The stone sculpture outside Cape Verde’s main airport bears a  simple, yet evocative, inscription: “Si ka badu ka ta biradu”—Crioulo for “If you don’t leave, you can’t return.”

“The words of poet Eugenio Tavares,” says Petra Lantz, the UN Resident Coordinator for the small island nation nestled off the Atlantic coast of West Africa. “They are meant to give courage and hope to those who left loved ones and family for uncertainty, loneliness and isolation. When I see that stone, I think about how all that suffering, separation, pain, and solitude really did make this great small nation the development success that it is.”

Cape Verde is an unlikely role model. It is 90 percent volcanic rock, has a tiny population and almost no natural resources besides fish, and yet in January 2008 it graduated from the category of least developed countries. It is only the second country to do so, after Botswana, since the list was established in 1971. The country is on track to meet all its Millennium Development Goal targets, and has already surpassed several.

This achievement undoubtedly owes a debt to the million Cape Verdeans who did leave, and continue to send remittances from their foreign homes; but also to an attitude of mind born of an intensely outward-looking geography and history. Cape Verde was, by Ms. Lantz’s reckoning, the pioneer of modern globalization, as a Portuguese colony and the first European toehold in the tropics.

Today, Cape Verde is a rare sub-Saharan example of a long-term, stable democracy, and is embracing new winds of change—opening its government to online scrutiny, pioneering mobile census techniques, and recently launching a programme to provide one laptop for every secondary school student.

It’s a reflection of Cape Verde’s mindset that Ms. Lantz conducted this interview via Skype, the free voice-over-internet technology—the first RC in this series to do so.

“When the government is Skyping, we must Skype too,” says Ms. Lantz. “I would be a lousy resident coordinator in Cape Verde if I did not attempt to live up to the expectation of modernization and cutting costs.”

It was this outlook that led Cape Verde three years back to pioneer the new thinking sweeping the United Nations system: an effort to set aside turf wars and inter-agency rivalries in favour of a common set of business practices and one leader in each country—guided by the philosophy of Delivering as One.

In 2006 Cape Verde was the first country to create a single UN joint office, bringing together UNDP, UNICEF, UNFPA and WFP under one roof. In 2007 it became one of eight pilot countries to Deliver as One, led in Cape Verde’s case by a single Resident Coordinator. They are increasingly working together on joint initiatives in areas including public health, school feeding, migration and women’s empowerment.

Today, the UN in Cape Verde uses one reporting standard, and presents a united face to the government—a move welcomed by its hosts.

“When it comes to the joint office, the government loves it. They only have one door on which to knock,” said Ms. Lantz. It also helps that “they are getting additional attention and resources from development partners, who are providing assistance to the Delivering as One countries.”

It would seem like a win-win scenario. In practice, however, it has been an often-painful process, beset by coordination challenges.

“I have the highest admiration for my colleagues in the joint office; they went through so much, so many different missions from the participating organizations to see how could this happen,” says Ms. Lantz.

“Coordination is tricky. Many UN agencies saw this as an excellent resource mobilization opportunity. Now we are really trying to make sure that we programme for better results at a lower cost. The implementation phase is in its infancy; the proof will be in the pudding.”

In Cape Verde, for example, the UN uses one administrative system—that of UNDP. But in headquarters, harmonization has not come so quickly, and agencies continue to use a variety of different protocols, with different reporting standards. As a result, the country office needs to write many of its reports in duplicate.

“It was a tough choice. The four agencies decided to use UNDP as a support agency—so that means we are using the business processes and software systems that UNDP has invested in,” says Ms. Lantz. “That makes it hard for some of my colleagues. To release resources from another organization you sometimes have to make multiple reports. This is the dark side.”

“The positive side is it’s so convenient to governments,” she continues. “They have one country programme, one set of processes that they can get really familiar with, one reporting modality. And while it’s hard on the staff, we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. We are really proud of what we have been experimenting with on this island. We have reduced administrative costs, and in some ways we can see better development results.”

Despite inflation and rising utility costs for the UN, this yielded a 36 percent reduction in total operating expenditures between 2005 and 2008. The Government is eager to see these savings channeled into development programmes.

Given Cape Verde’s unique situation, there are limits to how much its experience is applicable to other countries that might one day consider Delivering as One. As Ms. Lantz readily acknowledges, the UN system’s main goal in a country like Cape Verde is to put itself out of business. (In a previous incarnation, she closed the UNDP office in Estonia, amid great celebration).

Nevertheless, Cape Verde faces a host of new challenges if the global financial crisis takes its expected toll upon tourism and remittances, the mainstays of its economy; and the country has a large debt to tackle.

The UN launched One Programme in July 2008 to help Cape Verde tackle those challenges. Several sub-programmes focus on specific needs related to graduation and the country’s ambitious economic transformation agenda, including its recent membership of the WTO and its special partnership status with the European Union.

Ms. Lantz estimates the UN system—the country’s sixth largest source of grant assistance—will need to maintain a presence in Cape Verde for the next 15-20 years. Cape Verde’s evolving experience with the UN system is likely to have direct relevance for other countries in transition to middle income status.

“I think it could be a model for other countries, especially middle income countries,” says Ms. Lantz. “If I didn’t believe it made sense, I wouldn’t be here.”

- Mark Turner