Senior Policy Associate - J-PAL Africa

J-PAL Africa is seeking a Senior Policy Associate to support its mission of promoting evidence-based policymaking. The Senior Policy Associate will support J-PAL Africa’s partnership with the Government of Benin to Strengthen Evidence-Informed Policymaking. We are looking for an entrepreneurial and proactive candidate with strong relationship management skills who can build and maintain trusted partnerships with government counterparts, identify and drive strategic opportunities, and champion the use of evidence in policymaking and programme delivery.

The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) is a global research center working to reduce poverty by ensuring that policy is informed by scientific evidence. Anchored by a network of more than 1,100 top researchers at universities around the world, J-PAL conducts innovative research and builds powerful partnerships to solve the world’s greatest challenges. J-PAL Africa’s policy team analyses and disseminates research results and builds partnerships with practitioners and policymakers to ensure that policy and programmes are informed by scientific evidence, and effective programmes are scaled up. 

The J-PAL Africa team provides supportive management structures and offers flexibility for accelerated growth by supporting proactivity and encouraging top performers to expand and develop their portfolio.

Responsibilities include:

• Project development: Scope potential opportunities and partnerships for evidence use, scale-up, and evidence generation, through partnership development, desk research, event attendance, targeted outreach, and scoping trips. Cultivate and support existing relationships with key partners and regularly engage with them to identify needs and opportunities for collaboration. Where relevant, liaise between government officials and researchers in our network to advance scaling opportunities, disseminate evidence, or generate research using randomized evaluations. 
• Project Implementation: Plan and coordinate, and eventually directly manage policy projects and processes. Provide technical assistance to governments, in partnership with affiliated researchers where necessary, to support the development of evidence-informed policies and programmes in the relevant sector of expertise. This will involve synthesising evidence, supporting local adaptation through the design and implementation of data collection activities where needed, and co-designing interventions with government counterparts. A critical element will also be convening and coordinating stakeholders, including policy makers, affiliates, implementing partners, external contractors and team members for successful project implementation.
• Topic expertise: Maintain expertise on evidence and policy priorities in relevant subject areas and critically engage with existing evidence to identify replicable interventions and policy-relevant research questions. Codify and disseminate evidence on interventions that might address the challenges identified by government counterparts and Benin’s Vision 2060.
• Events and communications: Support content generation on evidence and policy activities in both French and English for various media platforms (social media, blog posts, third party publications etc) and support with drafting of donor reports. Prepare presentations and workshops for internal and external events and training, working with the Operations team to coordinate the logistics and planning.

Requirements:

• A Master’s Degree in Public Policy, Economics, or another similar social science including courses in econometrics/statistics, microeconomics, and development economics.
• Demonstrated ability to read and analyse rigorous quantitative research, including randomized evaluations, as well as interpreting and sharing policy lessons from randomized evaluations.
• A minimum of two years of relevant work experience.
• Advanced writing and oral presentation skills in English and French, particularly the ability to communicate technical research to policymakers in a non-technical manner.
• Demonstrated ability to build cross-organizational partnerships and/or identify and develop new projects.
• Ability to create and cultivate relationships with external stakeholders, such as policymakers or researchers. 
• An entrepreneurial mindset and demonstrated ability to identify new, high-value opportunities and mobilize teams to collaborate on new project creation.
• Good quantitative and data analysis skills. 
• Proven experience managing and influencing complex decision-making processes.
• Strong skills in Excel, Word, and Powerpoint.

Highly advantageous:

• Demonstrated interest and/or experience working with national or regional government in Benin
• Experience working in policy advisory and design.
• Experience working in Benin.