This Guide is intended as a contribution to addressing how to improve delivery of basic public infrastructure and related services. Over the past decade UNCDF has built up a portfolio of Local Development Programmes in the LDCs, primarily in Africa and Asia. Although these LDPs operate in very different national contexts, 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.