What we aim to accomplish
UNDP South Africa is committed to promoting strategic partnership with the Government of the Republic of South Africa through strong alignment with national development priorities and aspirations. The Country Office intends to enhance its credibility through operational efficiency and effectiveness that will promote aid effectiveness in use of resources, create maximum impact and become more relevance to the country through knowledge management and sharing of good practices, development management support and policy advocacy.
This is to be achieved by focusing on UNDP's comparative advantage, supporting the UN coherence agenda and tactical partnership with other development partners in the country. With the available capacity, the CO intends to strategically position itself to play its catalytic role more efficiently and effectively.
Development Trends
South Africa’s growth in GDP since 1993 has been consistently positive with the highest growth rate of 5.6% in 2006 while the lowest was-1.8% in 2009 which was largely attributed to the global financial and economic crisis. The country emerged from the recession at the end of 2009 and saw an estimated growth rate of 2.8% in 2010. Its HDI for 2010 stood at 0.597 with a rank of 110 globally. In the policy realm, South Africa unveiled a New Growth Path (NGP) aimed at addressing the twin principal socioeconomic challenges – high level unemployment and inequality by encouraging more labour-intensive and green economic activities, and intensifying social dialogue among its stakeholders.
The country continued to face structural and human development challenges including HIV/AIDS, high level of unemployment (estimated at 25.4%), inequality and poverty, uncompetitive and volatile exchange rate, and skills shortage to support growth. The impact of the dual epidemics of TB and HIV/AIDS are being felt across sectors, with government programmes and services being constrained in their day to day business, thereby undermining development efforts and progress. The service delivery challenges are huge and have sparked many protests across the country and the Government has embarked on measures to tackle the problem through, among others, institutionalised PM&E systems. ODA, though fragmented, is increasingly being channelled towards national service delivery efforts.
It is acknowledged by authorities that poverty reduction strategies have not yet reduced inequality and its consequences of poverty amongst women, especially in rural areas. In spite of the constitutional and legal provisions for gender equality and women empowerment, women in South Africa still experience social, cultural, political, and economic inequalities. A new development in this regard is the creation of the Department for Women, Children and People with Disabilities with the mandate to address the need for equity and access to development opportunities for vulnerable groups.
South Africa is one of the countries making laudable progress towards the attainment of several MDGs. The 2010 FIFA World Cup provided the platform to raise awareness for the implementation of MDGs, and the use of a sustainable public transport system. However, South Africa’s progress on MDGs reporting has been hampered by inadequate advocacy, mainstreaming and domestication. The country also faces environmental sustainability challenges, among others, climate change, loss of biodiversity, pollution of water resources, deforestation, and lack of capacities and coordination. These challenges have the potential to constrain human development and the attainment of MDGs.
Key results of UNDP's intervention in South Africa:
Programme Area 1: Enhancing Inlcusive Growth:
UNDP organized the International Conference on Social Protection - Lessons from BRICS (20-21 September 2011). This conference was co-hosted by the National Planning Commission, with the aim of learning from other BRIC countries and sharing experiences. As a result of the conference, UNDP submitted four key policy recommendations to the National Planning Commission in preparation of its long-term (20-year) development plan for South Africa. The recommendations were later incorporated into the plan, which was released in October 201. Other areas of collaboration between UNDP and the Government on social protection have been identified and will be explored and developed in 2012.
Land reform and rural development have implications for economic growth and political stability. UNDP has provided a technical paper as input to the development of the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform Green Paper. The final paper will be submitted to Cabinet in 2012.
UNDP, in collaboration with UN-DESA, is supporting the Department of Economic Development with the implementation of the New Growth Path. In particular, the support is aimed at developing policy options for employment generation through a green economy (Green Jobs). A scoping mission by UNDP and UNDESA to assess the capacity-building needs of the Department was undertaken in September 2011. Further discussions, including the secondment of an international policy advisor to the Department, are ongoing.
A capable public service is necessary for accelerated service delivery to enhance inclusive growth in South Africa. UNDP has collaborated with the Minister of Public Service and Administration to develop terms of reference and a work plan for drafting a Green Paper on the Review and Repositioning of the Public Service. This will be the first major review since the Presidential Review Commission initiated by the then President Mandela in 1996.
Programme Area 2: Climate Change and Greening the Economy
UNDP has played a leading role in supporting GoSA, through the Department of Environmental Affairs, with preparation for COP 17. UNDP has focused on making the process inclusive through periodic stakeholder engagements that include parliamentarians, business, the media, civil society organizations, African Ambassadors and the media. These formal meetings have been complemented with informal discussions. UNDP conducted a capacity building programme on COP 17 for parliamentarians in June 2011. UNDP has convened monthly inter-agency meetings on COP 17 and this has contributed to a coordinated UNCT effort on COP 17. Gender-related work is discussed under Gender Transformation.
On 23 June 2011, UNDP hosted a national event on Gender and Climate Change which was well received and laid the foundation for future work and partnerships with government and civil society. UNDP provided financial and technical support to GoSA to host a National Consultation for rural women on climate change; 400 women attended. UNDP has continued to provide technical assistance of the GoSA on provincial consultations for rural women on climate change. This training was a critical marker on the road to Durban and COP17 and was followed by a UNDP supported meeting of SADC Ministers of women's and gender affairs and a continental rural meeting to ensure a transparent, fair and equitable COP. Both meetings resulted in position papers that will be promoted by the relevant ministers at COP 17.
Programme Area 3: Developing capacity for promoting peace and development
UNDP is in the process of finalizing the programme of work in this programme area. Discussions have been held with the Minister of Correctional Services and Commissioner of Correctional Services to support the transformation of prisons to facilitate the reintegration of prisoners into society. This is being done in collaboration with UNODC. UNDP is also in discussion with the Minister of Public Service and Administration to support the preparation of a national anti-corruption strategy.
Cross-cutting Programme Area: Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women
While women are relatively well represented in governance structures in South Africa, their capacity to participate effectively has yet to be developed fully. UNDP is supporting capacity development of women in legislatures at national, provincial and local government spheres. To date, 128 women from 9 provinces and various political parties have been trained on internet research to improve their input to parliamentary processes; engaging with the media; SADC protocol on Gender; and general IT literacy. Discussions are underway with Parliament to develop the 2012-2013 programme.
Initiatives discussed under the Climate Change and Greening the Economy programme have laid the foundation for longer term efforts to empower women across all sectors including rural women to ensure that their voices are heard and incorporated in the immediate negotiations and beyond, ensuring that women have access to equal opportunities in the green economy. The Ministry of Energy and the Department of Women Children and Persons with Disabilities approached UNDP to continue this work through investigating the possibility of establishing a Barefoot College using the Indian model, as well as, that of Grameen Shakti in Bangladesh to empower and train the most vulnerable in climate change technologies.
UNDP is represented in the new Donor Group on Ending Gender Based Violence and will partner with other agencies to promote initiatives around the Secretary General's UNiTE Campaign to End Violence against Women during the 16 Days of Activism. UNDP is the lead agency on an advocacy initiative UNiTE to end Violence against Women film festival. Partners collaborating on the film festival are UNFPA, UN Women, UNICEF, The Department of Women Children and Persons with disabilities, the Ministry of Arts and Culture, the National Film and Publications Board, Sonke Gender Justice, the French Embassy, the Jamaican Embassy, the British High Commission and DFID, and Women of the Sun. The festival will be one element of UNDPs initiatives to use the arts to raise advocacy to end violence against women.
Cross-cutting Programme Area: Aid Coordination And Strengthening Development Partnership
South Africa is increasing its development cooperation on African Continent with the proposed establishment of the South Africa Development Partnership Agency. UNDP has provided senior advisory support to National Treasury and DIRCO on establishment of SADPA (organization structure and reporting options). The senior advisor has also supported National Treasury with important aid coordination and aid effectiveness issues, including development of a policy framework and operational guidelines for use by departments, consolidation of the country analysis 2011 for use by other development partners, and advisory support in preparations for the Busan conference on aid effectiveness.
Cross-cutting Programme Area: Millennium Development Goals
In general, South Africa has made progress on some MDGS, such as poverty (MDG 1) and education (MDG 2), but it lags in others, such as child health (MDG 4), maternal health (MDG 5) and HIV/AIDS (MDG 6). At the request of the Parliament Multi-Party Women's Caucus (MPWC), UNDP facilitated an awareness-creation workshop in Cape Town on 29th June 2011, which laid the groundwork for more extensive collaboration on MDGs between UNDP and the larger Parliament of South Africa. The workshop was facilitated by the CO and the Regional Service Centre. This collaboration coincided with Parliament's preparation of a report on its role in South Africa's implementation of the MDGs which was presented at the 125th meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) in Switzerland in October 2011. The CO is also working with the National Assembly to prepare a toolkit on legislative oversight of MDGs; the Parliament Women's Caucus Group has already begun community and constituency advocacy programmes on MDGs.
In addition to the above, a National Task Team on the MDGs Acceleration (MAF) was set up in August, 2011, under the auspices of the CO. The Task Team selected MDG 5 as a MAF candidate and the process of formulating a MAF action plan is ongoing.
The above results strengthened and expanded UNDP programmatic partnerships with other UN agencies, EU and other external partners, the civil society and the government. These partnerships have resulted in mobilizing additional resources, expanding development networks, and facilitated access to and participation of communities and repositioned UNDP within the development community in South Africa.
Programme Delivery
- Programme Delivery 2006 Us$ 6,638,877.51
- Programme Delivery 2007 Us$ 4,684,553.21
- Programme Delivery 2008 Us$ 4,277,598.00
- Programme Delivery 2009 Us$ 4,262,147.00
- Programme Delivery 2010 Us$ 4,830,581.00
- Programme Delivery 2011 Us$ 8,700,802.00
