TheJourneyVolume1 - Book - Page 74
#NextGenUNDP
Anthony Ngororano
MAU RI TAN I A
strategic opportunity to recast its role within the UNDS.
Essentially, as I saw it, this was largely going to be about
finding out how to better mobilize UNCTs around the
achievement of collective results, beyond joint work, and
often without concomitant changes in incentives.
In Mauritania, key contributions by UNDP to the transformation of the country’s development landscape during
my tenure to date include:
l Opening a new and major potential development
financing option for Mauritania leveraging Islamic Finance
with an emphasis on Zakat. UNDP and the Ministry of
Finance are co-leading work aimed at institutionalizing
Zakat bringing together different UN agencies and key
stakeholders;
l Helping establish and operationalize Mauritania’s
National Volunteer Program, which played a key role in
COVID-19 and national disaster response efforts;
l Playing a lead role in the initiation design, stakeholder
engagement, and set-up of Mauritania’s National Digital
Agency, to be launched early 2022, and in so doing,
ensuring inclusive digital development is central to its
mandate and functioning. The Agency will be responsible
for the implementation of the national digital transformation strategy. UNDP has also just completed a National
Digital Readiness Assessment, providing the first full
mapping of the digital development landscape;
l Laying the foundation for the governance of rural
electrification, through the successful conclusion of the
UNDP Electricity Sector Development Program, that now
provides the overarching framework for all rural electrification programs, irrespective of their funding source.
My main takeaway from serving as an RR is that there
are few things as important (or as difficult) as constantly
ensuring that the team is more than the sum of its parts.n
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M Y FAVO U R I T E Q U OTAT I O N
“Happiness and freedom
begin with one principle. Some
things are within your control,
and some are not.”
EPICTETUS