The United Nations (UN) system in Botswana was one of many UN systems in various countries that submitted a Joint Programme for funding under Component 1 of the SDG Fund, whose primary goal is to establish SDG Financing Architecture in countries. The Joint Programme was awarded funding of USD1,000,000 to be implemented over a period of 24 months, beginning July 2020 to June 2022. The United Nations Development Programme provided the technical and intellectual leadership in the design of the Joint Programme with support from three other participating UN Agencies including UNICEF, UNFPA and UNWomen, with each having strategic role to play during the implementation of the Joint Programme. The Joint Programme aims to support the Government of Botswana through the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development (MFED) to design and implement an SDG Financing Strategy through an Integrated National Financing Framework (INFF). The primary objective of the Joint Programme is to help the government to diversify its revenue generating capacity and increase budgetary allocation that will support the realisation of national development priorities and ultimately the achievement of the SDGs at national and sub-national levels. It also seeks to support the Government’s policy desire to achieve efficiency in spending in all sectors, contain cost and avoid waste in the public sector, and address corruption and illicit financing flows using a zero-based budgeting in all public sector ministries, departments and agencies.

The focus of the Joint Programme is helping government to mobilise development financing from both domestic and international public and private financing to support the realisation of the SDGs and all national development priorities including achieving prosperity for all Batswana. As such, the leave no one behind principle is particularly important for the realisation of these development objectives. Therefore, the mainstreaming of the leave no one behind principle and gender considerations will be integral throughout the implementation of the Joint Programme, with a keen focus on youth, women, people with disabilities and all other vulnerable members of the society.

Therefore, the key interventions that have been planned for implementation during the life span of the Joint Programme include the following interventions: 1) Undertake a comprehensive development finance assessment to understand the diversity of development financing that can be leveraged to support the realisation of the national development priorities and the realisation of the SDGs; 2) Support the production of a gender responsive SDG Financing Strategy through which the government will undertake the much needed policy and legislative reforms that will help to unlock multiple sources of development financing; 3) Support the collection of the much needed sex disaggregated data to effectively implement a robust monitoring and accountability framework; 4) Support the establishment of an effective and efficient governance and coordination framework to support the implementation of an INFF in Botswana; and 5) Support the development of a gender-based budgeting strategy and implementation of the zero-based budgeting principle in Botswana across all sector ministries, departments and agencies.

The experience of the 2008/2009 global financial and economic crisis and now the adverse impacts of the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) on the economies of countries has provided sufficient lesson and reason why it is important for Botswana to diversify its revenue generating capacity and tap into various development financing opportunities within the domestic and international public and private financing architecture. Therefore, the introduction of the INFF, based on which the Joint Programme has been designed, could not have come at a better time than now