UNDP Joins Safe Hands Ethiopia Coalition

September 21, 2020

photo ©Tenachinbejachin

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is partnering with Dalberg Catalyst to support the Safe Hands Ethiopia coalition on COVID19, which brings together private sector, government and civil society.

The coalition focuses on providing sanitary materials and information for vulnerable communities by putting in place an efficient system that aligns the private sector’s production of sanitary products with the distribution capacity of the government set up. This is complemented by the CSO’s comparative advantage around the production of behavioural change communication materials targeting vulnerable communities.

Through this partnership, UNDP will initially provide around 18 million ETB (USD 500,000) through Dalberg Catalyst to go towards supporting the cost of production and dissemination of sanitary and communication materials to at-risk populations in Addis Ababa. The funding will also help to sustain jobs and livelihoods.  

UNDP’s partnership with the Safe Hands Coalition is part of a global UNDP COVID19 response to prevent, manage and more importantly to mitigate impacts of the pandemic. UNDP’s COVID19 response has included informing policy through working with the UN system on a socio-economic impact assessment for Ethiopia.

UNDP’s strategic support to Ethiopia has prioritized supporting the government to ensure critical business continuity through the provision of PPEs as well as ICT tools for over 30 ministries and agencies, several regional states as well as industrial parks.