UNCRD Africa Office

The UNCRD Africa Office, established in 1992, is mandated to carry out training-cum-research activities, advisory services, and information exchange related to local and regional development in African countries. The main objectives of the Africa Office are to assist African countries in designing and implementing effective and innovative regional development policies to address their needs and problems, develop case studies on good practices in regional development and disseminate the information, and assist African countries in building up local capacity to solve pressing socioeconomic development and environmental problems.

The Africa Office aims to:

1. Clarify the nature and causes of the economic and social crises affecting the African continent, and their impacts on subnational regions and local communities;
2. Seek ways of revitalizing regional economies and strengthening local capacity to cope with, and grow out of, these crises in a sustainable manner;
3. Provide a forum for African professionals, scholars, and administrators to share their experience with regard to the above and to strengthen the exchange of necessary information, primarily with one another, and also with those from other regions, particularly from Asia;
4. Strengthen the indigenous knowledge base of African countries through information-gathering and dissemination of good practices in regional development to foster self-reliance and mutual interaction among the countries and communities in the continent;
5. Foster research and training programmes to meet the needs of regional (local) economic revitalization in Africa; and
6. Promote South-South cooperation by establishing and strengthening institutional linkages between African and Asian research and training institutions.