Operational Unit for Development Assistance (OUDA)

About

The Operational Unit for Development Assistance (OUDA) was created in 1992 in partnership between the Government of Egypt, represented by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). OUDA initially aimed to enhancing and strengthening the capacities of national institutions and national execution assisted projects and programs. OUDA holds and manages the South-South Development Assistance (SSDA) in Egypt. 

The development objective of OUDA is to foster national self-reliance in the administration of externally-assisted development projects, and maximize the use of foreign funds inputs. OUDA mandate is to provide and improve support to externally assisted programs and projects, providing its services to ministries, private sector, NGOs which are recipient of official foreign development assistance. To develop a cadre of national professionals who will be needed in order to render development assistance more effective, objective-oriented and cost effective.

OUDA is formulated to provide operational assistance to national development entities particularly under UN Development System Support (governmental, non-governmental, public or private sector) to enhance their programs and projects design capabilities for external funding purposes as well as to optimize their national execution capabilities for qualitative delivery.

Over the past years, formulation, implementation, and execution of programs and projects have been carried out by the UN specialized agencies and donor community with the accompanying overheads. This process has made the machinery dependent on the services of the external executing agencies of technical co-operation as well as UNDP field office services.

The fifth cycle however will give greater emphasis to national execution, in compliance with UN General Assembly Resolution 44/211 and Governing council decision 90/21. This will require a well thought out plan of action to assist Nationally Executed projects (NEX) for quality implementation and timely realization of outputs and immediate objectives. There is a need to provide support to host institutions in carrying out operational, administrative, financial and logistical functions in accordance with UNDP and GOE policies and procedures.