Senior Youth Employment Officer at African Development Bank - AfDB

Reference: ADB/17/408
Location: South Africa
Grade: PL5
Position N°: 50093598

The Complex

• The Vice-Presidency for ‘Regional Development, Integration and Business Delivery is responsible for operational relevancy, efficiency and effectiveness of the Bank Group’s operational programs, and activities.
• The Vice-Presidency Regional Development, Integration and Business Delivery will ensure that the Bank operates successfully across its Regional Members Countries and will oversee the full implementation of all aspects of the Bank’s Regional Directorates.

The Hiring Department/Division

• Within the Regional Development, Integration and Business Delivery Complex, the Bank has five (5) Regional Development, Integration and Business Delivery (RDIBD) Directorates, one in each region of Africa: North, South, East, West, and Central.
• Each Regional Directorate is headed by a Director General (DG) and is staffed with the relevant sectoral functions and administrative capabilities for rapid delivery of services to client countries.
• The Regional Directorates provide overall strategic direction to country offices within the regions and are responsible for the Bank’s operations, business development, project management and overall effective delivery of the Bank’s High 5s :‘Light Up and Power Africa’, ‘Feed Africa,’ ‘Industrialize Africa,’ ‘Integrate Africa,’ and ‘Improve the Quality of Life for the People of Africa.’
• The mission of the Agriculture, Human & Social Development Division is to contribute to the Bank’s efforts to reduce poverty and promote sustainable development in Regional Member Countries. It does so by contributing to development of country and regional strategies and building sector knowledge and focusing on project/programme origination and delivery for approval of operations defined under the High 5 priorities.
• The Human Capital, Youth and Skills Development Department (AHHD), within the Agriculture, Human and Social Development Complex (AHVP) will spearhead the achievement of the High 5s on “Improving the Quality of Life of People in Africa” and contribute to the other High 5s.
• The Department has two divisions Education, Human Capital and Skills Development Division (AHHD1) which focuses on scaling-up of Bank’s support to education, human capital and employment/livelihoods; and Public Health, Security and Nutrition Division (AHHD2) focusing on strengthening health systems and nutrition for human wellbeing. It also hosts various pertinent initiatives and trust funds.

The Position

• The African Development Bank adopted in May 2016, the “Jobs for Youth in Africa” (JfYA) Strategy for the period of 2016 – 2025. This Strategy responds to the priorities in Bank’s Ten Year Strategy and the New Corporate Priorities (High-Fives). Creating productive jobs for the youth would improve their living conditions and enhance their engagement in Africa’s growth and economic transformation.
• The Jobs for Youth in Africa Strategy was launched during the Bank’s annual meetings in May, 2016, in Lusaka to commence its operationalization.
• The Youth Employment Officer will be part of the team responsible of the day to day management of the implementation of the Jobs for Youth in Africa Strategy in the Southern region.
• The objective of this position is to support work by the Jobs Team in the aspect of ensuring an integrated approach and ecosystem on youth employment to guide the Bank’s work in this area for impactful solutions to the youth employment challenge in Southern Africa.

In this context the incumbent will, in her/his area of expertise:

• Business development and portfolio management;
• Design and implement “Jobs for Youth in Africa”  flagship and job creation operations;
• Supervise the implementation of these operations to ensure high performance;
• Support regional teams in designing and implementing the job creation aspects of their respective operations;
• Ecosystem for youth employment;
• Foster coalitions at country and regional level to encourage an ecosystem approach to advance the youth employment agenda, coordinating closely internally with the countries in the Southern region, across sector and externally linking with relevant actors from different spheres including governments, private sector, corporate actors, international organizations and civil society to generate and share learning about what works, and to leverage this shared understanding through increased investments in proven solutions for Africa;
• Identify and provide necessary support to stakeholders to boost the employment coalition at country and regional level;
• Provide technical expertise and identify opportunities to engage the private sector and propose innovative public-private partnerships for jobs creation for youth;
• Knowledge and Research: Provide support to regional team and “Jobs for Youth in Africa” on advancing economic and sector work on education and labour market policies and employment interactions analysis in Southern African countries drawing from their successes, failures and points of difference, lessons and best practices to promote knowledge, engage stakeholder debates and to underpin dialogue with countries;
• Informality, Gender and Fragility: Promoting special emphasis and building knowledge/evidence based action toward positive youth development in post conflict states, increasing access for poor and vulnerable youth in workforce development;

Duties and Responsibilities
With strategic and technical support from the Coordinator Jobs for Youth in Africa and under the supervision of the Regional Operations Manager, Agriculture, Human and Social Development Division of Regional Development, Integration and Business Delivery Complex, the incumbent equipped with a deep understanding of the labour market supply and demand side conditions and interaction with employment and education and skills development policies in Africa, will carry out the following duties and responsibilities:

• Provide technical and/or operational guidance and serve as a subject matter expert in assigned area or responsibility including inter alia labor market interventions, youth employment policy and activation programmes in the context of the “Jobs for Youth in Africa”;
• Formulate, implement and review of existing Youth employment policies/strategies and operations in Southern African countries;
• Facilitate comprehensive research on labor market conditions and activation programmes with attention to vulnerabilities and informality and generate lessons and best practices and that can be scaled in the Regional Member Countries and opportunities;
• Lead the preparation of Youth employment profiles for Southern African countries;
• Provide strategic advice on public-private partnership issues, such as the development of strategies for outreach to the private sector in line with the Jobs for Youth Agenda;
• Institute a community of practice on youth employment in the Bank and facilitate organizing of internal events on the subject matter to ensure a good Bank wide understanding of the subject area;
• Initiate and develop comprehensive technical assistance operations to improve the Bank’s Regional Member Countries Capacities to create a favorable enabling environment for youth development and productivity;
• Develop and facilitate trainings on internship programs, skills development programmes for informal sector productivity, and other ways of skills building for poor and vulnerable youth working closely with country offices;
• Promote coalition building and relationships to influence youth development and education policies, sectoral policies/strategies/programmes, and promote workforce development and ecosystem approach to inclusive youth employment and economic productivity in Southern African countries;
• Coordinating, tracking and reporting on “Jobs for Youth in Africa”. Implementation deliverables, deliverable tracking, etc., in assigned area;
• Carry out other technical tasks and coordination as required by the “Jobs for Youth in Africa”Coordinator or the Director General;
• Knowledge management;
• Contributing to the preparation of policy related documents;
• Supporting study and capacity building a related interventions;
• Periodically disseminating key information on Entrepreneurship best practices to sensitize Bank staff;
• Organizing internal events on entrepreneurship to ensure a good Bank wide understanding of nutrition;
• Supporting the preparation of briefs, talking points, status reports for management and the board;
• Fulfill any other tasks required by management;

Selection Criteria
Including desirable skills, knowledge and experience:

• Hold at least a Master's degree or its equivalent in Economics preferably with specialization in Economic Policy Management, Labor Dynamics and Workforce or other related discipline;
• Have a minimum of five (5) years professional experience in implementation of poverty reduction, workforce development and social inclusion operations;
• Good knowledge and experience in socio-economic development policy, labour market issues, workforce productivity and gender equality, preferably in the design, development and implementation of projects/ programmes;
• Experience in working directly in African Governments, private sector, CSOs, bilateral agencies, multilaterals and other stakeholders;
• Competent in operational and participatory development methodologies including perspectives on gender, youth and disadvantaged groups;
• Specific relevant expertise in country and stakeholder dialogue;
• Strong quantitative and problem-solving skills and skill working with data sets;
• Proven experience developing mechanisms and tools to accurately determine population vulnerabilities and utilizing the results to contribute to the creation of impact driven technical institutional support or programs/projects;
• Having private sector experience will be an added advantage;
• Client orientation: ensure that the client is considered to be of primary importance in all transactions and interactions. Strive to understand, and when appropriate, anticipate client needs, and ensure that the client receives the best possible service from the Bank;
• Ability to search for and produce innovative and creative approaches to activities in order to enhance performance and create added benefits to the Bank and its clients;
• Ability to apply business knowledge to the resolution of problems and identifies solutions to the benefit of the client (internal and external) and the organization;
• Communicate and write effectively in French or English, with a good working knowledge of the other language;
• Competence in the use of standard Microsoft Office applications (Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint); knowledge of SAP is desirable.