INT/UNCTAD Trust Funds for Research and Technical Assistance

Description What is done in the programme or project and why, what results are pursued, who benefits from the activities and who are involved in the implementation.

The main objective of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) is to support developing countries in their efforts to integrate to the world economy. UNCTAD's main tasks are: intergovernmental negotiations, 2) research and analysis and 3) technical assistance. The proposed project support UNCTAD's mandated work in three product areas of technical assistance. The objective is to support developing countries' 1) capacity in the questions related with trade and gender equality; 2) research and teaching capacity of universities and research institutions and 3) capacity in the questions related with e-commerce and information economy. Previous results have been good and cost-effective. For example: trade and gender courses were successfully passed by 143 participants. Localized teaching materials by the Virtual Institute were used to teach 1562 students in 6 countries and 477 persons benefitted from workshops, on-line courses and other tailor-made capacity-building. The 2015 Information Economy Report facilitated discussion on economic opportunities of e-commerce for developing countries, the report was downloaded 41.000 times. In addition technical assistance has supported e-commerce reforms in East and West Africa. It is proposed that 731.000 EUR is allocated to the programs (of which 725.000 to the Secretariat and 6.000 to monitoring) for 2016-2018.