UNIDO and South Africa

South Africa deposited its instrument of accession with the Secretary General of the United Nations in October 2000 and became the 169th member of UNIDO.  This accession was motivated by the role that UNIDO could play to facilitate South Africa’s own economic development. This accession further took into consideration the expertise that South Africa could bring to UNIDO based on her local, regional and continental experience.

The adoption of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) by the summit of heads of state held in Lusaka, Zambia, situated South Africa’s co-operation with UNIDO on a much focused and strategic path.

Currently UNIDO has twelve active programmes in South Africa, three of which are related to “Greening the COP 17 in Durban”, amounting to a budget allotment of US$1.000.002.. Three other projects are related to industrial energy efficiency improvement in South Africa in order to save the scarce energy needed to maintain the targeted 6% GDP growth, to improve the productivity and competitiveness of industrial products and to create more jobs, as well as to reduce CO2 emissions. One new project supports South Africa on the local production of an HIV/AIDS vaccine and active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), in which UNIDO acts as a coordinator of the International Scientific Advisory Committee (ISAC) and thereby enables the expertise within the expert group to be conveyed effectively to the project. UNIDO’s role in the ongoing discussions on local production of APIs will help resolve the situation such that it protects the short term supply of Anti-retrovirals, whilst developing a long term sustainable supply of products.