UNDP IN SOUTH AFRICA

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UNDP South Africa is a centre of development excellence and partner of choice in promoting the achievement of Vision 2014, the Millennium Development Goals and beyond

UNDP's Mandate

As the UN's global development organization, UNDP has a normative global mission, as a pro-poor development agency, to promote human rights, gender and the MDGs. As a cornerstone of its work, UNDP connects partner countries to knowledge, experience and resource networks that build capacity for pro-poor growth and human development. Further, as part of the UN Reforms process, UNDP has a mandate to lead the UN in system-wide coordination,

UNDP and South Africa: Principles of Engagement

The UN System in South Africa is committed to supporting the country in meeting its development objectives in alignment with the national development priorities and within the context of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Through the International Development Cooperation Unit (IDC) in National Treasury the Government of South Africa coordinates donor assistance with the objective of ensuring aid effectiveness within the framework of the Paris Declaration. The Government is clear that ODA to South Africa should essentially constitute a South African-driven partnership for sustainable development between the donor community and South Africa. For the UN in general and UNDP in particular, these partnership principles can be summarized as follows:

• Recognising national ownership of the country's development agenda
• Recognising the roles and responsibilities of the developmental state within context of "peoples contract"
• Aligning UN support with Government's development policies, strategies and frameworks
• Working coherently with the three spheres of Government
• Harmonising UNDP programming with 5 Government clusters and IGR principles of cooperative governance
• Mainstreaming Human Rights, Gender, HIV/AIDS, Capacity Building , Environment, Research and Monitoring and Evaluation as cross-cutting development issues
• Achieving MDGs within context of Vision 2014 and the Programme of Action

The Government in South Africa is keenly focused on:

• Innovative strategies to promote social cohesion
• A comprehensive, integrated and participatory anti-poverty strategy, which will promote national unity, shared value systems and citizen identity.
• Sustainable solutions for priority and quality delivery of basic services particularly to marginalized and vulnerable groups.

In response to this, UNDP will focus on capacity development for pro-poor growth and in priority areas of service delivery and service access. It will provide:

• Inter-sectoral, specialised, participatory governance expertise
• Policy advisory services on capacity development for enhanced service delivery
• Coordination of UN System resources and expertise

UNDP Country Programme 2007 - 2010

The focus of the Country Programme will be to support participatory capacity development initiatives for pro-poor growth.

Under the direction of key Ministries, the technical expertise and coordination capacity of UNDP South Africa will be focused on pro-poor capacity development interventions to support the service delivery commitments of the Government, specifically within provincial and local government structures.

UNDP will provide demand driven technical assistance for diagnosing delivery constraints and strengthening the delivery capacity of the state and its development partners in the following areas:

• Institutional and human capacity needs for the developmental state, including broad-based civic engagement;
• Strengthened capacity to implement policy frameworks that serve to deepen the macro-organization of the state and promote public participation;
• Strengthened capacity for Planning, implementation and monitoring and evaluation;
• Consolidating the Government of SA - Africa Agenda;
• Mainstreaming practical hands-on support to Local Government to improve municipal governance, performance and accountability;
• Capacity to address the structure and governance arrangements of the State in order to better strengthen, support and monitor Local Government; and
• Strengthened capacity to refine and deepen the policy, regulatory and fiscal environment for Local Government and give greater attention to the enforcement measures.

UNDP’s Mission in South Africa

Globally UNDP leads the advancement and evolution of development debates and formulation of new paradigms for democratic governance and capacity development. In South Africa, UNDP's mission is to strengthen capacity for participatory governance and pro-poor growth based on normative and inclusive human rights principles.