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From potential to prosperity

UNDP supports the Doha Programme of Action’s ambitious agenda for least developed countries

By United Nations Development Programme

March 3^rd, 2023

UNDP’s mission is to leave no one behind. Not a person. Not a country. That means focusing on the most disadvantaged first.

The world’s “least developed countries” (LDCs) are where people not only struggle to get the basics to feed their families, but they do so within a larger society that faces structural impediments to universal prosperity.

Without the 46 LDCs, the world cannot achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – the blueprint for a future free from poverty and hunger, and safe from the worst effects of climate change.

The compounded effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the increasingly savage effects of climate change, have caused devastating setbacks.

Soaring food and energy prices may have pushed as many as 71 million people into poverty, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.

From potential to prosperity

From potential to prosperity

From potential to prosperity

This year global leaders are making a concerted push to raise 100 million people out of poverty and to assist 500 million to get clean affordable energy, at the same time as unlocking more than US$1 trillion in public and private investment in the SDGs.

The Fifth United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDC5), which takes place in Doha in March, is a once-in-a-decade opportunity to invest in the future and success of the world’s poorest countries and to meet the SDGs. The Doha Programme of Action proposes an ambitious agenda for LDCs –with a special emphasis on digital transitions, innovation and structural transformation, and a special role for youth.

From potential to prosperity

From potential to prosperity

UNDP’s programming is surgically focused where it’s most needed, and amongst the most vulnerable, to promote wider change.

We work with people so they can transform their societies.

Anne - Sustainable energy

“My business has grown so much since I got connected to electricity.”

Photo: UNDP Malawi

For entrepreneur and mother of four Anne Nyendwa in Sitolo Malawi, electricity is about much more than just light.

Anne used to be one of 568 million sub-Saharan Africans who lived without electricity, which meant she was forced to shut her business when the sun went down. Now she has her own source of power—a minigrid.

Sub-Saharan Africa is the region is where most of the world’s people who don’t have electricity live. Minigrids are a cheap and fast solution—one can be built in six weeks.

From potential to prosperity

From potential to prosperity

UNDP’s Africa Minigrids Program is funded by the Global Environment Facility in partnership with the Rocky Mountain Institute and the African Development Bank. It makes renewable energy minigrids commercially viable and unlocks opportunities for private investors to electrify off-grid communities.

Rikta – Climate and nature

“Storms, cyclones and salinity levels in water have increased over the years. This largely disrupted my livelihood."

Photo: UNDP Bangladesh

Rikta Roy, a farmer in Bangladesh, had long been struggling to find a stable source of income.

An increasingly unstable climate has played a large role in her financial insecurity. Cyclone Amphan, which struck Bangladesh in 2020, was a severe setback to her plans to become a poultry farmer.

From potential to prosperity

From potential to prosperity

From potential to prosperity

UNDP’s LoGIC programme has embraced a grassroots approach—working with local governments, agricultural officers and through community mobilization. It assists vulnerable women living in coastal communities with everything from planning to finance and developing markets for their products.

Rikta was one of more than 200 women who retrained to become watermelon farmers.

The process ensures that the community has charge of the project, which is also climate adaptive and gender inclusive.

Zahra – Crisis response

"Seeing other entrepreneurs, hearing their stories, seeing their products and advertising, and of course, through my good sales. I am thrilled and hopeful for the future.”

Photo: UNDP Afghanistan/Haroon Hamdard

Zahra Alizadeh runs a clothing business. But her flourishing enterprise took a double hit from the COVID-19 pandemic and the sudden takeover by the Taliban government in Afghanistan. She became depressed, but she didn’t give up.

From potential to prosperity

From potential to prosperity

At this low point in her life, Future Generation Afghanistan, one of UNDP Afghanistan’s partner organizations, offered a slot in their women-only market days. Supported by the European Union, under the umbrella ABADEI programme it provides safe spaces for women entrepreneurs to sell their goods and to receive technical and vocational training.

From potential to prosperity

From potential to prosperity

In the short term, businesspeople are also eligible for food baskets to tide their families over. ABADEI operates in all provinces, including those that are hard to reach.

Nada - Science and technology

"Providing biogas to the community is critical, as it not continuously available. People are forced to stand for long hours in cold weather to purchase it and its high price does not allow some to get the quantity needed.”

Photo: UNDP Yemen

At 26 years old, Nada has big ideas, and the means to carry them out. She owns and operates a biogas company in Yemen that produces clean, alternative energy from food waste.

Working with UNDP’s youth leadership programme in Yemen she has developed a mobile electronic device that measures the temperature of decomposing waste, enabling her to optimize production.

She works with the community to help ensure production while also focusing on increasing the awareness about using alternative energy and individual responsibility toward climate change.

Jacinta – Inequality

“Now I know how to make a budget for my family’s daily expenses.

Through the women’s cooperative, I can save the extra funds for my children to pay their tuition fees in the future.”

Photo: UNDP-ATSEA 2

In Timor-Leste women often carry a larger share of households’ financial burdens, despite having less control over their money. The problem is compounded by lack of information.

Jacinta Maria Da Cruz, a housewife and mother of three, has found new financial freedom through the ATSEA-2 programme, a cooperative that trains women in financial management. For the first time in her community, women have been able to establish their own financial institutions which meet their economic and social needs.

Retiring “least developed”

UNDP supports efforts to close the financing gaps that stand in the way of the least developed countries achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. We foster green structural transformation that closes the digital divide, promotes inclusive prosperity and a resilient future, and which will allow us to build world in which “least developed” does not exist as a concept.

© 2026 United Nations Development Programme

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