About UNDP
As the United Nations lead agency on international development, UNDP works in 170 countries and territories to eradicate poverty and reduce inequality. We help countries to develop policies, leadership skills, partnering abilities, institutional capabilities, and to build resilience to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Our work is concentrated in three focus areas; sustainable development, democratic governance and peace building, and climate and disaster resilience.Activities by UNDP
SUSTAIN MAURITANIA : Innovative Governance : AI, Blockchain and Digital Tools for Efficiency and Accountability
Africa Mauritania
SUSTAIN is an AI-enabled governance and capacity-building initiative led by UNDP Mauritania to support evidence-based public policy, strategic planning and development monitoring. The activity aims to strengthen national capacities to use artificial intelligence, data analytics and digital tools for monitoring SCAPP and SDG indicators, identifying development risks and opportunities, improving policy coordination, and supporting more transparent and timely decision-making.
The initiative will support the development of an integrated digital and AI-enabled platform combining indicator tracking, data visualization, trend analysis, scenario-based insights, and knowledge management. It will also explore responsible data traceability mechanisms, including blockchain-enabled validation where relevant, to improve trust, accountability and reliability of development data.
Expected impact includes stronger institutional capacity for strategic monitoring, improved use of data and AI in public decision-making, enhanced alignment between national priorities and the SDGs, and better coordination between government institutions, UNDP and development partners.
Applying AI to Map UNDP Projects to SDG Concepts and Indicators
Global Not ApplicableThis project uses the UN LinkedSDGs API to analyze UNDP projects and map them against SDG concepts and indicators. The API employs natural language processing (NLP) techniques to identify key concepts based on UNBIS and EuroVoc thesauruses and their association with specific SDGs. For each project, we extract the top 5 key concepts and the top 3 SDG goals most closely related to these concepts. Then we integrate the extracted concepts and related SDG goals into UNDP's project portfolio dashboard, which allows for easy categorization and filtering of projects based on their alignment with specific SDGs and concepts.
Activity Type AI Tools/SolutionsAI for people-centred smart cities workstream in the UN inter-agency working group on AI
GlobalA new workstream was established to understand the needs of cities and the capabilities of UN System organizations in relation to AI. The objectives are to leverage AI for people-centered smart cities, promote ethical guidelines, and strengthen inter-agency cooperation. The project is kicking off a global assessment of responsible AI use in cities.
Activity Type Research/Reports/AssessmentsNetworks/Mentorship/ExchangePolicy/Regulatory GuidanceGovernment Stakeholder Consultation on Public Sector Challenges and AI Solutions
Arab States Egypt
A hearing session jointly organized by UNDP Egypt and the Applied Innovation Center (AIC) brought together multi-ministerial representatives and government entities to identify key challenges facing the public sector in Egypt and explore how artificial intelligence could be leveraged to address them. Through a structured hearing and discussion process, participants shared operational and policy bottlenecks, which revealed several common and overlapping administrative challenges across ministries. The session enabled a collaborative exchange on potential AI-driven solutions to these shared issues and helped identify high-impact use cases to support more efficient, data-driven, and citizen-centric government services.
Challenges identified were primarily related to fragmented and siloed data systems, reliance on manual and paper-based processes, and constraints in monitoring performance. These challenges were recognized as cross-cutting issues that affect the efficiency, responsiveness, and overall effectiveness of public institutions, representing strong opportunities for targeted AI applications to streamline operations and enhance service delivery.