The Common Country Programme Action Plan (CCPAP, 2007-2010) for South Africa is build on the United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF, 2007-2010), which represents the United Nations' response to the policies and programmes that the Government of South Africa has put in place to address the priority developmental needs of the country.
Considering that the UNDAF is fully based on and responsive to South Africa Government's national development priorities and contextualised within the country's institutional frameworks, the 2007-2010 CCPAP is in keeping with the goals and outcomes of the country's Vision 2014 and National Strategic Plan. Through the convergence of direction among these national policy frameworks and the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs), the CCPAP provides further opportunities and avenues for the South Africa Government to enhance the gains that it has already made towards timely attainment of the MDGs.
Thus, the 2007-2010 CCPAP represents the United Nations Country Team in South Africa's translation of its commitments to addressing the country's development priorities into concrete programmatic interventions with clear outputs, strategies, activities, budgets etc. It emanates from extensive consultations with the Government, NGOs, civil society, multi-bilateral organisations and other development partners on how best to plan, implement and manage collaborative and comprehensive programmatic interventions in response to the national development priorities. Towards this end, the 2007-2010 CCPAP is fully aligned with the principles of national ownership and human-rights based approach as enshrined in South Africa's Constitution and the UN Charter and Guidelines on collaboration with members states. It further focuses on complementing Government efforts to build and strengthen national capacity towards enhanced service delivery for improved quality of life for the people of South Africa.
Under the direction of key Ministries, the technical expertise and coordination capacity of UNDP South Africa focus on pro‑poor capacity development interventions to support the service delivery commitments of the Government, specifically within provincial and local government structures.
UNDP provides 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 Macroorganisation 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
- Strengthen capacity to refine and deepen the policy, regulatory and fiscal environment for Local Government and give greater attention to the enforcement measures.
The Government of South Africa (GOSA) and the UN Evaluation Group (UNEG) conducted a joint evaluation exercise in 2008-09 to review the GOSA-UN collaboration and partnership and to come up with recommendations for transforming the relationship to a strategic level engagement, taking into account the country’s middle income status, its relatively well developed national capacity, and the knowledge and experience of the UN.
South Africa has a unique status and characteristics in that it is considered a middle income country and yet it has got two economies: one represented by characteristics of the developed countries, with high per capita income and sophisticated and advance infra-structure and the second economy, less developed with the majority of the population, but with a per capita income of a developing country. The predicament of the UN system is whether to be involved in development cooperation in a country considered to be middle-income based on the characteristics of its first economy or not.
The UNEG report recommended that the GOSA-UN relationship should be strategic taking into account the unique position of South Africa. It was generally felt that such a partnership should revolve around the provision of high-end technical and policy advisory services in areas that the UN System has comparative advantage based on its long term experience and involvement in technical and development cooperation and in order to optimise the benefits that South Africa can derive from the expertise available within the UN System. UNDP Country Office in South Africa is taking the lead on the UN repositioning initiative in South Africa, engaging the Government and other stakeholders in consultative discussions with a view to transforming itself (UNDP) into a knowledge hub and centre of excellence providing the country and other stakeholders with strategic policy support rather than its traditional technical cooperation project support mechanism which may not be adequate for the relationship with GOSA.
To date, a strategic framework for a new programme focussing on upstream strategic areas has been developed and endorsed by government. An AWP has being finalised for signature in January 2011. A new resource mobilisation strategy is being prepared to fully implement the new programme.
