The International Growth Centre (IGC) works with policymakers in developing countries to promote
inclusive and sustainable growth through path breaking research. The IGC combines a set of
programme teams across Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East with a network of worldleading researchers, backed by a global hub at the London School of Economics in partnership with the
University of Oxford. IGC partner countries currently include Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana, India,
Jordan, Mozambique, Pakistan, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Uganda, and Zambia. The IGC is majority
funded by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).
In an innovative collaboration to improve the use of data for making policy decisions and driving reforms, the Government of Zambia and the IGC, with support from the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, are seeking to establish an Evidence Lab embedded within the Ministry of Finance and National Planning operated in close partnership with the Zambia Statistics Agency. The Lab, which will provide first-of-its-kind analytical expertise within the Zambian government to produce data-driven policy outputs, is a result of an IGC and Finance Ministry-led government-wide exercise conducted last year that highlighted the opportunity to enhance policymaking by better utilising the relatively abundant data available, which can be achieved by strengthening capacity and establishing a dedicated team to connect data with policy.
The Head of the Evidence Lab will lead the day-to-day operations of the Lab to establish and deliver the Lab’s strategy, based full-time within the Ministry of Finance and National Planning in Lusaka. The key responsibilities will include:
⎯ Provide day-to-day leadership of the Lab including implementing the Lab’s strategy, with a focus
on institutionalising progress,
⎯ Lead programme delivery, mentor and manage a team of staff economists and operational staff,
⎯ Provide oversight on all data-driven policy outputs (including cost-benefit, econometric, policy
diagnostic, data illustrations) throughout the entire analytical processes,
⎯ Maximise methodological rigor across all outputs,
⎯ Deliver policy impact through demonstrating the value of evidence-based policy,
⎯ Manage relationships with policymakers,
⎯ Communicate complex findings in writing and verbally to non-specialists, and
⎯ Lead budget, risk, and grant reporting with support from operations staff.
The Head of the Evidence Lab will work in close collaboration with the Lab leadership, including the
Evidence Lab Steering Committee led by the Finance Ministry’s Permanent Secretary and a Leadership

Working Group led by a Director at the Finance Ministry. Reporting to Director of Impact and
Programmes, with a dotted line day to day supervision by the Country Manager Zambia, and they will
have experience in:
⎯ Working with large datasets, ideally public-sector administrative datasets.
⎯ Engaging closely with policymakers, ideally in a developing country.
⎯ Leading a team.

Responsibilities 

Creating and delivering a multi-year agile workplan based on the Lab’s concept note and
Logframe including identifying priority areas for project generation and policy engagement, a
rigorous quality assurance mechanism, and project management structures with a focus on
cohesion in leadership between IGC, the Finance Ministry, and key government partners.
2. Lead on development of all policy outputs including oversight of the entire analytical
processes from structuring research questions in partnership with policymakers, undertaking
policy diagnostic, conducting econometric analysis, and active dissemination exercises. This
will involved coordination with IGC’s academic leadership.
3. Lead on a data diagnostic exercise to map out datasets in priority areas, including identifying
gaps in data.
4. Recruiting, managing and mentoring a team of economists and data analysts to deliver
analysis and policy impact.
5. Work closely with the government partners particularly in the Finance Ministry and the
ZamStats to maintain policy buy-in, troubleshoot bottlenecks, increase impact, and align
strategic direction with policy priorities.
6. Lead programme delivery and management, including terms of reference documents, budget
management, forecasting and ensuring value for money. In close collaboration with the MEL
team based at the London IGC Hub, ensure the ongoing monitoring and evaluation of the Lab.
7. Deliver, in partnership with LSE colleagues, an active capacity building programme to
government partners to improve the public capacity to consume data-driven evidence.
8. Consider, plan and develop the best way toto effectively deploy and prioritise resources
available within the Lab to deliver highest impact.
9. Actively identify how the Lab’s model can be constantly reshaped to deliver highest impact,
sustainability, and rigour.
10. Work with the wider IGC Zambia programme team to support the identification and
development of new policy-relevant research projects that require push the frontier of
knowledge in development economics.
11. Collaborating closely with teams in the London IGC Hub, including compliance, operations,
finance, MEL, Programme Management team, and SMT where required.

The successful candidate will have a combination of the following experiences and qualifications:

• Master’s level degree qualification in economics or closely related with significant training in econometrics.
• Using quantitative analytical methods, particularly those applicable to non-experimental observational data.
• Precedence of successful project management in complex agile settings.
• Working with large datasets, ideally public-sector administrative datasets.
• Engaging closely with policymakers, ideally in a developing country.
• Leading a team.