Consultant to support the World Bank’s Agriculture Program in Jordan At World Bank

Synopsis: Full-time consultant position to become part of team and support the WBs growing Agriculture sector program in Jordan for the coming several years. The person should have a minimum of 2 years of relevant work experience (5 years preferred), be dynamic (able to learn new skills, adapt to changing situations), energetic (ambitious, hardworking, accountable for results), possess strong communication skills, be familiar with Jordan’s agriculture sector and its stakeholders (especially Ministry of Agriculture and related institutions; private sector), and possess excellent command of English in addition to Arabic.

1. BACKGROUND

Jordan’s agri-food sector is an important source of income, employment, and exports and holds untapped potential. Around 25 percent of Jordan’s poor rely on agriculture for their income. Although primary agriculture contributes only 5.6 percent of GDP, when related value chain activities are counted, the broader agri-food sector contributes about 20-25 percent of GDP. Jordan’s average agriculture value-added as a share of GDP has risen from 3.5 percent in 2001–2010 to 4.8 percent in 2011–2018. Agricultural growth multipliers are generally estimated between 1.3 and 1.8 in developing countries, suggesting strong potential for investment in the agriculture sector to trigger wider economic growth. Currently, primary agriculture and the wider agri-food sector represent 3 percent and 14 percent of formal employment, respectively, masking a significant contribution to livelihoods through large numbers of informal employment opportunities. Increased investment in the agri-food sector can drive rural job creation both on-farm and all along the value chain, including processing, packaging, distribution, and related sectors such as services, input suppliers, transport, and communication.

Jordan’s agri-food sector is facing three principal interlinked challenges: (i) ensuring food security in in the context of increasing exogenous shocks, (ii) worsening water scarcity and drought risk due to climate change and (iii) loss of competitiveness and export markets. Increasing exogenous shocks – rising food prices, post-covid economic recovery, and structural endogenous constraints – in tandem with limited domestic agricultural production and population growth pose a risk to Jordan’s food security. Climate change strongly impacts agriculture in Jordan through higher temperatures, decreased average precipitation, and increased variability in precipitation. This puts the productivity and resilience of both irrigated and rainfed agriculture at risk. The potential of Jordan’s agri-food sector has gone unrealized in recent years as a complex set of structural factors have driven declines in competitiveness for the local market and exports alike. Fresh fruit and vegetables offer major export opportunities but face challenges of (i) loss of key market access due to the Syrian and Iraqi civil wars and (ii) an inadequate enabling environment of public services.

The World Bank’s agriculture program consists of two areas of work:

Technical assistance: Building on Jordan’s National Food Security Strategy, National Sustainable Agriculture Plan and the new economic vision, the analytical work and technical assistance of the WB aims to propose concrete steps towards operationalizing integrated approaches to address food security, build resilience and maximize the economic potential of the sector at national and regional levels. The integrated approach consists of a number of key elements that address different dimensions of the complex food security equation: 1) regional coordination for food security (identifying core regional public goods and strategies for managing commodity trade and risk); 2) innovation (the role of generation, distribution and acquisition of knowledge can play in improving the resilience of the food system) and possible regional collaboration to stimulate and share innovation across the region, 3) managing food stocks of strategic commodities (roles of public and private sector in improving the efficiency of agri-food value chains), 4) the modernization and reform of the wholesale markets and related systems for food products; and 5) a review of public expenditures in the agriculture sector. The technical work will be conducted in close coordination with the private sector, academia, and scientific community, optimizing on the synergies across all actors.

Operations: The GoJ and World Bank are finalizing the preparation of an Agriculture Resilience, Valuechain Development and Innovation (ARDI, “my land” in Arabic) Program for Results (PforR), seeking to address climate change and competitiveness challenges of Jordan’s agriculture sector. The program is in expected to be approved in September 2022 with an expected duration of 2023-2028. The Program Development Objective (PDO) of ARDI is to strengthen the climate resilience and enabling environment for agriculture development in selected value chains in Jordan. It will involve major investments and policy reforms across four sub-results Areas:

• Climate resilience and sustainability: SRA 1.1 Scale-up of Sustainable Agricultural Rainwater Harvesting (RWH) and SRA 1.2 Building Institutional Adaptive Capacity for Innovation; and
• Competitiveness and exports: SRA 2.1 Enabling Services for Value Chain Development and Export Promotion; and SRA 2.2 Matching skills supply with demand in agri-food sector.

2. DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

The consultant will support the overall WB program on agriculture in Jordan, including the analytical work and the operations described above. Specifically, the consultant’s responsibilities will include:

• Facilitate the coordination of the WBs supervision of the ARDI Program with the Ministry of Agriculture and other implementing agencies,
• Contribute to the implementation and supervision of the program through planning of and participation in progress and review meetings, consultations, and missions
• Provide implementation support of selected program activities
• Support TTLs with procurement processes (preparation of terms of references, selection) and serving as focal point for program related requests
• Prepare technical inputs to presentations, documentation, proposals, notes, and any other required material
• Conduct analytical work developing independent analysis and also contributing to broader tasks

3. QUALIFICATIONS

• At least 2 years of relevant work experience, 5 years preferred
• Educational background in agriculture, economics, business, or a related field
• Strong familiarity with Jordan’s public sector including the Agriculture sector
• Broad technical sectoral knowledge of the agriculture sector
• Fluency in Arabic, professional working proficiency in English
• Strong writing skills and ability to draft documents in Arabic and English
• Strong organizational skills and a problem solver attitude: proactive, perseverant, and creative in finding solutions
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills and ability to working within teams and collaborate with others
• High level of motivation and accountability to results

4. SCOPE

1 year (up to total of 150 days) with possibility of extension

5. DELIVERABLES

• Notes and charts facilitating and documenting coordination process
• Analytical work, advisory services and technical inputs
• Operational documents and progress reports