Annual Report 2024

Innovation, finance and our portfolio approach

Powering development

Finance Moonshot

Goal 2022–2025:
Promote over $1 trillion more in public expenditure and private capital for the SDGs

Where we are in 2024:
Over $867 billion in public and private finance, projected at $1.1 trillion by the end of 2025

Since 2022, direct support from UNDP has yielded:

✓ $481.5 billion in public sector finance
✓ $385.5 billion in private sector finance

* Includes both the increase in budget allocations and improved transparency in SDG-aligned budgets.

Innovation is embedded across UNDP’s work, from the global to the local level. Our Accelerator Labs have sourced over 6,000 development solutions across 115 countries. Some 70% of these experiments have gone to scale — a remarkable 2-in-3 success rate. Around half of Lab partners come from the private sector.

In Ghana and Nigeria, the Accelerator Labs jumpstarted a $25 million partnership with the Mastercard Foundation to back 10,000 young SDG innovators. UNDP’s timbuktoo initiative is seeking to scale up the innovation ecosystem in Africa by supporting 10,000 tech start-ups. In 2024, it created innovation hubs and satellite university pods in 13 African countries.

SDGs supported through UNDP’s Finance Moonshot

Advancing NextGen

We scale up investments by:

Supporting countries to link planning with finance through the development of integrated national financing frameworks (INFFs) in 86 countries. Since 2021, these have leveraged $16 billion in new finance and aligned an additional $32 billion with the SDGs. Mongolia adopted its second-phase INFF action plan for 2024–2028, aligning $3 billion of its budget with the SDGs.
Expanding domestic public finance, including through tax systems. The Joint OECD/UNDP Tax Inspectors Without Borders Initiative has contributed over $2.3 billion in additional tax revenue in developing countries.
Catalysing private sector finance through SDG-aligned bonds in 40 countries. Bolivia issued a $15 million bond, the country’s first for renewable energy projects, through a UNDP partnership with the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean (CAF). Thailand’s first sustainability-linked bonds for $877 million in 2024 and $848 million in early 2025 are part of a $5.85 billion bond plan linked to slashing greenhouse gas emissions.

We scale up investments by:

Supporting countries to link planning with finance through the development of integrated national financing frameworks (INFFs) in 86 countries. Since 2021, these have leveraged $16 billion in new finance and aligned an additional $32 billion with the SDGs. Mongolia adopted its second-phase INFF action plan for 2024–2028, aligning $3 billion of its budget with the SDGs.
Expanding domestic public finance, including through tax systems. The Joint OECD/UNDP Tax Inspectors Without Borders Initiative has contributed over $2.3 billion in additional tax revenue in developing countries.
Catalysing private sector finance through SDG-aligned bonds in 40 countries. Bolivia issued a $15 million bond, the country’s first for renewable energy projects, through a UNDP partnership with the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean (CAF). Thailand’s first sustainability-linked bonds for $877 million in 2024 and $848 million in early 2025 are part of a $5.85 billion bond plan linked to slashing greenhouse gas emissions.

Performance milestones in 2024

Institutional achievements

As a future-smart organization, UNDP continued its strong track record of delivering value in 2024, transacting $4.8 billion* efficiently, accountably and transparently

*Based on preliminary 2024 financial data.

UNDP surpassed 94% of benchmark indicators on the UN System-Wide Action Plan (UN-SWAP), which measures performance on gender equality.

Our continued progress on greening our operations included a 22% cut in vehicle fuel emissions since 2018, with one-third of offices acquiring electric and hybrid vehicles and over 50 offices introducing solar power.

In 2024, UNDP conducted a thorough diagnostic analysis of its business model to assess the efficiency, effectiveness and financial sustainability of its operations. Recommendations from the review are informing strategic actions to maintain and further enhance our institutional effectiveness.

19^thconsecutive clean audit

Received its 19th clean audit from the UN Board of Auditors. Over the past 20 years, UNDP has stewarded over $100 billion in total revenue based on the highest standards of accountability and transparency.

Integrated risk management

We strengthened integrated risk management at all levels, from projects to corporate-wide. Advanced tracking tools assessed emerging issues, including AI and a new Integrated Risk Module for Results Management provided granular data on threats and opportunities.

UN 2.0

UNDP achieved exceptional performance scores among 51 UN organizations across five categories of the UN 2.0 System-Wide Assessment — digital, data, foresight, innovation and behavioural science.

Efficiency gains

Our ongoing efficiency gains free-up more funds for development results. UNDP invested 92 cents of every dollar in development programming and services in 2024, up from 88 cents in 2018*

*Based on preliminary 2024 financial data.

Human Development Report

UNDP’s 2024 Human Development Report, Breaking the Gridlock: Reimagining Cooperation in a Polarized World, confirmed our global thought leadership on a topic of wide concern. Within 24 hours of its launch, over 1,000 media stories on the report had appeared in leading outlets. Since then, the report has been read by 500,000 people from all regions, making it one of the year’s leading references on global development. It has also been cited in academic articles and covered by media outlets worldwide with a combined potential reach of over 3 billion unique monthly visitors.

UNDP’s global thought leadership extends to innovative data initiatives such as Human Climate Horizons, which delivers regular subnational projections on human development under different climate change scenarios, and the Multidimensional Poverty Index Report.

The Rio trio

UNDP works with 140 countries to act on climate change, bringing a wealth of experience to the “Rio Trio” conventions on climate change, biodiversity and land degradation in 2024. On the global stage, we demonstrated the possibilities for change by highlighting our work on nationally tailored climate initiatives across 16 countries.

Photo: UNDP Nature