The Africa Regional Workshop took place on 12-14 November in Nairobi, Kenya. Over 50 participants attended the workshop comprising national planning, finance and environment officials plus UNDP Country Office representatives from the nine PEI Africa countries.  In addition, representatives from civil society, the UNDP Poverty Practice and, UNEP attended the workshop. The aim of the workshop was to share PEI results and lessons learned from the on-going country programmes and to discuss the needs, priorities and approaches for the new PEI Phase 2013-2017.

Participants confirmed that PEI in Africa has been successful in creating greater understanding of PE issues reflected by the fact that P-E linkages are now taken into account in major policy decisions and national development plans. During the next phase the region would like PEI to continue to work with planning and finance ministries and apply its flexible approach to support their efforts for P-E mainstreaming.  To build on the achievements thus far and to improve future outcomes PEI Africa aims to focus on three areas for the next phase i) integrating P-E objectives in sector plans, policies and strategies ii) increasing budget allocations for pro-poor sustainability and iii) reducing poverty through investments in environmental sustainability. The complete workshop report will be available soon.