TheJourneyVolume1 - Book - Page 8
#NextGenUNDP
OV E RV I EW
Re-imagining Development
with #NextGen UNDP
T
he COVID-19 pandemic, climate change,
demographic transitions, and the Fourth
Industrial Revolution are amongst the major
issues that are radically reshaping the Continent
of Africa’s development landscape. Working as part of
efforts by the United Nations (UN) and UN Country Teams
active across the Continent, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is supporting countries and
communities to co-create vital development solutions.
UNDP’s work on the ground is led by Resident Representatives (RRs) who head 46 UNDP Country Offices across
Africa. As part of #NextGenUNDP, they are encouraged
to push the boundaries of how the organisation thinks,
delivers, invests, and manages. This institutional and
cultural shift is paying dividends - helping UNDP to offer
the best possible level of support to countries to drive
forward their development priorities in line with the
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
UNDP has been leading the UN’s socio-economic
response to the COVID-19 pandemic - working with
partners to generate quality analysis and data to
understand where the need is greatest. As lockdowns
took hold, our support included using the power of digital
finance to facilitate social protection payments in Nigeria
and helping women entrepreneurs to trade online for
the first time in Uganda, for example. Crucially, vaccines
delayed is development denied for Africa.
KEY ROLE
Therefore, UNDP’s efforts include working with the UN
family and partners to roll out vaccines and procure
vital medical equipment. And the Global Dashboard for
Vaccine Equity is using data to provide new insights for
policymakers into the implications of vaccine inequity
for socio-economic recovery, jobs, and welfare. RRs have
also played a key role in ensuring the successful roll-out
of 35 UNDP Accelerator Labs across Africa. Working with
local communities, the network is helping to maintain the
unprecedented global wave of homegrown innovation,
whose epicentre was in Africa. That included everything
from 3D-printing personal protective equipment in
Tanzania to sequencing the virus’ genomes in Ghana. The
labs will have an increasingly important role in surfacing
and scaling-up grassroots solutions, including in the
digital sphere, to tackle acute challenges such as climate
change, poverty, and inequality.
UNDP is supporting countries to make bold choices
to build forward better from COVID-19. That includes
the work of UNDP’s Climate Promise, which is assisting
countries across Africa to enhance their climate pledges,
or Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). As a
result, countries are promoting closer linkages between
COVID-19 recovery and climate ambition. And governments are leveraging their enhanced NDCs to unlock
new investments in key areas like health, education,
agriculture, and nature. Yet countries across Africa need
new access to finance and debt relief measures as well as
innovative financing solutions to achieve the SDGs.
Efforts like UNDP’s SDG Impact initiative are helping
countries to unlock billions of dollars towards sustainable development and its potential for a similar impact
in Africa is immense. UNDP is also supporting countries
such as Mauritania and Senegal to make strategic investments in the burgeoning African Continental Free
Trade Area, a market of 1.2 billion people. And UNDP
is offering tailored support to regions such as the Sahel.
A Regeneration, our programmatic offer for the region,
will address the underlying causes of instability while
helping to unlock the region’s extraordinary socio-economic promise. That includes investing in young people.
For instance, in cooperation with the Tony Elumelu
Foundation, UNDP aims to support, train and mentor
100,000 young entrepreneurs in the Sahel.
BOLD OBJECTIVES
RRs will play a key role in implementing UNDP’s
Strategic Plan 2022-25. Our objectives are bold at this
pivotal moment for people and planet. That includes
helping 100 million people to escape multidimensional
poverty worldwide, for example. Notably, UNDP has
made an ambitious pledge with our partners to provide
access to clean and affordable energy to 500 million
additional people globally by 2025. That will be achieved
through initiatives like the Africa Minigrids Programme,
which will improve the financial viability of renewable
energy minigrids in 18 countries. Such efforts are critical
in Sub-Saharan Africa where the energy access deficit is
stark -- powering homes, hospitals, and schools, many
for the first time while expanding broadband access, the
nervous system of today’s economy.
UNDP can bring science, knowledge, technology, and
opportunity closer to those who can turn them into development choices and pathways. #FutureSmartUNDP
Resident Representatives must continue to re-imagine
the future of development by challenging accepted
wisdom, breaking new boundaries, and continuing to
explore. Doing so will boost efforts by the United Nations,
countries, communities, and our partners to co-invest in
a greener, more inclusive, and more sustainable future
for all.
ACHIM STEINER
A D M I N I S T R AT O R
U N I T E D N AT I O N S D E V E LO P M E N T P R O G R A M M E
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