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About UNCDF

The UN Capital Development Fund makes public and private finance work for the poor in the world’s 46 least developed countries (LDCs).

UNCDF offers “last mile” finance models that unlock public and private resources, especially at the domestic level, to reduce poverty and support local economic development.

UNCDF’s financing models work through three channels: (1) inclusive digital economies, which connects individuals, households, and small businesses with financial eco-systems that catalyze participation in the local economy, and provide tools to climb out of poverty and manage financial lives; (2) local transformative finance, which capacitates localities through fiscal decentralization, innovative municipal finance, and structured project finance to drive local economic expansion and sustainable development; and (3) investment finance, which provides catalytic financial structuring, de-risking, and capital deployment to drive SDG impact and domestic resource mobilization.

Calls for tenders and Plug
and Play e-grants

Access to our online calls for tenders and Plug and Play e-grants platform providing a rapid lifeline for local businesses and local governments, enabling us to support the SMEs and public partners at the local level.

Calls for Tenders E-Grants

Report fraud, abuse and misconduct

In order to strengthen UNCDF's accountability framework and to provide opportunities for bringing to light any misconduct, wrongdoing by any individuals working for or doing business with us, UNCDF has established an Investigations Hotline to ensure that persons wishing to report fraud may do so using the link below.

ONLINE FORM

Delivering for people and the planet

The impact of climate change is acutely experienced at the local level – where we work, go to school and live our lives. In the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations, adaptation is critical and all too often, under-resourced.

The UN Capital Development Fund designed the Local Climate Adaptive Living Facility over ten years ago to channel finance to local government authorities and their communities to cover the additional costs of mitigating and adapting to the impacts of climate change, thereby averting or minimising potential loss and damage.

Today, LoCAL is a country-owned mechanism and international standard (ISO 14093:2022) being implemented, or designed for implementation, in over 30 countries across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Pacific.

COVID-19 Pandemic

Today, local governments, nonprofits, and social enterprises in the global south are facing new and unforeseen challenges. Given the need for “emergency” capital, UNCDF can leverage the following technical expertise and investment instruments to reduce and limit the economic and social hardship communities are experiencing.

Capital Musings. A UNCDF Podcast Show.

Capital Musings is a podcast series featuring in-depth conversations with economic development experts, thought-leaders and private sector leaders discussing critical issues at the intersection of development finance, impact investment and the SDGs.

UNCDF and the SDGs

By strengthening how finance works for poor people at the household, small enterprise, and local infrastructure levels, UNCDF contributes to SDG 1 on eradicating poverty and SDG 17 on the means of implementation.

By identifying those market segments where innovative financing models can have transformational impact in helping to reach the last mile and address exclusion and inequalities of access, UNCDF contributes to a number of different SDGs.

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The three-pronged Capital Pathways platform—consisting of “Interact, Innovate, Invest”—was launched at UNCDF’s 1st Annual Investment Forum, which was co-hosted with The Rockefeller Foundation. Capital Pathways was announced before an audience featuring multiple heads of state—H.E. Lazarus Chakwera, President of the Republic of Malawi and H.E. Dr. Moeketsi Majoro, Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Lesotho—as well as H.E. Dr. Rania Al-Mashat, Minister of International Cooperation of the Arab Republic of Egypt. Several ministers from frontier economies were also present at the investment forum.

This event will showcase how loans and guarantees can help attract much-needed capital that can be used towards creating sustainable businesses that lead to structural transformation in LDCs, with a particular focus on unlocking financing for small- and medium-sized enterprises and small and medium-sized infrastructure projects. These projects lead to job opportunities, and stimulate economic activity and sectoral transformation which are pathways towards Stockholm+50’s objective of a healthy planet for all. This can be seen in the results of both UNCDF initiatives: the Gambia’s solar power plants and the Portfolio guarantee in Papua New Guinea to support women owned MSMEs.

The event will bring together representatives from international organizations, LDC and donor / developed country governments, and private sector, to share experiences and perspectives on challenges and opportunities for how guarantees can most effectively be used to enable sustainable development pathways for LDCs towards achieving a healthy planet for all. This event is co-hosted by UNCDF and Sida.
© UN Capital Development Fund 2022. All rights reserved.

United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) image, audio and video files may be used to further the aims and work of the organization. They cannot be used for advertising, marketing or in ways which are inconsistent with the organization's mission.

The audiovisual files cannot be altered, sold or redistributed. Any use of this footage must be authorized by UNCDF and a license agreement must be signed between UNCDF and the requesting entity. Depending on the use of the contents, licensing fees may apply.

Scaling up Access to Affordable Finance in Developing Countries, notably in LDCs.

Reports from the Inter-Agency Task Force on Financing for Development and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change raise the alarm bells on a lost decade for sustainable development and a shrinking window of opportunity to address the devastating impacts of climate change. Transitioning to a green, climate-resilient global economy will require the mobilization of unprecedented capital. However, developing countries, notably LDCs and African countries, continue to have the lowest access to affordable finance. Improving developing countries’ capacity to leverage the potential of green and climate-resilient bonds could be a game-changer for financing nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and national adaptation plans (NAPs). However, green bonds still represent only a fraction of total bonds issued globally and only a small number of developing countries are accessing such a market, notably in Africa, where in 2020, Africa still only accounted for 0.003% of total green bond issuance.

Building on UNCDF’s Sovereign Borrowers Conference held during the 2021 General Assembly, the Government of Malawi and the Chair of the LDC Group, with UNCDF, UNDP and the GCF will bring together global leaders to highlight the actions needed for developing countries, particularly LDCs, to leverage debt markets to increase their access to affordable finance for climate action. Outcomes will contribute to “Our Common Agenda” and the Doha Programme of Action for LDCs.

© UN Capital Development Fund 2022. All rights reserved.

United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) image, audio and video files may be used to further the aims and work of the organization. They cannot be used for advertising, marketing or in ways which are inconsistent with the organization's mission.

The audiovisual files cannot be altered, sold or redistributed. Any use of this footage must be authorized by UNCDF and a license agreement must be signed between UNCDF and the requesting entity. Depending on the use of the contents, licensing fees may apply.

Impact Shares, the nonprofit ETF sponsor-backed by The Rockefeller Foundation, is pleased to announce the launch of the Impact Shares MSCI Global Climate Select ETF (NYSE Arca: NTZO) in collaboration with the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), the UN agency that makes public and private finance work for the poor in the world’s 46 Least Developed Countries (LDCs). NTZO is based on any index licensed by MSCI (NYSE: MSCI), a leading provider of critical decision support tools and services for the global investment community.

The new ETF, based on the MSCI ACWI Climate Pathway Select Index, was co-created by Impact Shares and a working group of the Global Investors for Sustainable Development (GISD) Alliance. In 2019, UN Secretary-General António Guterres established the GISD, a group of 30 of the world’s top business leaders, to arrive at solutions that scale up private finance and investment necessary to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

© UN Capital Development Fund 2021. All rights reserved.

United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) image, audio and video files may be used to further the aims and work of the organization. They cannot be used for advertising, marketing or in ways that are inconsistent with the organization's mission.

The audiovisual files cannot be altered, sold or redistributed. Any use of this footage must be authorized by UNCDF and a license agreement must be signed between UNCDF and the requesting entity. Depending on the use of the contents, licensing fees may apply.

At the 76th Session of the UN General Assembly, the Government of Fiji, Global Fund for Coral Reefs, Joint SDG Fund, and UNCDF, will hold a side-event to showcase blended finance in action. The focus of this event will be on Blue Economy developments for Fijian Coral Reefs and local communities. Together, the Joint SDG Fund and GFCR are providing USD 3.5M in capital investment to mobilise commercial investments, promote financial sustainability of coral reef conservation and accelerate reef-positive livelihoods. This initial funding will seed the facility, bringing a mature pipeline and signed partnerships, including the investment manager; the facility will seek private sector investment and contribution from individual donors and foundations.

© UN Capital Development Fund 2021. All rights reserved.

United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) image, audio and video files may be used to further the aims and work of the organization. They cannot be used for advertising, marketing or in ways which are inconsistent with the organization's mission.

The audiovisual files cannot be altered, sold or redistributed. Any use of this footage must be authorized by UNCDF and a license agreement must be signed between UNCDF and the requesting entity. Depending on the use of the contents, licensing fees may apply.

Parallel Session at the UN Food Systems Pre-Summit in Rome on 27 July 2021 on “Transformative Finance for Resilient Local Food Supply Chains” jointly sponsored by UNCDF and WFP.

© UN Capital Development Fund 2021. All rights reserved.

United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) image, audio and video files may be used to further the aims and work of the organization. They cannot be used for advertising, marketing or in ways which are inconsistent with the organization's mission.

The audiovisual files cannot be altered, sold or redistributed. Any use of this footage must be authorized by UNCDF and a license agreement must be signed between UNCDF and the requesting entity. Depending on the use of the contents, licensing fees may apply.

UNCDF side event during the Second Intergovernmental Preparatory Committee for the Fifth UN Conference on Least Developed Countries (LDC5)

It is critical that the LDC5 Conference delivers concrete solutions that make finance work better for the LDCs and to leave no one behind. Among such solutions, as articulated in the draft outcome document of LDC, is the establishment of a dedicated and sufficiently large blended finance de-risking facility for LDCs that is focused on providing catalytic capital to growth SMEs, small investment projects and other strategic investments with transformative SDG potential, in order to unlock further commercial and semi-commercial investments. If properly resourced, UNCDF’s BRIDGE Facility can serve as a dedicated financing mechanism, which can include flexible financing that can be used to attract additional resources from the private sector to SDG-aligned investments that can scale to address the needs of the LDCs, including for graduating LDCs.

© UN Capital Development Fund 2021. All rights reserved.

United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) image, audio and video files may be used to further the aims and work of the organization. They cannot be used for advertising, marketing or in ways which are inconsistent with the organization's mission.

The audiovisual files cannot be altered, sold or redistributed. Any use of this footage must be authorized by UNCDF and a license agreement must be signed between UNCDF and the requesting entity. Depending on the use of the contents, licensing fees may apply.

The Addis Ababa Action Agenda and the 2030 Agenda both identify the need for multiple sources of finance to work together effectively and in new combinations. Yet, the international financial architecture is not designed to directly support small ticket size, higher risk transactions that – nevertheless – will be the key to achieving transformative impact at the local level.

Against this context, it is critical that the LDC5 Conference delivers concrete solutions that make finance work better for the LDCs and to leave no one behind.

The objective of this session is therefore to explore the suite of financing and de-risking resources and instruments that catalyze additional resources to help fill financing gaps and support transformative investments in LDCs.

© UN Capital Development Fund 2021. All rights reserved.

United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) image, audio and video files may be used to further the aims and work of the organization. They cannot be used for advertising, marketing or in ways which are inconsistent with the organization's mission.

The audiovisual files cannot be altered, sold or redistributed. Any use of this footage must be authorized by UNCDF and a license agreement must be signed between UNCDF and the requesting entity. Depending on the use of the contents, licensing fees may apply.