E T Consultant

E T Consultant Job #: req35045 Organization: World Bank Sector: Education Grade: EC2 Term Duration: 1 year 0 months Recruitment Type: Local Recruitment Location: Nigeria Required Language(s): English Preferred Language(s): Closing Date: 12/17/2025 (MM/DD/YYYY) at 11:59pm UTC

Description

Do you want to build a career that is truly worthwhile? The World Bank Group is one of the largest sources of funding and knowledge for developing countries; a unique global partnership of five institutions dedicated to ending extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity. With 189 member countries and more than 120 offices worldwide, we work with public and private sector partners, investing in groundbreaking projects and using data, research, and technology to develop solutions to the most urgent global challenges.  For more information, visit www.worldbank.org. 
Western and Central Africa (AFW) Region
We need the best and brightest talent focused on Sub-Saharan African countries in order to harness the potential and innovation happening across the continent. Africa is a continent on the move, with a young population and a growing market of nearly 1.2bn people. We are committed to making the Africa regional teams into leading innovation hubs.
Yet, these vast opportunities are tempered by persistent gaps in education, health, and skills, which have Africa only reaching forty percent of its estimated potential. Moreover, conflict, food insecurity, population growth, and the disruptive forces of climate change threaten to curtail or even reverse the progress that has been made over the past decades.
In West and Central Africa, the World Bank is a leading partner with a growing portfolio of 350 projects totaling more than $38 billion in areas such as agriculture, trade and transport, energy, education, health, water and sanitation- all to support job creation, gender equality, poverty reduction, and better lives. Across the continent, the World Bank’s program has nearly doubled over the last 10 years. By 2030, about 87% of the world’s extreme poor are projected to live in Sub-Saharan Africa, so this is where our mission to end extreme poverty and to promote shared prosperity will be achieved.
Are you ready to make an impact? We are looking for dedicated professionals to join our innovative and diverse team to improve people’s lives and help countries build back better after COVID.
The People  Practice Group (PG)
The People Practice Group is one of the World Bank Group’s five main verticals, alongside Prosperity, Planet, Infrastructure, and Digital. The People Practice Group focuses on advancing human development outcomes, with a strong emphasis on building equitable and inclusive resilience for the poorest and most vulnerable populations.  Its operational and research program spans across education, health, social protection, jobs and gender. 
Education Global Practice  
Education is a human right, a powerful driver of development and one of the strongest instruments for reducing poverty and improving health, gender equality, peace, and stability. It delivers large, consistent returns in terms of income and is the most important factor to ensure equality of opportunities. For more information: https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/education 
Education is central to achieving the WBG’s twin goals: it is a reliable route out of poverty through large and consistent returns to income for individuals and as a driver for economic growth. It is also a prime vehicle for promoting shared prosperity. The main challenge in the education sector is to achieve “learning for all and learning for life”- that is, to ensure that all children and young people acquire the knowledge and skills they need for their lives and livelihoods. In the past two decades, the developing world has made great advances in education, most notably in enrolling and keeping children in school and in approaching gender equality. Despite these successes in expanding access to education, critical challenges remain; removing persistent educational barriers faced by the poorest people and those living in fragile and conflict-affected states and improving the quality of education so that schooling leads to real learning.  In recent years, the WBG, and the broader education development community, have shifted their focus to including learning outcomes. Traditional input-driven programs have shown that they do not always lead to improved learning outcomes, so that the WBG’s education strategy highlights the need for a more comprehensive ‘systems approach’ to education reform, investments, and service delivery. This approach is about increasing accountability and targeting results, as a complement to providing inputs.  It also requires strengthening the knowledge base on education, to highlight where systems are achieving results, where they are falling short, and what the most effective solutions are.  These efforts are increasingly guided by the need to invest early; invest smartly; and invest for all.  Through high-quality analytical work, collection of evidence, and practical know-how in these three areas, the WBG is helping its partner countries accelerate their progress in the education sector.
The Education Global Practice is led by a Global Director, who has overall responsibility for the practice, together with Regional Directors who oversee the People  program in the regions working with ten Practice Managers.
Education Sector in Western and Central Africa (HAWE3)  
The Education team in the Western and Central Africa Region is divided into two units, each covering three CMUs. HAWE3 covers Nigeria, Cameroon, and Ghana CMUs, which includes nine countries. Clients range from low-income countries, among them several fragile and conflict-affected states, to a small but growing number of middle-income countries (MICs) but with weak human development indicators. Average annual per capita income varies widely, and inequalities persist in most AFR countries, with most of the Region's population living in poverty.
In AFR, many countries have achieved considerable progress in access to basic education. But challenges persist, namely: improving the quality and relevance of education at all levels; expanding access to early childhood development (ECD) and post-basic education; developing emphasis on science, technology and innovation; and improving skills development. Efforts are needed in each of these areas to produce a quality workforce to sustain, innovate, and expand on the current economic growth in the region.
The Education GP team in the region works with client countries – at the regional, national, and sub-national levels – to address their unique and shared challenges. We do this by addressing low quality at all levels of education, increasing the efficiency and accountability of education services, modernizing the higher end of the formal education continuum, integrating science and technology more effectively, and aligning skills formation with the needs of a fast-growing Region, including. The Education GP aims to not only deliver high quality products but also to build capacity in client countries through collaborative interactions with country counterparts and other development partners. It seeks to bring the best possible knowledge to bear on the practical challenges facing client countries and at the same time places a high priority on knowledge generation, including through rigorous impact evaluations of education interventions.
Many of our operations and analytical products are based on approaches that (i) assist countries in developing and implementing strategies for ensuring quality teaching and learning at all levels of education (pre-school, basic education, secondary education and tertiary education), and in addressing the issues that face these countries' disadvantaged population groups; (ii) ensures that education systems respond to the needs of labor markets, with a focus on applied sciences, engineering and technology and strengthening the links between post-basic education systems and labor markets; (iii) continue to stress the focus on results; builds capacity for monitoring and impact evaluation of reforms; fosters knowledge sharing; (iv) promote innovative approaches, cross-sectoral linkages, and partnerships with the private sector and other development partners whenever relevant; (v) develop and scale up successful strategies for regional collaboration to leverage economies of scale; and (vi) work to strengthen governance, accountability, and transparency in the education sector.
The unit currently has a portfolio of regional and country projects and programs, analytical and technical assistance activities financed through IDA grants and credits, Trust Funds, and using investment and results-based financing. The portfolio spans the full spectrum of the education sector from early childhood development to higher education and skills development. The unit is committed to delivering high quality technical products to support education development in the Bank’s client countries, and to do so in a manner that build capacity through collaborative interactions with country counterparts.
The World Bank support to Nigeria includes active engagement in policy dialogue, analytical and operational work using various funding instruments. With an estimated education program size of US$2.0 billion and forthcoming pipelines, the World Bank-supported operations are spread across the entire education system. These include pre-primary and primary education, secondary education, technical, vocational and higher education, with national implementation coverage. To ensure comprehensive supervision support to Government while giving space to strategic engagements and advisory services, the World Bank plans to recruit a Education Economist/ Specialist based in Abuja, Nigeria for a one-year Extended Term Consultant (ETC) position.
Duties and Accountabilities 
The Education Economist/Specialist (ETC) provides technical expertise to support and lead/coordinate the preparation, design and implementation supervision of complex or large education or education-related lending operations (IPF, PforR and DPF); and non-lending operations in Nigeria. In addition, he/she will contribute to the development of the IDA pipeline; in addition to contributing to other tasks in the Country Management Unit. More specifically, the ETC tasks and accountabilities include: 
• Supporting strategic and operational work on the Education agenda in Nigeria;• Participating in the technical educational dialogue in the country and serve as one of the focal points for the World Bank on education related activities; • Co-leading or contributing to the preparation and implementation of education and multisectoral operations and ASAs;• Facilitating and coordinating the Knowledge, Analytics and Assessment activities;• Providing policy analysis and advice to counterparts in the areas of education systems reform; offer international comparative perspectives; and recommend policy options and implementation strategies;• Maintaining and fostering partnerships with government actors, bilateral donors, humanitarian and development partners engaged in the education sector; • Identifying opportunities for cross-sector collaboration to improve education service delivery, efficiency, outcomes, and impact of education interventions and to enhance human development impact where relevant;• Executing other tasks and deliverables as deemed appropriate by the Education GP Practice Manager.

Selection Criteria

The candidate should have:
• Educational Degree: a Ph.D. in the field of education, economics, public policy or a Master’s degree with a minimum of 5 years’ experience is required.• Demonstrated experience including recognized technical expertise within core education areas, such as early childhood education, learning poverty, learning assessment, teacher management, training, higher education, or economic analysis for education. • Diverse operational experience supporting clients to build capacity and lead complex policy dialogue on education. • Ability to pay attention to political economic aspects and design programs for comprehensive education reforms.• Strong operational, technical, research, and analytical skills in education and training, including demonstrated track record of thought leadership on education and training, publications, as well as demonstrated impact of analytical work.• Experience in working with cross-sectoral WBG teams, such as cross-People and cross-PG teams.• Track record of building trustful partnerships with external partners, including development partners, to coordinate support for clients and raise resources.• Excellent oral and written communication and presentational skills.

WBG Culture Attributes:

1. Sense of urgency: Anticipate and quickly respond to the needs of internal and external stakeholders.
2. Thoughtful risk-taking: Challenge the status quo and push boundaries to achieve greater impact.
3. Empowerment and accountability: Empower yourself and others to act and hold each other accountable for results.

World Bank Group Core Competencies

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