Social Protection Specialist


The World Bank Group - Established in 1944, the WBG is one of the world's largest sources of funding and knowledge for development solutions. In fiscal year 2017, the WBG committed $59 billion in loans, grants, equity investments and guarantees to its members and private businesses, of which $19 billion was concessional finance to its poorest members. It is governed by 188 member countries and delivers services out of 120 offices with nearly 15,000 staff located globally.

We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Position: Social Protection Specialist
Job #: req1044
Job Location: Abuja, Nigeria
Grade: GF
Sector: Social Protection
Term Duration: 1 year 0 months
Recruitment Type: Local Recruitment

Job Descriptions

  • The World Bank Group is one of the world’s largest sources of funding and knowledge for developing countries. It uses financial resources and extensive experience to help poor nations reduce poverty, increase economic growth, and improve quality of life.
  • To ensure that countries can access the best global expertise and help generate cutting-edge knowledge, the World Bank Group is constantly seeking to improve the way it works. Key priorities include delivering measurable results, promoting openness and transparency in development, and improving access to development information and data.

Social Protection and Jobs Global Practice Context

  • In a world filled with risk and potential, social protection and labor policies and programs help people and families find jobs, improve productivity, cope with shocks, invest in the health and education of their children, as well as the protection for the aging population.
  • Social protection programs, which comprise social assistance (such as cash transfers, school feeding, targeted food assistance and subsidies), social insurance (such as old-age, survivorship, disability pensions, and unemployment insurance), and social services for vulnerable groups are a powerful tool to reduce poverty and enhance households’ resilience. They can have a direct, positive impact on poor families by building human capital and strengthening their productive inclusion. .
  • Jobs, too, are critical for reducing poverty and promoting prosperity. All countries, regardless of income, face challenges creating and sustaining adequate job opportunities for their citizens.
  • The World Bank supports social protection and jobs programs in developing countries as a central part of its mission to end extreme poverty an foster shared prosperity. To this end, the institution increased its engagement in social protection and jobs significantly in the last years.
  • The World Bank’s 10-year social protection strategy’s main objective is to help countries move from fragmented projects to harmonized social protection and labor systems. It focuses on making these systems more inclusive of the vulnerable and more attuned to building people’s capacities and improving the productivity of their work. The strategy lays out ways to deepen the Bank’s involvement, capacity, knowledge, and impact in social protection and labor.
  • The SPJ Global Practice is seeking a Social Protection Specialist to be located in the Abuja Country Office with excellent technical skills and significant operational experience in the design and implementation of delivery systems in safety net programs, especially ID and payments systems, to support clients develop these systems in Nigeria.

Country Context

  • The SPJ Global Practice has a large portfolio in Nigeria and comprises of IDA-funded projects amounting to about US$ 1.3 billion. There are three major operations currently under supervision as well as technical work.
  • National Social Safety Nets Project (NASSP) $500 million credit from IDA. The project development objective (PDO) for NASSP is to provide access to targeted transfers to poor and vulnerable households under an expanded national social safety nets system.
  • The project targets poor households in Nigeria, identified through a combination of geographical and community-based targeting (CBT) verified by a proxy means test (PMT) and included in the National Social Registry. The project will expand gradually to cover 4 million households in the National Social Registry and 1 million households (about 5 million individuals) per year for targeted cash transfers by 2021.
  • The project provides support for the design and implementation of the government’s National Social Safety Nets Coordinating Office (NASSCO) and the targeted cash transfers. This involves supporting the set-up of the safety net institutional framework and delivery systems for the national cash transfer project through two components: (a) Establishing the Foundation for a National Social Safety Net System; and (b) Implementing a Targeted Cash Transfer. The project is national in coverage, with all states eligible for the intervention.
  • YESSO The $400 million Youth Employment and Social Support Operation (YESSO) provides assistance to 15 (fifteen) State Governments to help develop their respective safety net systems, a public workfare intervention, a skills development program and a targeted grant transfer for internally displaced people in the North East. The Project is expected to close in June 2020.
  • CSDP The $415 million Community and Social Development Project (CSDP) is operating in 30 (thirty) States plus the Federal Capital Territory. The Project supports State Agencies that provide grants to poor community and vulnerable groups for community and group-owned micro-projects for delivery of basic social services. The project is also expected to close in June 2020.
  • Technical assistance and analytical work focused mainly on protection and promotion of basic services for the poor and vulnerable.

Duties and Accountabilities 

  • The responsibilities of the staff member will be to advance the World Bank's current safety net program implementation, as well as the broader social protection and jobs policy dialogue in Nigeria. This will specifically relate to supporting ongoing programs of operations, as well as the ongoing technical assistance agenda of the World Bank Team.

The Specific Responsibilities are as follows:

  • Participate in and carry-out, as needed, the development, appraisal and supervision of delivery systems. Provide technical advice and policy guidance to government in consultation with the World Bank's management and relevant task team leaders (TTLs). These tasks will require a wide variety of skills, including technical analysis; design of delivery systems, and technical assistance activities; interaction with clients at the policy level; supervision of consultants; management of trust funds etc.;
  • Support the day-to-day operational needs of the Nigeria National Safety Net Program,  particularly overseeing the payments system and social registries being used to make cash transfers.  Respond to government and donor partners requests for action on project implementation issues and help to ensure the World Bank's timely and complete responses to those requests;
  • Participate and organize missions to provide technical inputs and guidance to counterparts, including improving the monitoring and evaluation of project activities.  The candidate will also be expected to participate in developing reports and evaluations of delivery systems as relevant;
  • Strengthen World Bank’s services to clients and donor partners by helping in donor coordination and liaison with NGOs and Government counterparts,  as it relates to the delivery systems agenda;
  • Contribute to cross-sectoral work, collaborating with other initiatives in social protection and job, with the Human Development team, and other units within the World Bank’s broader country team.;
  • Work closely with the World Bank’s financial management and procurement teams and assist government in matters of project implementation;
  • Carry out any other related technical assessments (including the preparation of analytical pieces and/or technical reports on various aspects of ongoing and pipeline Bank projects) and administrative activities required by the TTL, Practice Manager and Country Director.

Reporting Lines:

  • The Social Protection Specialist will report to Social Protection Practice Manager, West and Southern Africa, and the TTLs for Social Protection tasks in Nigeria.

Accountabilities:

  • The Social Protection Specialist is accountable for performing the responsibilities, modeling the behaviors and maintaining the competencies in his or her capacity as a member of the Social Protection and Jobs Global Practice. Accountability means being answerable for achieving results, managing quality, risks and institutional initiatives, and operating in compliance with World Bank policies and procedures.

Selection Criteria

  • Master's degree in Economics, Social Science or related discipline, or relevant training in delivery systems
  • At least five years of relevant operational experience in the development field, preferably in the delivery systems in Nigeria with emphasis on social protection program design and implementation.  Experience in other African or developing countries and on payments systems is desirable
  • Proven technical skills and experience
  • Demonstrated ability to develop and maintain productive, professional relationships with government counterparts, donors, civil society and other stakeholders
  • High capacity for organization and coordination, as well as an ability to work with a high degree of independence in a team environment
  • Experience working in a multi-donor environment
  • Experience in managing diverse and sometimes competing interests and perspectives to arrive at a durable consensus;
  • Fluency in written and spoken English
  • Willing to travel to remote areas in Nigeria and field experience in developing countries a


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