Manage dialogue and provide recommendations on a broad range of regional integration policy and implementation issues;
• Contribute actively to issues that cut across the Bank/other High fives, and actively collaborate with other Departments in the Complex and the Bank to provide efficient integration with and complementarity to others’ activities;
• Lead the effective delivery of the Department’s work and budget programming;
• Ensure effective budgetary management based on productivity, efficiency, and where feasible, cost savings;
• Ensure that the Key Performance Indicators set for the Department are met.
• Lead, manage, develop and mentor performance of the Regional Integration team by ensuring that the team is high performing, motivated, innovative, and properly trained; have clear deliverables based on ambitious yet feasible time lines; remain highly committed to the success of the African Development Bank;
• Supervise staff in the office and undertake staff development and performance evaluation;
• Prepare, supervise and manage implementation of the Regional Integration unit’s budget, and submit periodic reports in accordance with the Bank’s budget management regulations;
• Plan and supervise the administrative, financial and personnel support services required; prepare budget and financial reports; authorize expenditures, personnel actions, acquisitions and other administrative actions, and monitor the best possible contribution of the Action Time Recording System to the Cost Accounting System of the Bank;
• Provide leadership and motivate the Regional Integration team to be effectively and productively engaged and to deliver required outputs;
• Initiate necessary corrective actions to address all audit findings successfully, and to prevent any repeat thereof;
• Perform high level engagement and dialogue with Diplomatic personnel, Senior Government Officials, and Ministry and Presidential representatives to further the interest and mandate of the Bank; and
• Provide direct and indirect operational support that will contribute to the regional output and mandate in each assigned Country.

Selection Criteria
Including Desirable Skills, Knowledge and Experience

• Hold at least a Master's Degree or its equivalent in Business Administration, Finance, Economics, Banking, or any other related discipline;
• Have a minimum of ten (10) years of relevant professional experience, five (5) years of which should be in a management position or leadership role;
• Having private sector experience will be an added advantage;
• Possess strong interpersonal skills; demonstrated ability to present and win support for ideas; a good listener; cultural sensitivity; commitment to diversity; capacity to initiate and manage innovations and change;
• A strategic mind-set and the capacity to steer the Bank’s agenda while empowering staff during a phase of institutional reform  that stress closer coordination with Regional Members Countries and Regional Economic Communities in the design and delivery of the Bank’s activities;
• Ability to build partnership with a broad range of clients and deliver results that meet the needs and long-term interests of clients within and outside the institution;
• Strong capacity to analyse actions from the perspectives of stakeholders, and to translate strategic thinking into compelling action plans;
• Demonstrated ability to take prudent business risks and make effective, timely and well-determined decisions;
• Ability to perform under stress and manage multiple competing priorities in obtaining effective solutions
• Dedication to team-building and effective working relations between and among team members;
• Ability to lead the capture and formal documentation of explicit and tacit knowledge to ensure ready access to information, knowledge and staff learning;
• Ability to create an environment for sharing and communicating knowledge within the Department, Complex, Regional Hubs and externally;
• Ability to engage with internal and external parties to develop and communicate knowledge and methods.
• Ability to provide thought leadership to encourage innovation, and raises awareness of the Department as a center of excellence in regional integration;
• Ability to build and lead motivated and committed multidisciplinary teams of experts across functional boundaries, and to effectively and productively utilize talent and expertise of team members;
• Demonstrated ability to present and win support for ideas;
• Ability to develop strong managerial and technical talent and actively engages in strategic staff planning and succession planning with appropriate delegation;
• Models integrity and inclusion, and offers mentoring and career development opportunities for staff;
• Good knowledge of and experience with socio-economic, development and business environment issues in African countries;
• Strong leadership and coaching skills, with a track record of working with economic teams and creating an empowering and self-development, focus-oriented work environment.
• Fragility assessment knowledge and relevant experience;
• Ability to ensure that full use is made of the systems, procedures and culture within the organization to deliver required results;
• Ability to search for and produce innovative and creative approaches to activities to enhance performance and create added benefits to the Bank and its clients;
• Professional Expertise: continuously expands understanding of relevant business products, practices and systems/technology, and actively shares knowledge and expertise with others;
• Client Orientation: ensures that the client (internal or external) is considered to be of primary importance in all transactions and interactions; strives to understand, and when appropriate, anticipate client needs; ensures the client receives the best possible service from the Bank;
• Ability to work with others to maximize the effectiveness of the team as a whole; actively shares pertinent knowledge, appropriately allocates responsibilities and balances workloads to optimize results; develops strong working relationships with colleagues, and contributes to creation of a positive team environment;
• Ability to solicit support for co-financing into a project or to generate new business for the Bank;
• Excellent Professional written and verbal communications in English or French with a working knowledge of the other.
• Competence in the use of standard MS office applications (Word, Excel, Access, and PowerPoint).