Enhancing collective impact of the UN in Ethiopia

The United Nations Country Team (UNCT) in Ethiopia held its strategic meeting to reflect critically on how the UN system operates in support of the development needs of the country. 

The meeting brought together UNCT members and Programme Management Team (PMT) colleagues from across the system, united by a shared objective to chart a more coherent and impactful way of working together to deliver solutions at scale in support of Ethiopia’s development priorities.

In his opening intervention, the Director of the UN Development Coordination Office (DCO) in Africa, Yacoub El Hillo, highlighted the wider global context marked by overlapping crises, geopolitical instability, and increasing pressure on traditional development assistance, placing Ethiopia at the center of the UN’s global reform challenge.

“The world is facing multiple overlapping crises, and the United Nations was created for moments exactly like this,” El Hillo stressed. “The real question in Ethiopia is not whether we remain relevant in theory, but whether we can deliver solutions, policy advice, and transformative results in practice.”

In his address, the UN Assistant Secretary-General and UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Ethiopia, Ozonnia Ojielo, emphasized that Ethiopia’s national priorities - rather than agency mandates or project boundaries - must determine the UN’s mode of engagement.

“Ethiopia’s needs should determine how we design our interventions,” he said, “not the boundaries of existing projects or the preferences of individual agencies.”

He further underscored the importance of starting with Ethiopia’s major structural challenges and building credible, scalable responses capable of crowding in additional investment.

“The UN’s comparative advantage lies in integrated analysis, convening power, technical expertise, and its ability to design and test solutions that others can finance and scale,” Ozonnia added.

The meeting candidly acknowledged that while collaboration has improved at the design stage, deeper and more meaningful integration is required to deliver shared and enhanced outcomes. 

Participants also emphasized the need to reinforce the UN’s collective value proposition by supporting systemic solutions that link sectors, align policies, strengthen institutions, and provide trusted, evidence‑based advice.

According to the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator, achieving this shift requires moving beyond activity‑based cooperation.

“We must go beyond activity‑driven coordination toward genuinely integrated initiatives,” he said, “initiatives that are capable of serving as proof of concept for larger national and institutional uptake.”

Participants also highlighted the importance of better leveraging the UN’s existing assets, including its knowledge, normative mandate, data, communications capacity, and deep technical expertise across agencies to enhance the UN’s role as a catalyst for transformation in Ethiopia.

The discussion held among the senior leadership for the UN in Ethiopia further underscored the importance of accountability, both for results and for changes in behavior. In this regard, the Programme Management Team (PMT) was identified as a key platform for translating strategic decisions into operational reality and ensuring that agreements reached at leadership level are reflected in day‑to‑day practice.

The meeting concluded with agreement to translate its strategic direction into a joint declaration and a limited set of investment‑ready, systems‑level initiatives aligned with Ethiopia’s national trajectory and the United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework.

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