Annual Report 2008

The UN Capital Development Fund: mobilizing capacity development

A team leader conducts a work-shop on local development and poverty alleviation in Yemen.

The UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) and UNDP’s joint work on local development through local authorities in the LDCs draws on their combined mandate to build capacity of and to provide investment resources to local governments. UNCDF’s contributions in the form of investment capital for block grants, capacity development support and technical advisory services are essential for piloting innovations that, when successful, can be scaled up by national governments and replicated in other countries facing similar challenges. UNCDF is administered by UNDP.

Nowhere is this better exemplified than in Yemen, where UNCDF and UNDP are assisting the Government to define and implement decentralization reforms and to enhance the effectiveness of local governments to promote local development and alleviate poverty. The Decentralization and Local Development Support Programme is a multi-donor initiative to improve the decentralized system in Yemen and to strengthen local institutional capacities in public expenditure management.

One dimension of the Programme involves the use of mobile capacity development teams with regionally-based experts seconded from different ministry offices that are mobilized to bring their knowledge to local authorities, and to share best practices between regions. The mobile teams specialize in a wide range of local development skills and expertise, including participatory data collection, integrated planning, budgeting, procurement, supervision of project implementation, accounting and reporting. Operating like capacity-building ambulances, the teams use four-wheel drives to reach remote areas of the country and can leave on a moment’s notice. This approach has enabled the Programme to build capacity where and when it is needed and in a manner that is responsive to the capacity requirements of an evolving local authority system.

Since its start-up in early 2004, the Programme has expanded from eight to 48 districts and has demonstrated the feasibility of fiscal decentralization, while producing a tested basis for a National Decentralization Strategy with a unified methodology and institutional framework. With a total budget of $12.5 million from nine development partners, the Programme has developed an efficient platform through which organizations seeking to support Yemen’s national local development agenda can channel their assistance – demonstrating, in essence, how the various agencies of the UN and other development partners can work together in greater coherence to achieve more effective development results at the local level.