UNCDF's presents it latest publication “Local Government Finance is Development Finance” by the Local Transformative Finance team.This publication rests on a three-decade foundation of knowledge and networks
that have sustained UNCDF’s work in local financing of infrastructure and services since the design of the first local development fund in the 1990s.

This book highlights the partnership, policy and investment agenda of UNCDF in sub – national finance. The book expands on, and provides context to, the approved 2022 – 2025 UNCDF Strategic Framework and its vision for the flagship area of Local Transformative Finance.

The United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) has a long track
record of conceiving and testing innovative financial solutions that mobilize
capital investment for our clients – the frontier economies known as
least developed countries (LDCs) – and their populations, while contributing to
thought leadership for the wider financing of the development agenda. Recent
examples of this thought leadership include collaboration with the Organisation
for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on the annual Blended
Finance in the Least Developed Countries report and the biannual World Observatory on Subnational Government Finance and Investment report.

The recently approved UNCDF Strategic Framework 2022–2025 continues this
tradition by emphasizing UNCDF’s hybrid nature as a development finance institution on the one hand and a United Nations development agency on the other.
During the discussions leading up to the 2022–2025 Strategic Framework’s
approval, Member States and development partners encouraged UNCDF to
strengthen its alignment with the priorities of the LDCs as expressed in the Doha Programme of Action (2022), which highlights building productive capacity. LDC concerns are also embodied in their collective requests to the Rio conventions on climate, biodiversity and desertification for financial mechanisms that address the existential risks of the environment and climate emergency.

And throughout 2021, there was a wider appreciation of the urgency of greater capital flows towards sustainable infrastructure, including local infrastructure, particularly given the rapid growth rate of cities in developing countries. The United Nations Economic and Social Council, with Pakistan in the chair, promoted a focus on sustainable infrastructure finance; and the European Union, together with UN-Habitat, published a landmark report on Financing Sustainable Urban Development.

This publication provides a substantive consideration of one of the questions
raised in these debates: Given the scale of the capital flows required, is
the architecture of the global financial ecosystem fit for purpose? Much more
remains to be done to fully implement the comprehensive framework envisaged.This book is a thought-provoking, forward-thinking volume in an established tradition of UNCDF ‘outside-the-box’ scholarship.

Please find the publication at the following link: DOWNLOAD PUBLICATION

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 connect individuals, households, and small businesses with financial ecosystems that catalyse participation in the local economy, and provide tools to climb out of poverty and manage financial lives; (2) local development finance, which capacitates localities through fiscal decentralisation, 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 mobilisation.