Delivering the Goods Building Local Government Capacity to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals A Practitioner's Guide from UNCDF Experience in Least Developed Countries October 2005 Foreword | Introduction Summary Publication: [ pdf ] Full Publication: [ pdf ] Purchase this book at UN Publications or Amazon.com.

A key part of any strategy for poverty reduction and for achievement of the Millennium Development Goals lies in improved delivery of basic public infrastructure and related services. This point has been forcefully made in numerous global fora, where the international community has called for a major increase in funding for public investments, for poor people and in poor areas – and also for the rapid deployment of locally appropriate and replicable delivery systems to ensure effective absorption of funds for delivery of this infrastructure on the scale required. The challenge is to devise or to reform local infrastructure systems, to ensure that resources allocated for local public expenditure on pro-poor investments are used effectively, efficiently, equitably and accountably.

This Guide is intended as a modest contribution to addressing this challenge. Over the past decade UNCDF has built up a portfolio of Local Development Programmes in the Least Developed Countries, primarily in Africa and Asia. Although these LDPs operate in very different national contexts – and are tailored accordingly – they all embody a common strategy: they aim to promote more effective, efficient, equitable and accountable infrastructure and service delivery through rural local governments, by twinning innovations in funding mechanisms with other “capacity development” innovations in planning, budgeting, delivery and accountability arrangements.