Call for Interest - Senior Portfolio Advisor - Short-Term Opportunity for 9 months

## Organizational Setting This call is advertised as a short-term opportunity with a duration of 9 months and expected to start shortly after selection. Should an external candidate (including consultants and staff members not meeting IFAD HR Implementing Procedures' definition of 'internal') be selected, the contract type would be that of a short-term professional (TPO). In the event an IFAD staff member, holding a Fixed Term contract be selected, the movement would be implemented as a Temporary Assignment through the applicable provisions. Applicants should verify and obtain their supervisors' support to be released. This is a short-term contract. The appointment of a short-term staff member carries no expectation of continuous employment or conversion to any other type of appointment with IFAD.The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is an international financial institution and a specialized United Nations agency dedicated to eradicating rural poverty and hunger. It does so by investing in rural people. IFAD finances programmes and projects that increase agricultural productivity and raise rural incomes, and advocates at the local, national and international level for policies that contribute to rural transformation.The Department for Country Operations (DCO) oversees the origination, design and management of IFAD investments, including sovereign and non-sovereign operations, as well as the design and implementation of non-lending activities within country programmes, including policy engagement and SSTC. DCO is the department that primarily interfaces with governments, the private sector and other stakeholders to deliver IFAD's programme of work and to provide oversight to ensure quality of the portfolio.DCO is led by an Associate Vice-President and is composed of five (5) regional divisions: Asia and the Pacific Division (), East and Southern Africa Division (), Latin America and Caribbean Division () , Near East, North Africa and Europe Division () and West and Central Africa Division (), the Private Sector Operations Division (PSD), and two (2) units:  the South-South and Triangular Cooperation Unit (SSTC) and the fragility unit (FRU).The Regional Division NEN is led by a Divisional Director, based in IFAD Headquarters, Rome, Italy.  The Division leads on the design and delivery of IFAD country and regional programmes in NEN.  The precise country coverage of the division varies across replenishment periods. ## Job Role The Senior Portfolio Advisor provides authoritative advice on operational matters related to the divisional portfolio and contributes to relevant corporate processes to enhance the efficiency of IFAD-funded operations. ## Key Functions and Results 1. CONTRIBUTION TO OPERATIONAL POLICY ADVICE: The Senior Portfolio Advisor contributes to relevant corporate processes to enhance the Fund's business model, with a particular focus on efficiency of IFAD-funded operations. Activities may include, but are not necessarily limited to: (a) as part of the Portfolio Advisors' Group, supporting the Office of Development Effectiveness (ODE) in the development and/or revision of relevant operational policies and procedures aimed at enhancing the performance of IFAD-funded interventions, e.g. Supervision and Implementation Support (SIS) policy and guidelines; (b) promoting the use and compliance with new and revised operational policies and procedures by country teams within the division; (c) coordinating divisional efforts to ensure full divisional compliance with IFAD SIS policy and guidelines, and establish relevant divisional quality assurance systems to ascertain quality and cross-country consistency of key SIS mission deliverables and those related to project completion reports; (d) coordinating the divisional self-assessment work which culminates in the yearly Portfolio Stocktaking exercise; (e) providing authoritative advice to country teams pertaining to project results-based management; and (f) providing authoritative advice to the Regional Director and Heads of Multi-country Offices (MCOs) planning exercises.2. COUNTRY PROGRAMME ADVICE AND DEVELOPMENT: The Senior Portfolio Advisor provides authoritative advice on operational matters related to the divisional portfolio, keeping abreast of all relevant corporate changes and reforms having a bearing on portfolio management. Activities may include, but are not necessarily limited to: (a) providing demand-based authoritative advice to the Divisional Director, CDs/Heads of MCOs on operational requests, e.g. extensions, suspensions, cancellations, additional financing, restructuring; (b) closely monitoring portfolio performance and working closely with Country Directors to develop and implement project performance improvement plans for projects-at-risk; (c) ensuring quality review of supervision mission and project completion reports (PCRs), including clearing the reports in the Operational Results Management System (ORMS), and monitoring timely disclosure, as well as providing inputs to Management Letters; (d) playing a role in identifying and mitigating risks in operations, having the oversight of emerging risks from the portfolio, as well as aggregating and reporting on these risks to the Regional Director and relevant committees; (e) working closely with the Senior Regional Economist to ensure, as required, that experiences and lessons learned from the ongoing portfolio are fed into project designs; (f) providing field support on demand during supervision and implementation support missions, and design missions, as required; (g) working closely with PFM and FCD to expedite withdrawal application processing and other loan administration tasks, e.g. addressing ineligible expenditures; and (h) overseeing, monitoring and coordinating IFAD's expanding private sector and equity investment portfolio. Senior Portfolio Advisor support includes providing advice on investment solutions and portfolio quality, also from a financial perspective.3. KNOWLEDGE MANGEMENT AND CAPACITY BUILDING: The Senior Portfolio Advisor engages in a wide range of peer-to-peer interactions and systematically manages and shares both formal and informal knowledge pertaining to relevant qualitative and quantitative information and best practices for the benefit of all country programmes. Activities may include, but are not necessarily limited to: (a) making use of all corporate media and delivery mechanisms, including divisional publications, with particular responsibility for documenting and analyzing implementation-related issues common across country programmes; and (b) taking the lead on designing and delivering needs-based training modules and improving results-based management performance.4. RESULTS MONOTORING AND REPORTING: The Senior Portfolio Advisor coordinates the monitoring and reporting processes on the regional portfolio (loans and grants) management, performance and results for Divisional, Departmental and Corporate levels. This entails, as part of the regional team, organizing and overseeing portfolio data analysis, periodic portfolio performance reports/updates, portfolio reviews and stock takes, production and dissemination of knowledge products, briefs, case studies, as required, and delivering of presentations. The Senior Portfolio Advisor coordinates the divisional quality assurance processes for SIS, mid-term review (MTR), PCR, data/results reporting, and the timely submission and disclosure of reports as well as updating of the various systems, i.e. Grants and Investment Projects System (GRIPS) and ORMS. Upon request, the Senior Portfolio Advisor provides input to new Country Strategic Opportunities Programmes (COSOPs) and the design of new loans and/or grants based on lessons learned from the country portfolio performance. The incumbent coordinates divisional contributions to the corporate Results Measurement Framework (RMF) and provides support to CDs/ Heads of MCOs and Countr