World Bank's Umbrella Trust Fund on Jobs, phase 2 (2020-2024)

Resultat

The implementation of the second phase of the Fund just started. So far, fifteen pilot projects aimed to validate the new approach of the Fund has been initiated. This relates specifically to Window 1 and the objective to provide technical expertise resources to task teams in other Global Practices (GP) and IFC to improve technical quality of operations for improved targeting of jobs outcomes in operational approaches especially in low-income and fragile settings. The pilot projects includes operations from the GPs of Agriculture and Food; Environment and Natural Resources; Finance, Competitiveness and Innovation; Poverty and Equity; Social Protection and Jobs and Urban Resilience and Land. The operations covers five WBG lending regions, and most are carried out in Africa, Central Asia and Europe. Examples of work carried out in the pilots are: For the Agriculture and Growth Programme in Ethiopia, which aims to increase productivity and commercialisation of small holder farmers, the Fund is supporting the operation to strengthen the framework and monitoring and measurement methods to assess the number of jobs created through programme, as well as to capture multiplier effect of jobs of the operation. This is being done for example through collaboration with institutions such as the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency to develop sample frameworks and collect relevant information for selected agricultural value chains, as well as improving Ethiopias Social Accounting Matrix by clearing up issues of the database related to agricultural value chains. For the South Sudan Resilient Agricultural Livelihoods Project (RALP), which aims to improve food availability in the country through increased investment in seed production, farmer capacity building and promotion of mechanisation in agriculture, the Fund is supporting the WB task team in designing the project together with the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security (MAFS) as well as the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) who is the main implementer of the project. The Fund is contributing with functional studies on upstream and downstream job creation in agri-food value chains, establishment of baseline data and appropriate indicators on job creation, and methods of measurement. Through strengthening the design and M&E system of the RALP the goal is to follow and determine the nature of jobs that could be created; full time/part time, self-employed/salaried, and at what part of the value chain. For the Financial Inclusion and Entrepreneurship Scaling Project in Malawi,  which aims to enhance private enterprise growth and job creation in Malawi by increasing MSMEs access to financial services, the Fund will support the part of the project that support the government in measuring direct and indirect jobs created through the components of the project. This includes developing and adopting more jobs related indicators in the project framework and developing methodologies to measure these. Another part of the project where the Fund is involved is in looking at to what extent financial institutions, economists and entrepreneurs are able to ex-ante estimate the number of jobs being created in a planned investment and contribute to analysis of gaps between the data sources from FIs and entrepreneurs, as well as improved reporting templates for FIs for reporting on jobs being created by their SME clients and improved business plan templates for entrepreneurs.