Polish-UNDP Partnership

During its political and economic transformation in the 1990s, Poland benefited from financial support provided by other countries and the international community. Now, Poland itself has become a development cooperation donor, providing support to its partner countries in the region.

The Polish Aid programme, coordinated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, focuses on good governance, democracy and human rights, entrepreneurship and the private sector, sustainable agriculture and rural development, and environment protection. In the Europe and Central Asia region, its priority countries are Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine.

Polish Challenge Fund

In December 2019, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland and UNDP launched the pilot Polish Challenge Fund (PCF), to engage Polish companies to address complex development challenges in partner countries.

The Challenge Fund is an innovative platform for gathering, identifying, and sharing innovative solutions that will be sustainable, suitable to the local context, scalable and replicable within the country. The goal is to facilitate the transfer of Polish know-how, technology, and innovatives , by pulling from the private sector, research institutes and universities.

The success of the programme is based on close cooperation between the Polish entities and local partners – to assure projects viability and increased capacity on the ground – and the involvement of all possible financial resources and tools to increase the positive impact of development activities.
In 2020, the PCF focused on Republic of Belarus and Ukraine, supporting ten Polish innovations in the areas of green technologies, information and communication technologies (ICT), and response to COVID-19 challenges.  Responding to the COVID-19 crisis, Poland joined the UNDP regional multi-partner response BOOST.

In early March 2022, the Donor decided to make an additional contribution to the PUP budget with the aim to support the Republic of Moldova in countering negative effects of an unprecedented Russia’s invasion on Ukraine. On 24 June, 2022, the revision of the PUP Project Document was agreed between the partners, extending the cooperation until 31 August, 2023, and increasing the Project’s funding by US$407,096.00. The two Project’s components and outputs set in the first project cycle (2021-2022) remained unchanged.

In 2023, a decision was made to extend the project until the end of 2024 and to send an additional amount of PLN 4,300,00 (USD 987,348, 17) for the implementation of the 6th edition of the Polish Challenge Fund, implemented for Georgia, North Macedonia and Moldova. Currently, there are 11 ongoing CF projects – 6 in Georgia and 5 in Moldova.

Polish-UNDP Partnership – Innovative Solutions for the SDGs

On 1 May 2021, the “Polish-UNDP Partnership: Innovative Solutions for the SDGs” was launched, aiming to bring Polish expertise, know-how and innovative solutions to the SDGs in partner countries. The project builds on the experience accumulated through the 2020 PCF.

In addition to the Challenge Fund modality, the new project has a Knowledge Management component and focuses on Georgia, Republic of Moldova, and Ukraine, and four development challenges: green technologies & smart solutions, information and communication technologies (ICT); anti COVID-19 solutions and smart cities.