UNDP Regional Bureau for Africa created a pool of stabilization experts with interactive training powered by SURGE Academy.
Business as usual isn’t an option. Stabilization experts are needed to think outside the norms of UNDP operations and programming to uncover new solutions that help create environments where populations feel safe returning after violent crisis.
The Challenge: Conflict and insurgency in some countries combined with extreme violence and weak government structures has challenged the Regional Bureau for Africa (RBA) to boost capacity in UNDP Country Offices to address stabilization needs to enable communities affected to return to normal as quickly as possible. In short, this means developing a common understanding of a stabilization model developed around three proven guiding principles: speed, scale, and strengthening the social contract.
The SURGE Approach: Leveraging the SURGE Academy Track model, a collaboration between the Regional Bureau for Africa, Crisis Bureau, and the German Foreign Affairs Office quickly evolved. The Stabilization Academy launched less than a month later, building upon a cohort of expertise from other regions and contexts.
- Learning: RBA held an interactive 8-week training course tailored for 63 colleagues from Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mozambique, Chad, and the Dakar Regional Hub. For two and a half hours each week, experts from select Country Offices gathered to explore scenarios, learn from experiences in other regions, and co-create a common understanding of stabilization. All sessions and materials were translated in real-time for French and English speakers.
- Community: With SURGE Academy’s learning and communication support, the Stabilization Academy quickly created an online community and scheduled twice-weekly open houses for these stabilization experts to discuss, ask questions, share resources, and get to know and inspire each other.
- Deployment: This cohort of trained experts will be matched with deployments where stabilization capacities are needed to boost UNDP’s corporate ability to respond flexibly and adaptively to changing circumstances in a way that’s relevant to diverse contexts.
Why This Matters: The thread that runs through the Stabilization Academy training can be summed up in one phrase: business as usual isn’t an option. Stabilization experts are needed to think outside the norms of UNDP operations and programming to uncover new solutions that help create environments where populations feel safe returning to after violent crisis. The Stabilization Academy proved timely and relevant for challenges facing the region, making UNDP even more agile in responding to changing circumstances in Africa for programmatic scale-up in stabilization as a clear path to peace.
“Indeed, I’m really impressed with the speed with which this was curated. It was less than a month ago when we started talking about the possibility of extending stabilization in Ethiopia for the situation in Tigray that we realized how few people we had who had expertise in this area. That’s when we started dreaming up this idea.”
— Ahunna Eziakonwa
Assistant Secretary-General, Assistant Administrator and Director of the Regional Bureau for Africa (RBA)
SURGE Academy is an initiative of the Crisis Bureau to systematically strengthen a community of global crisis practitioners within UNDP.
